After preparing a proposal for more than a year, the Interfraternity Council will push to obtain university permission to serve alcohol in fraternity houses.
IFC President Michael Beadle is set to present the newest draft of the proposal Thursday to select members from the Committee on Alcohol and Other Drugs. If approved, it will be sent to Vice President for Student Affairs William Banis for a final decision.
“We’ve had great support from the university,” Beadle said. IFC has worked with the university on the proposal since the spring.
The proposal calls for the university to set up an application process by which frats would apply to hold BYOB and bar events — in which third-party distributors serve alcohol — in on-campus houses for of-age students.
To hold a wet event, a frat would have to maintain more than a 3.2 quarterly GPA. More than half of a fraternity’s members would have to be trained in alcohol safety. Hard liquor would not be allowed at any event.
The plan could bring a fundamental change to registered frat parties, which are now prohibited from distributing alcohol.
“There are a lot of hurdles — or at least perceived hurdles” in the registration process, Dean of Students Burgwell Howard said Tuesday after a forum on student off-campus behavior.
Beadle has worked since spring quarter on the proposal with the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life and the alcohol committee. He said the committee feared wet frat events would encourage binge and underage drinking, which Beadle called “something of a social culture we couldn’t control.”
But Beadle said he was confident that IFC’s plan would find support within the university.
The push comes just as the university has pledged to re-examine alcohol policy as part of its $2 million settlement with the family of Matthew Sunshine, an underage student who died of alcohol poisoning in 2008. And last weekend, the university held a wet, on-campus tailgate for seniors — a move Howard called “unprecedented” in recent years.
Howard said he and Banis may review the proposal as early as next week.