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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Fraternity presidents discuss community plans

Campus Filler

Members of IU’s greek community boarded yellow school buses and journeyed out to the woods where they would be sharing bunks for a couple of nights.

All four greek councils were present Jan. 20 at the retreat in Bradford Woods to discuss the future and structure of their community. They discussed mental health care, risk policy and philanthropy.

The retreat is the Greek Leadership Academy, an event that hasn’t taken place in three years. Jack Polte, a representative for the Interfraternity Council in charge of standards, said the greek councils resurrected the event to improve the community. It’s a gathering of all the presidents and council executive members at IU from Interfraternity Council, Panhellenhic Association, Multi-Cultural Greek Council and National Pan-Hellenic Council.

“It was actually a lot of fun,” Polte said. “We were there to discuss the expectations for the community and for the new leaders that have been elected since we got back to school.”

He said the gathering showcased the extent of IU’s greek life because there were people from all walks of life. Furthermore, he said, they had the opportunity to reacquaint, or in some cases acquaint, themselves, with the resources that are available at IU.

Polte and Adam Weber, IFC vice president of recruitment, said the organizations that visited, like the IU Police department and Counseling and Psychological Services, were memorable and important to the weekend.

Oasis and Step Up! also stopped by Friday night to talk about what the councils do and what getting help from the organizations looks like.

“I thought it was a really important thing for the community, as over 70 chapters were together trying to make the greek community better,” Weber said.

That’s why the weekend didn’t end there, as it allowed the different councils to have an open 
dialogue.

Weber said it was exciting to see the inner workings of different councils and their chapters. As the vice president of recruitment for IFC, seeing how others operate was beneficial to him. It allowed him to gain more perspective on how to help future recruits.

“Although our chapters are unique, a lot of our chapters were founded for the same reasons,” he said.

Part of the reason Polte and Weber were able to learn so much was because, despite the many differences in backgrounds, each of the greek councils has common ground.

“A lot of the chapters have similar issues that they want to resolve,” Polte said. “We found out that we can work together as a team to make our greek community as best as possible.”

Zach Hermann, the president of Delta Chi, thought so as well.

“I learned a lot,” he said. “It was good to interact with other presidents and discuss different ways to handle situations.”

Polte said this is why the greek community aims to have more retreats like this in the future to continue to talk as a community.

All four councils and their executive members will be going to the Association of Fraternal Leadership next weekend, Feb. 2-5.

“That’s going to be in Indianapolis, it’s a national conference with councils from universities across the country,” he said. “About 28 of us will be going to learn what other schools do in order to learn what the greek landscape looks like nationwide.”

The councils are also planning what they call a “Super Gavel,” where they have a chapter meeting among the four councils. This event is scheduled for some time in March.

Finally, the presidents will be back on a retreat like this in the fall.

Weber said he believed most of the people there had an excellent learning experience.

“I think they did especially when we had to collaborate talking about different issues in the communities, and most people thought it was pretty beneficial,” he said.

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