The sorority strikes back

Attorney Eric Berg, sporting a green suit and ponytail, stood before Butte County Superior Judge Thomas Kelly, explaining why a hearing for the Alpha Chi sorority scheduled for late February should be held sooner.

Berg contended that the sorority could suffer “irreparable injury” by not being able to set up tables on campus as classes were scheduled to resume earlier this week.

Alpha Chi, the oldest sorority at Chico State, was temporarily suspended from campus last semester for attempting to recruit pledges after President Paul Zingg ordered the establishment of 59 recommendations that members of the local Greek system must follow in order to maintain university recognition, including the halting of recruitment during the fall semester.

The sorority filed a lawsuit against the university last month, naming Zingg, the Associated Students, A.S. President Thomas Whitcher and a number of other university officials, citing that its civil rights have been violated after being temporarily suspended from campus.

More than a dozen members of Alpha Chi, as well as Tau Gamma Theta founding father and fraternity house-owner Charlie Preusser, sat and listened as Berg presented the complaint. The Tau Gamma Theta fraternity was also kicked off campus for recruiting during the fall semester, but is not pursuing legal action.

In the end, Judge Kelly ruled that the information presented didn’t “rise up to the level of irreparable injury.” The preliminary injunction is scheduled for Feb. 24. In the meantime the sorority members are allowed to stand in the campus Free Speech Area with clipboards to try and recruit new members, but cannot set up a table.

However, given Chico State’s decision to boot Alpha Chi from campus, some have accused the university of bullying the Greeks.

“No one challenges the big entity,” Alpha Chi adviser Jim Davis told the CN&R last week.

Davis, who’s been the sorority’s adviser for the past 25 years, said that by not allowing Alpha Chi to set up tables on campus, the university is violating the sorority’s freedom of speech and its freedom of assembly under the First Amendment.

Davis also said the sorority took a financial hit last semester by not being able to recruit, explaining that the alumni association forks out $15,000 a year just for insurance on the house. (Members pay dues, and those who live in the house pay rent.)

Davis has taken issue with several other recommendations, including the elimination of the traditional singing and dancing activities as well as the enacting of grade-point average requirements. Chapters will be required to turn in rosters to confirm that members were working toward raising the Greek GPAs to the student average. The average fraternity GPA in fall 2004 was 2.48, below the all-men’s average of 2.6, and sororities came in with 2.78, below the all-women’s average of 2.92.

But it wasn’t grades that led to the decision to overhaul the entire Greek system. A slew of events at the beginning of the fall 2005 semester, including the near-death alcohol poisoning of 19-year-old Butte College student Richard Amador and the nationally publicized hazing death of 21-year-old Matthew Carrington, triggered President Zingg to lambaste the Greek community.

In an e-mailed response to the CN&R last week Zingg said he couldn’t comment on the case but that the fundamental principle of the university is to protect freedoms of speech and expression.

“The guidelines established for the social Greek organizations at the university do not abridge those rights,” Zingg wrote.

However, Alpha Chi’s attorney Eric Berg said the 59 rules set forth by the university are problematic simply because they apply only to social Greek organizations.

And given the sorority’s problem-free history in the Greek community, many feel the guidelines punish those for the actions of irresponsible individuals.

According to Davis, Alpha Chi had never been kicked off campus in the years since it was established in 1918. He said Carrington’s death was a wakeup call, but that the problem of rowdy Greeks should have been handled differently.