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AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

Closing a chapter — staff editorial

Just when fraternity members said they were cleaning up their act, another chapter gets removed for violating the rules. Sigma Chi lost its charter this week from its national office, in the latest of a series of violations against fraternities on GW’s campus.

As The Hatchet reported two weeks ago, fraternities are taking a larger role on GW’s campus. Each of the people in the story expressed a view that fraternities were moving away from the Animal House image of hazing and recklessness and toward building young leaders. Less than two weeks later, we are back to learning about more discipline needed to regulate Greek-letter members. And with Sigma Alpha Mu disbanding their new chapter, maybe everything wasn’t as bright as it looked a couple of weeks ago.

Those fraternity members who are serious about regulating the system need to step up now. Rhetoric alone will not work. Until these organizations take the initiative to take responsibility for their actions and the actions of their brothers, people will continue to look at these incidents and the organizations in a bad light. If fraternities are committed to focus on building brotherhood and community service, and steer away from alcohol abuse and hazing, then they must hold themselves accountable and not wait for the other shoe to drop when the University or national office hears about their mistakes.

If the end of these two chapters is the beginning of a Greek-letter house cleaning, then it must be supported by a stronger effort among the fraternity leaders to implement the rules among those that remain. But if the GW Greek-letter system is going to continue to show a clean exterior and hide the real problems within their groups, we will see more incidents of chapters being suspended or disbanded coming out of thin air.

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