A new fraternity, Tau Kappa Epsilon, or TKE, has been welcomed to Ohio University’s campus as a provisional chapter after receiving approval from the university’s Office of Sorority and Fraternity Life, or SFL.
Currently, OU has nine recognized and fully operational fraternities on campus, Jeremy Paul, assistant director of Sorority and Fraternity Life, said. When Paul first started at OU in 2019, there were about 15 fraternities, and he attributed the decline to COVID-19 and conduct issues.
Although TKE is currently a provisional chapter at OU, it will soon be a fully operational chapter on campus. The planning for TKE has been underway for over a year, as the SFL approved a TKE expansion proposal in spring 2020, Paul said.
When a new chapter of a fraternity is brought to OU, an expansion coordinator helps recruit members and create a space on campus in which the fraternity can thrive, Paul said. It is also the responsibility of the expansion coordinators, who are employed by the national organization, to choose people who reflect the values the national organization holds.
“They are not going to be recruiting folks who might contribute to a cultural problem that we might see in the community today or might have seen in the community in the past,” Paul said. “Having that really intentional recruitment, done by a professional, is going to establish a chapter that, in theory, would actually work to better the community and make the community stronger.”
In July, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law an anti-hazing bill named in honor of OU student Collin Wiant, according to a previous Post report. Wiant died of asphyxiation at the unofficial Sigma Pi annex house in November 2018.
Also in July, the Delta Pi chapter of Sigma Chi and the Beta chapter of Delta Tau Delta were suspended for four years each from the university’s campus after internal investigations found both fraternities were responsible for multiple Student Code of Conduct violations, including hazing.
TKE has had to deal with its own hazing violations in recent years, including at Ohio State University. In late 2017, the OSU chapter had its organization status revoked due to cited violations of “alcohol,” “hazing” and “endangering behavior,” according to OSU’s Sorority and Fraternity Life Conduct History form.
Paul Malafronte, the TKE expansion coordinator at OU, is also working with OSU to rebuild the TKE chapter there.
“My job is to go in there and not just recruit guys and get numbers but to recruit high-quality men who want to follow and advance our mission and … create a strong culture, where there is no hazing,” Malafronte said. “We're really trying to raise the standard and be the true example of what it means to be in a fraternity at OSU, and I hope to be able to do the same thing (at OU).”
Any negative connotations surrounding fraternities are not ignored by the SFL. In fact, Paul said Greek life at campuses throughout the U.S. could benefit from a shift in culture.
“If you look on a national scale, you're going to be able to find an article about any fraternity in the nation because, quite frankly — and this is part of the reason why I do the work that I do — there are needs for reform in fraternity and sorority life,” Paul said. “The hope is that when we're bringing folks to expand here, they're recognizing that need for reformation.”
Many fraternities also participate in philanthropic work to improve their image, Colin Duber, a sophomore studying marketing, said. Not only is involvement in Greek life fun, he said, but it provides members with an outlet to help the surrounding community.
TKE has been on OU’s campus before but left in the 1970s. Paul and Malafronte are aware of that, though both were unable to comment on why it left.
Although the new chapter of TKE will share the same values and goals of the national organization, the culture within and surrounding the new chapter will evolve a bit, Malafronte said.
“There is a negative connotation (about fraternities) nowadays in the media and the news and everything, so in order to ever shift that, we need to bring more people into the fraternity landscape that want to change that,” Malafronte said. “(One of) the main things that I look for are guys ... that really want to change what it means to be a fraternity man on their campus.”
