Guest column by Ray Clark and Griffin Rubin | Shifting the culture: Introducing the Greek Community Judicial Board
During our freshman and sophomore years at Penn, two incidents of cultural insensitivity within the Greek system created community tension and divided Penn’s campus. First was the “gangsta”-themed mixer and then the holiday photo fiasco. While both of these incidents were deeply concerning on a cultural awareness level, one of the greatest problems that became apparent afterwards was the lack of a system of recourse for both Greek and non-Greek Penn students to report incidents of potential cultural insensitivity. At the time of the holiday photo incident, we were both moving into positions of greater community responsibility — one of us being elected as the Interfraternity Council’s Judicial Inquiry Board manager and the other serving as co-chair of UMOJA and as a member of the Undergraduate Assembly. We both saw a significant issue on Penn’s campus that necessitated not just discussion, but deliberate and purposeful action. We took to this task with great care and much thought, beginning with what we wished to accomplish in creating an infrastructure to instill and preserve Penn’s tradition of culturally aware and informed freedom of expression.