The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports that tyrannical efforts to stamp out fraternities at Trinity College may have backfired and led to the early departure of the revolutionary regime.
Trinity College President James Jones announced his intention to step down from his post in June 2014, one year before the end of his contract. Jones reported in the same email that Board of Trustees Chair Paul E. Raether will also leave the Trustees’ top position. Trinity’s two top leaders signaled their departures as student and alumni dissatisfaction is increasing over a new social code that violates Trinity’s promises of freedom of association and effectively bans fraternities and sororities through gender quotas and other measures. …
In October 2012, Trinity’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved the recommendations of a report by the Charter Committee for Building Social Community at Trinity College, including a new social code that will effectively eliminate fraternities, sororities, and other campus social organizations. Among the new requirements for such organizations are:
All social organizations must be recognized and approved by the college, and students are prohibited from participating in unrecognized social organizations. Students who associate with unapproved groups “will be subject to separation from the College.”
Social organizations may not be single-sex. “Trinity students,” the code states, “shall not be affiliated with national organizations that do not adhere to a coeducational philosophy.”
Quotas for gender parity in membership and leadership. By 2016, all fraternities and sororities must achieve 45% “minority gender” membership and 40% minority gender leadership. Organizations that fail to do so will be prohibited.
The new requirements are specifically targeted at Greek life on campus, as musical, athletic, and even academic and professional organizations are explicitly exempted.
Trinity also intends to seize the properties of organizations that do not comply with the new code, stating that the college will “establish a fair sale price for these assets with alumni owners and reassign them to another organization for the betterment of the College.”
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