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I entered the fraternity and sorority world about the time that the risk management mania began. I joined my fraternity in 1987, and I went to work at the fraternity headquarters in 1988. These were the years when kegs were banned, FIPG came about, and undergraduate members of fraternities and sororities began paying steep annual insurance premiums.
My second job out of college was as the national coordinator of GAMMA, Greeks Advocating Mature Management of Alcohol, and I was kept very busy helping Greek communities respond to risk management policies. Most Greek communities had speakers visit to promote risk management practices. For quite a while, most men's national fraternities hired lawyers as their executive directors. Publications like Fraternal Law became must reads for campus advisors.
The last 20 years of fraternity and sorority life can be aptly called "the risk management era." The emphasis was on rules and policy adherence. It dominated everything: chapter services strategies, fraternity education, volunteer training and duties, consultant training, board meetings, etc.
Someone a lot smarter than I will write a book about this, and I'm sure opinions will vary on whether or not it was a good, important era, or a harmful one. Was there any net benefit? Some will say that fraternities and sororities grew stronger during this time. The values congruence crowd will continue to crow about how risk management draws us closer to the values we were founded upon (a weak argument, I'd say). Others will say fraternities and sororities lost their fun, their innocence, and their relevance. One thing for sure, lawyers and insurance agents made a lot of money. Yet, students are still dying from alcohol poisoning and hazing on a regular basis.
In any case, I believe everyone is ready to move on. FIPG is now older than most of the student leaders taking the reins of our chapters. Most fraternity and sorority advising professionals have never known anything different – as professionals, or as students. Just about everything that can be said or created around the idea of risk management has been done.
Risk management isn't going away, for sure. As long as there are people falling out of windows at fraternity parties, risk management will be in the picture.
But, things are changing. I can feel it. I can see it as I visit campuses and attend leadership conferences. As I sat with some fraternity staff members at a luncheon last week, they asked me what I thought was on the horizon for the nation's fraternities and sororities. I told them that I wasn't sure, but that I thought that whatever is next is going to come from the students, not from the national organizations.
I believe that after nearly two decades of being told how fraternities and sororities should operate, should look, and what values they should seek to represent, students are ready to innovate.
To be continued...
