IFC votes against banning hard liquor from parties
The Intrafraternity Council voted Monday against a policy that would ban hard liquor from all fraternity house parties and tabled discussion for a policy proposing to ban kegs until next week.
UW-Madison fraternity and sorority advisor Barbara Kautz said that although the proposed hard liquor policy failed, a motion was made to create a committee to make events safer and decrease binge drinking throughout both the Greek community and campus.
We're going to develop a committee just to look at other options because it was very heated and there was a lot of discussion,\ said Noah Annes, UW-Madison senior and vice president of IFC.
According to Annes, the introduction of both policies was a response to the possibility of the university implementing more regulations on the Greek system.
""We're thinking that if we did some regulating ourselves, then that would prevent further action from the university,"" Annes said.
Kautz said the committee gives Greeks a chance to be ""proactive rather than reactive.""
Kautz said among 25 proposed campus recommendations from the University's task force on alcohol and drugs, there was only one Greek-life reference. The proposed recommendations suggested a delayed recruitment, which would require frats to keep their houses ""dry"" for a larger part of the year. But Kautz said this item was ""taken off the table"" and will not occur in the fall.
""However, it does help the Greek community recognize that maybe we're not doing everything that we can possibly do,"" she said. ""I think that's where the IFC executive council asked, ‘what are some other things we can put in place to make these environments even safer?'""
Sigma Phi Epsilon has taken steps toward safety in the past by eliminating hard alcohol and kegs from their parties, according to UW-Madison senior and SPE President Simon Snyder. Instead, they operate parties on a ticket exchange system for beer.
""We just felt it was too much of a risk, and the insurance was too expensive,"" he said. ""We didn't think it was worth it.""
The fraternity took an additional step this semester to change the number of house parties from three to one per semester.
""We're now limiting it to one in the spring and one in the fall,"" Snyder said. ""We feel that the liabilities are too large in terms of how many things can go wrong and putting our members in that much danger.""\
