Greek life changing after death

The number of registered fraternity parties has dropped dramatically since Michael Tobin's death last year. Just a few short years ago, Penn students could have their pick of at least three or four fraternity parties on any given Friday or Saturday night. Now, there are rarely more than a few fraternity parties in a weekend, much less in a single evening. Although the nature of Penn's Greek culture has been slowly evolving over the past few years, the alcohol-related death of 26-year-old Phi Gamma Delta alumnus Michael Tobin a year ago yesterday served as the catalyst for rapid changes to the Greek system. Tobin's death prompted a widespread evaluation of Penn's rules regarding drinking, resulting in a stricter alcohol policy that has changed the nature and frequency of fraternity parties on campus. Under the new rules, Greeks say large, blow-out parties are all but extinct due to the strict regulations. And many say that as the number of fraternity parties diminishes, the number of unregulated parties increases. Tobin was found dead during the early morning hours of March 21, 1999, following a FIJI alumni dinner. Four days later, University President Judith Rodin instituted a temporary ban on alcohol at all registered campus parties -- igniting campus-wide uproar, with students organizing a mass protest on College Green. During the five-week alcohol ban, Provost Robert Barchi led a committee of students, faculty and administrators that drafted recommendations for a new alcohol policy. While the policy applies to the entire campus, Greeks at the time voiced concerns that as the main organizers of on-campus parties they would be unfairly penalized for Tobin's death. InterFraternity Council leaders, who were a part of the Working Group on Alcohol Abuse, stressed throughout the process that fraternity parties were among the safer places for students to drink at Penn. Many expressed worries that under a new, stricter policy, parties would just be pushed to unsafe, off-campus locations. According to former IFC President Mark Metzl, a College senior, fraternity parties, "even in the old system, were the safest places to imbibe in the world." And former IFC Executive Vice President Andrew Exum, a College senior and Daily Pennsylvanian columnist, said students tend to drink more at private parties or in their dorm rooms than at fraternity parties. "From a practical standpoint, you run more of a risk binge drinking behind closed doors than fighting with 300 people for a beer at a crowded fraternity party," the Sigma Nu brother said. But those crowded fraternity parties have thinned out over the past semester as the new policy demands stricter carding rules and tighter enforcement. The new alcohol policy calls for a 1 a.m. serving deadline of alcohol at all undergraduate parties and a total ban on hard alcohol. The new policy also strengthened and expanded the existing monitoring system. Every registered party now has at least one of the University's approximately 30 trained monitors -- all of whom are Penn graduate students -- checking it during the course of the evening. Still, Alcohol Policy Coordinator Stephanie Ives stressed that the new policy was "very carefully worded," so as not to single out the Greeks as targets. But former Sigma Alpha Mu President Michael Kraver, who served on the WGAA, said that the correlation between the Greeks and alcohol could not be avoided. "The bottom line is, right or wrong, the Greeks are associated with the alcohol policy," said Kraver, now a first-year Penn Law student. Kraver did note, however, that the administration included Greek input as it reshaped the policy. Barchi said that the University does not want to get rid of the Greek system, explaining that the Tobin tragedy was only a sign of a larger campus-wide problem. "I think that Tobin's tragic death was just an indication of problems that were pervasive in the system as a whole," Barchi said. "It's not a question of suspending a fraternity -- it's a question of changing the culture." If the drinking culture has not changed, the Greek culture certainly has, with the numbers of on-campus parties down and the stringent rules, for the most part, being enforced. Wharton senior Martin Park, who was president of FIJI before the fraternity gave up its charter last spring, said he can see the changes on campus. Fraternities "don't want to have parties because they don't want to get in trouble," Park said. He also maintained that the new rules "don't let you have a fun party -- you can't have a real party." Many Greeks now say that drinking has been moved off campus to unmonitored locations, as they feared initially. As for the future of FIJI at Penn, the brothers agreed upon forfeiting their charter that the fraternity would not be allowed to recolonize until all current brothers had graduated. But Park believes that FIJI's national organization will try and bring the chapter back eventually, and that many men will be interested in joining. Park also emphasized that the death at FIJI was not the sole reason for the change in policy. "It was a whole string of events, not just what happened last year," he said. "People have to understand -- policies were changing from the day I got here four years ago." Ives agreed. "If you look at the national picture, at Greek life at campuses around the country, there are many similarities, although not all campuses have had a tragedy like we have," she said. And Metzl said he believes that the necessary reevaluation of the fraternity system has strengthened the Greeks and improved their prospects for the future. "We stand on much more solid ground than we did in February of last year," he said.

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