By Steven Viera ’16, News Editor
F&M’s Interfraternity Council (IFC) held its annual elections for executive board positions last week. IFC is a self-governing body, consisting of all of F&M’s fraternities, that serves the local and campus community and tries to show first-year students the benefits of Greek life.
IFC holds elections for its entire executive board anually. The elections usually take place in November. Officers that were just elected will hold office until roughly this time next year, according to Matt O’Shea ’14, IFC’s former vice president.
The highest offices went to Chris DiRisio ’16, a brother of Phi Kappa Psi, who was elected president, and Baxter Lehman ’15 of Delta Sigma Phi, who was elected vice-president.
Others elected were Steele Schauer ’15 of Phi Kappa Psi, IFC’s new vice president of values & standards; Ryan Tedesco ’16 of Phi Kappa Tau, vice president of programs & special events; Keith Golden ’16 of Kappa Sigma, vice president of administration and treasurer; Hunter Citrin ’16 of Phi Kappa Sigma, vice president of membership recruitment; Cole Wisdo ’15 of Phi Kappa Psi, vice president of community relations; and John Garvey ’15 of Delta Sigma Phi, vice president of administration and secretary.
“I think there’s a lot of promise in [the new executive board],” DiRisio said. “We have a lot of people coming from a lot of different backgrounds, a lot of different previous experiences regarding their positions, both on campus and off campus, and I think that’s something that’s really going to benefit us in the future. I think the changing of the guard is something that will help bring new ideas to the forefront.”
DiRisio went on to discuss what he thinks is one of the most critical issues for IFC — communication.
“The biggest challenge will probably be keeping everybody informed about what’s going on, and that’s important for both the people who are on IFC and the rest of the people on campus — both Greeks and non-Greeks,” he said. “I think a big thing we could’ve worked on is communication and community relations last semester and I think that going forward one of our biggest challenges is definitely going to be building a communications [system] that would better serve Franklin and Marshall as a whole.”
IFC is already planning events for the coming year. DiRisio mentioned that the executive board is working on an event that would compliment the Spring Arts Festival next semester, improving on a successful event by incorporating input from multiple clubs, fraternities, and sororities to make it even better.
O’Shea explained that in order to be eligible for a position on IFC, candidates must be members of a fraternity; if running for president or vice-president, they must have served on IFC for at least one semester.
The normal voting process is different this year: now, candidates must be nominated for positions by fraternity presidents and each fraternity is only allowed to run one nominee per position. In addition, rather than a vote by only the fraternity presidents, the entire IFC’s general body voted in the nominees — except for the IFC president, who votes only in the event of a tie, in which case he serves as the tiebreaker.
“[IFC has] a solid and diverse group of guys, who are ready to take on these new-found responsibilities,” O’Shea said of the new executive board. “Their legacy will be left for years to come as this is the first legitimate group, who will run IFC using the new bylaws composed by Brett Giacco ’14 [former president of the IFC], myself, and the rest of the IFC Executive Board. These men are all responsible and will do great things for the Greek community.”
Sophomore Steven Viera is the News Editor. His email is sviera@fandm.edu.