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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Questions and Answers with IFC President

Andrew Cowie is the president of the Interfraternity Council. He sat down to discuss IFC and his goals for the year. 

Andrew Cowie is the president of IU’s Interfraternity Council. IFC oversees 30 fraternities, and its members include representatives from 30 fraternities. Cowie is a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and sat down with the Indiana Daily Student to discuss his job and the community he not only belongs to but also helps govern.

IDS: What have you learned and accomplished since becoming president?

Cowie: The first month and a half have been pretty busy. We attended a national leadership conference for all IFCs across the country. We changed how we scheduled our weekly president meetings. We have set up roundtables for chapter presidents to discuss the issues their chapters face.

IDS: What do you still hope to accomplish?

Cowie: I still hope to accomplish the chapter evaluation plan, allowing for each chapter to share with the community in order to find areas of improvements. To understand how we as an IFC executive board can act as a resource to improve. I think really trying to get this chapter evaluation plan up and running.

The vice presidents and myself on executive board have been coming up with questions. It will target 12 to 15 categories from leadership structure to senior leadership in the fraternity to look at each of the chapters within these categories and from that we are going to give an assessment to each chapter. We are going to say here’s what you are doing really well, and here’s what we want you to keep doing.

IDS: What challenges do you face as president and how do you balance being a fraternity member and being in charge?

Cowie: I think the most important thing is communication, being able to communicate effectively knowing when you have to have moments, knowing when it’s relaxing-with-the-guys time or stepping up to be a leader. It’s about making those conscious decisions and being able to communicate most effectively when you do it.

IDS: What has IFC done to bolster its anti-hazing policies this semester?

Cowie: This semester we took a very proactive approach when reviewing each chapters new member education program just to make sure that each program was educational and structured. We think hazing occurs when there’s a lack of structure or plan within the new member education process. If things aren’t planned out and set in stone ahead of time that’s when hazing can occur when there’s downtime and they don’t know what to do to the guys. We have to make sure that there are not opportunities for hazing to occur.

IDS: What’re you doing and aiming to do differently in order to tackle the issue of sexual assault in the IFC community?

We have revamped our Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault program to now include a more significant portion of the new members in the greek community. So that when they enter in, we can establish a strong foundation and say there is no place for sexual assault. Also training them to what that can look like and how to prevent it. The MARS team will create handouts to reinforce the teachings that go on in hopes to create community that is more knowledgeable about what sexual assault looks like and to be a community that holds each other accountable.

IDS: Are there any 
stereotypes about the greek community you would like to address?

Cowie: The biggest stereotype is that people join these organizations just to party or to be able to live in a giant house, if it’s a housed organization. What people may not see is the philanthropic benefits that comes with it and the strong sense of brotherhood that comes with being in a fraternity. We should try to promote the multidimensional facets of fraternities and to promote the ideas of community. We should constantly be making that conscious effort to evaluate how a chapter runs and to make sure that we are doing things not because that’s how we’ve always done 
it.

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