Columbia University’s Inter-Greek Council (IGC), comprised of the Inter-Fraternity Council, the Panhellenic Council, and the Multicultural Greek Council recently voted down an amendment to change the way votes are distributed.
The current voting system allows for one vote per organization, which seems fair on a base-level, but with the school’s eleven IFC fraternities, eleven multicultural organizations and six Panhellenic sororities, the vote skews like this.
At first, you’re like, okay, fine. They have fewer organizations, so they should have less representation. That makes sense. But then you’re told that Panhellenic members actually represent 55% of Greek life, but only get 21% of the vote, and you’re like, well shit. The amendment proposed would have given equal representation to all three organizations, and brought Panhellenic’s vote up to 33%, but you could argue even that is unfair. If this system were operating like the United States electoral college system, the votes would be assigned to organizations based on the number of members. And I can’t speak on how a university’s Greek system should be operating, but when 55% of your system only comprises 21% of the vote, that seems unjust.
While I see the logic behind there being one vote per organization, and that adjusting this for “equal” representation is not so black and white, I understand why the girls are upset. Especially considering the voting system for the Judicial Board is completely baseless.
The IFC fraternities get two votes for Judicial Board elections, while Panhellenic and MGC organizations only get one each. Why is this? Well, uhhh, fraternities get in trouble more often, so they need to have double the votes with regard to hearings on misconduct. This is quite literally equivalent to saying that criminals should get more votes on the law, because it affects them more. Taking the vote away from women in this instance is particularly dangerous on campus, where sexual misconduct is likely to come up quite a bit. (I don’t mean to imply that this is specific to Columbia or fraternities, but all men and women on all college campuses.)
Something a little wonky is going on over at Columbia. Smart people, stupid policy..
[via Columbia Spectator]
Image via Shutterstock
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Veronica Ruckh
Veronica (@VeronicaRuckh) is the Director of Total Sorority Move for Grandex, Inc. After having spent her undergraduate years drinking $4 double LITs on a patio and drunk texting away potential suitors, she managed to graduate with an impressive GPA and an unimpressive engagement ring -- so unimpressive, in fact, some might say it's not there at all. Veronica has since been fulfilling her duties as "America's big," a title she gave to herself with the help of her giant ego. She has recently switched from vodka to wine on weekdays. Email her at veronica@grandex.co
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