The Greek community created a judicial committee and a new framework for judicial standards cases that will go into effect by the end of the spring semester.

The new judicial committee is comprised of two representatives from each Greek organization. A total of six representatives, three men and three women, are chosen randomly from a pool of 26 members for each case. Members who are chosen for a case will be removed from the list until all members have cycled through and every organization has heard a case.

The creation of the new judicial committee was crafted through the collaboration of former and current Greek Council judicial chairs Cameron McKay and Julia Kennedy, Trinity University Conduct Board representative Aileen Domann and coordinator for fraternity and sorority life, Jeremy Allen.

The previous system required Greek Council members to sit on judicial cases when needed, according to Allen.

“I think one of the issues was that not every organization was represented on Greek Council. We wanted to make the committee more representative of the entirety of the Greek community,” Allen said.

Rebecca Prager, women’s co-chair for Greek Council, said that the new process is a better reflection of the standards of the Greek community.

“Our judicial process has been revamped to better exemplify our community values and provide representation from all active Greek organizations,” Prager said.

Organizations that have a case before Greek Council will not be allowed to have their members on the committee.

“It wouldn’t be fair to have them hear their own cases,” Allen said.

Two cases have gone before Greek Council this academic year and Allen is hopeful that there will not be any judicial cases for the remainder of the semester.

“We’ve only had two cases this year, and I’m hoping that we don’t really have to use this framework really. But it’s nice to have a good system set up,” Allen said.

“In the past we noticed that we had two organizations with very similar cases but very different results. That’s an issue. You don’t want cases to be decided by perception or this unfair bias. You want it to be consistent throughout regardless of the organization. We created a new framework that has a more impartial objective look,” Allen said.

Greek Council will use the framework to help guide what the proper punishment for judicial cases should be.

“The framework is meant to be a guiding factor. Groups should feel like they have an opportunity to put forth what they think is appropriate,” Allen said.

Greek organizations are also given an opportunity to submit what sanctions they think are appropriate. The new judicial framework is intended to help Greek Council members learn.  

“It’s treating the group with respect and as adults. This is a learning experience. We’re here to work with you and support you in that growth. We’re not trying to catch people doing the wrong thing. I think groups deserve more credit than that. It’s about communicating in an honest way,” Allen said.

The judicial committee is an effort for Greek Council to remove any extra power from the council.

“I think people thought that Greek Council had more power than they should have. Especially because of all the clubs that got kicked off campus. Even though that wasn’t done by Greek Council, Cameron McKay thought that the Greek community would feel better knowing that they had more of a decision in judicial hearings,” Kennedy said.

The judicial committee and revised bylines will further improve self-governance in the Greek community.

“We take a lot of pride in being self-governed and policing each other. This will help keep everyone accountable and keep it so that it’s not a Greek Community versus Greek Council environment,” Kennedy said, “It’s all of us together trying to lift each other up and learn about each other’s mistakes and fix them.”