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By Dan Snyder ’17

April 24, 2014

Wesleyan Student Assembly passes Greek Life reform

On Sunday, April 20, the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) passed legislation that will drastically change the school’s Greek life. The resolution requires all fraternities on campus to become coeducational by 2015. It passed with a 14-12 vote with one abstention and 11 members not in attendance of the meeting. The division of the student assembly reflects the division across campus as well as the college’s recent efforts to address its sexual assault rate..

“It’s always difficult to approach such a complicated problem, and the sensitivity of this issue only made reaching a decision more complicated,” WSA Vice President-elect Nicole Brenner ’15 said in a statement. “One of the hardest parts is deciding when the time is right to come to a vote; it’s always hard to decide to cut off a conversation but at a certain point there’s not much more that can be said.”

President Roth, who in March came out with a neutral stance on the causality between the existence of fraternities and sexual assault, seems to now be siding with the Student Assembly. He said, “I’ve followed conversations about the future of fraternities at Wesleyan with great interest, and, given my own experience, I am encourage by the co-education proposal supported by the WSA and several faculty members.”

Three Wesleyan fraternities—Beta Theta Pi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, and Psi Upsilon—have all come out against the reform, citing the American right to free assembly and association as their defense. The brothers of Psi U have had mixed feelings on the resolution, though. President Jaime de Venecia ’15 said, “There are definitely some brothers who are in support of co-education on principle and it’s just a correct thing to do, which I totally understand. And of course there are some brothers who love our tradition to the point that they feel that co-education is not the answer but do obviously want to address this issue that has become such a big one on campus.” A campus wide discussion on sexual assault and the actions of WSA will continue, but as of now, Wesleyan Greek organizations must have co-educational pledge classes in the spring of 2015.

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