University approves new Greek requirements

Since Georgia College’s founding in 1889, it has grown from a 585 student body to a 6,000 student body with over 170 student organizations.

With so many student organizations, certain policies must be in place to protect the organizations and the campus.

Recently, SGA has proposed a revised Greek Expansion Policy.

This revised policy is directed towards Greek Life on campus at Georgia College, indicating the proper steps a future Greek student organization would have to go through to be admitted on campus.

Director of the Department of Campus Life, Tom Miles, said the previous policy needed to be updated, and a revision was needed.

“(The old policy) was dated and it was not as strict as it needed to be…it provided and allowed for loops holes,” Miles said.

These loop holes made it hard for administration to keep up with growing organizations.

“When certain steps are not followed or not in writing then some of the policy in place don’t get enforced,” Miles said.

Because of the vague policies of the old expansion policy, organizations came about on campus the wrong way.

“(This did) spark some attention of SGA and administration and students,” said SGA President Zach Mullins. “But it highlighted the need that we need to make sure any student group on campus needs to have clear guidelines how to come to our campus.”

Mullins says he pushed hard for this new policy to be put into action.

“I pushed for it…because we needed a policy that is very clear and easy to understand and students can access, (it) all needs to be laid out very clear,” Mullins said.

Erin Gant, public relations chair of Greek Steering Committee said the new policy was needed to create a checks and balances system to protect new and existing organizations.

“When looking at sororities and fraternities, they are going to be around for a while, so when you let them on your campus you have to understand you’re bringing on not just a fraternity but you’re creating a long term culture for this organization,” Miles said. “If you go back to the 1970s, that is, when the first fraternities starting coming on Georgia College, you will see they all (still) exist except for one.”

Some of the requirements of starting a Greek organization is having a 2.5 GPA, being a full time student, having at least 50 percent of the average membership planning to join, and being in good academic standing with the University.

Miles says Greek Life is growing rapidly, and within a year two more sororities are expected to be at Georgia College.

“They’re are rarely any opportunities where SGA or Greek life put up too many hurdles for any organizations to come on campus,” Miles said. “We have over 170 student organizations and we love to see that number, that basically says we have a lot of students involved on campus which is what we want to see.”

Posted by Steffi Beigh on Feb 3 2011. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.