By Steven Viera, News Editor ||
Last Wednesday, F&M’s Interfraternity Council (IFC) held its annual executive board elections. Among other things, the IFC is responsible for overseeing the actions of fraternities on campus, ensuring they comply with certain rules and regulations, and setting a tone for F&M’s male Greek community.
“We have a very diverse group, which is really good for an IFC executive board,” said Mark Rooney ’17, a brother of Phi Kappa Psi and the newly-elected president of the IFC.
Rooney initially became involved with the IFC as his fraternity’s delegate to the organization. However, when certain officer positions became vacant, he approaced Thomas “Baxter” Lehman ’15, former president of the IFC, about the possibility for advancement; shortly thereafter, Lehman appointed Rooney as IFC’s vice president.
According to Rooney, the new IFC officers are Giovan Shepard ’16, a brother of Sigma Pi and vice president; Stephen Colodny ’16, a brother of Chi Phi and vice president of values & standards; Max Wolf ’17, a brother of Phi Kappa Tau and the vice president of programs & special events; Matt Kershner ’17, a brother of Kappa Sigma and vice president of administration & treasurer; Louis Hu ’17, a brother of Phi Kappa Tau and vice president of membership recruitment; Hunter Citrin ’16, a brother of Phi Kappa Sigma and vice president of community relations; and Matt Rosenfeld ’17, a brother of Chi Phi and vice president of administration and secretary.
“IFC has our bylaws and rules that govern how fraternities are supposed to operate — with philanthropy events, social events, recruitment events,” Rooney said. “So one of the big things IFC really does is act as a judicial organization, overseeing the fraternities and making sure they’re following all of the rules.”
He referenced a number of social protocols, such as making sure each party has bottles of water, as an
example of IFC guidelines that fraternities are required to
observe.
“Furthermore, IFC is partially responsible for dealing with infractions on the chapter level of the various fraternities,” he
continued.
This year, aside from standard operations, IFC is working to strengthen the presence and practices of F&M’s Greek community by improving the philanthropic image of fraternities on campus and by changing recruitment to make it more of an open process to potential new members.
In addition, Rooney discussed revising the IFC’s bylaws so that it will have greater agency in judicial matters regarding each of the fraternities; according to him, IFC has already drafted a document proposing new bylaws.
“We will be meeting with various deans of the College shortly, trying to get their feedback and improve the document so that we can then ratify it and then get it up and running as soon as possible,” Rooney said.
Rooney also pointed to an intangible change he hopes to make — establishing a more unified community of fraternities at F&M.
“There’s a lot of belief that it’s an ‘us vs. them’ [mentality] within the individual fraternities, but you’ve got to look at it holistically,” he said. “We’re all in this together, and we’ve got to be constantly working to
improve.”
Next week, both the current and former IFC executive boards will be sharing authority as part of a transition period to show new officers the nature of their
positions.
“I think that the transition is going to go really smoothly,” Rooney said. “I think we have a lot of things on the agenda that the current executive board is going to pass off to us and let us run with it. So I’m really excited for IFC’s prospects in the coming year.”
Junior Steven Viera is the News Editor. His email is sviera@fandm.edu.