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What scandals might be taking place within these hallowed halls?
Towards the end of November, we received a tip from an anonymous source in the Gamma Phi Beta sorority describing how the newly elected president rose to her position by “bullying her opponent, promising appointed positions to get votes, and spreading false rumors.” The source, who is still a member of the sorority, declined to meet with Bwog as she desired to keep her identity anonymous.
The tipster revealed how Gamma Phi leadership, both the newly elected president and the chapter’s Collegiate Leadership Consultant (CLC), has attempted to cover up the unethical behaviour of the now former President-Elect, who resigned from her position as Chapter President earlier this week. In response, Gamma Phi’s Administrative Vice President sent a denunciation email to the entire chapter before resigning.
The Sorority’s New Chapter Coordinator (a primary advisor for Columbia’s Gamma Phi chapter, also referred to as the Chapter Advisor) responded to this denunciation in an email, of which the Gamma Phi tipster released portions to us. The Advisor outlined certain executive actions which were taken against the former President-Elect under the Disciplinary Action section, in what we believe to be the bylaws of Columbia’s Gamma Phi chapter.
The Advisor writes how, in the case of minor offenses, the standards committee may “stipulate a designated time to improve, encourage counseling, or issue a warning.” The tipster says that the standards committee is in charge of handling minor issues, and that “more serious issues regarding harassment are to be dealt with in executive council hearings and have proportionally serious consequences.” The tipster believes this “is exactly the reason that they gave [the former President-Elect] a standards hearing” instead of a more appropriate executive council hearing.
The advisor’s email states that the Standards Committee and the Chapter Advisor decides whether to determine if incidents are to be escalated to the Executive Council. But in the Collegiate Operations Manual of Gamma Phi Beta it states that “instances of hazing and harassment are to be dealt with in Executive Council Hearings.” The Advisor seemingly disregards the Gamma Phi Collegiate Operations Manual in order to cover up the incident, saying that the incident was not related to “alcohol, drugs, and/or hazing” and so shouldn’t be dealt with by the chapter’s Executive Council. But the Collegiate Operations Manual “very clearly indicates hazing/harassment to be issues that the executive council handles.”
The sister who filed an incident report, as well as another sister named in the report, are members of the Standards Committee, leading the Advisor to claim that both must recuse themselves and find replacements for the hearing. However, “neither of the two members that were replaced were notified of their replacement,” with the Advisor even having zero contact with one of the members. According to our source, this is in no way mandated. In fact, in the case of a member of the Executive Council filing an incident report, the “members of the executive council [who filed the incident report] are expected to … attend the hearing.”
On top of this, one of the Standards Committee members who the Advisor says must recuse herself is also a member of the Executive Council. According to our source, “these decisions seem to be made for an agenda separate from Gamma Phi’s interests and to ensure that specific opinions are not present at the decision.”
The Advisor also notes in her email that “a date for the hearing has not been set as there was difficulty reserving a private space on campus to conduct the meetings.” The tipster mentioned no requests were made for a private space on campus for the Standards Committee. The Administrative Vice President was never notified to make a room request, which would have been easy to make as the room would only need to hold five to seven people.
The Gamma Phi advisor also states in her email that “we are all human and do make mistakes and have poor judgement from time to time.” The tipster asserts that this is more proof corroborating Gamma Phi leadership attempting to downplay the situation, reducing harassment in the form of “slut-shaming and utterly false comments” to “mistakes or mishaps and almost defending [the former President-Elect’s] actions.” To support this accusation of “slut-shaming and utterly false comments,” the tipster included records of texts where the former President-Elect says about another sister running for an executive position that nobody will take her seriously because “people think she’s such a slut” and that “let’s be real … she kind of is.”
The Chapter Advisor allegedly met with the sorority during their recruitment retreat to “address the chapter for damage control,” though our source did not respond to further inquiries about the state of the Gamma Phi controversy.
Furthermore, a third party member recounted the scandal in an email to the sorority’s international headquarters. We are unaware of any actions the sorority’s headquarters have taken so far.
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38 Comments
@Anonymous 346 East 63rd St was a Barnyard salinity?
@Anonymous If you’re in Greek life and are upset by this: Take comfort in the facts that 1) everyone will have forgotten this by next week, at the most and 2) nobody outside of Greek life especially cares about it.
I get that it matters so very much to you, but it really isn’t a thing people talk and care about, outside of the actual participants.
@lrn2journalist not a comment on the news itself, just noting that this story is basically unreadable
“The Advisor writes how, in the case of minor offenses, the standards committee may “stipulate a designated time to improve, encourage counseling, or issue a warning.” The tipster says that the standards committee is in charge of handling minor issues, and that “more serious issues regarding harassment are to be dealt with in executive council hearings and have proportionally serious consequences.”
article is full of graphs like this – bureaucrat-ese, poorly broken up, no sense of narrative or broader context, kind of sad really that spec has no real competition in student journalism
@HEY read the blue and white
@Disappointed This sounds like the butt hurt complaint of a girl who lost an election for president trying to explain away her failures. Shame on you for shaming another girl in your attempted rise to the top. Shameful of the angry, bitter girl who leaked this
@Anonymous What a great notion… One person is slut shaming, bullying, harassing, etc. (AND IS CAUGHT IN WRITING) and rather than addressing those very real issues, we should simply pass it off as someone being “butt hurt” (an assertion made on what grounds exactly?) and be ashamed of them instead…? Do you hear yourself? This is the epitome of victim blaming and even worse, your whole comment lacks any logic to follow.
@Yeah All these people saying the claims are unsubstantiated, but literally all the quotes from the emails back up every claim. The person was literally caught calling other girls in her sorority sluts and harassing them, but it’s just “gossip.” lol
@Anon literally literally
@Disappointed This sounds like the bitter angry response of the girl who lost the election trying to explain away her failure. She’s a shame to the entire Greek community and I’m sorry Gamma Phi had to accept her
@Anonymous A woman lying and gossiping about another woman. I don’t believe it!
@a woman well that was sexist
@ugh this article is so stupid. who cares? all campus orgs have stupid internal issues, especially when theyre just starting out.
most surprised by the woman who leaked this. wtf? how could you be so mean and gossip obsessed? it’s sad that people like you 1. go to a school like this and 2. are even allowed into these sorts of campus organization.
@Anonymous There is nothing mean about taking a stand against bullying when the leaders of the organization expected to do so fail to. Keeping quiet in a situation like that is what would be considered mean. 1. more people need to stand up for whats right at a school like this 2. should bullying even be allowed into these sorts of campus organizations?
@nah Handling a problem like this shouldn’t be done through leaking info to campus news.
“Taking a stand to bullying” is not the same as leaking internal issues to the press.
@Anonymous do you know how often that is used as an excuse to not report hazing in sororities and fraternities? too often these types of things have devastating results that could have been prevented had someone “leaked” this information to outsiders. it’s clear that there were efforts to handle this internally at first but obviously that was not sufficient in resolving this issue.
@Anonymous Why would this site post this? This is mean-spirited and exactly why people hate BWOG and think it is a total joke. This isn’t news but rather just a rumor. Seriously, people will find anything to try to make sororities look bad. I have met a lot of Gamma Phi girls and this is not representative of them . All groups have internal problems sometimes when it comes to elections, especially when the group is new.
@SPICY you keep churnin dat gossip mill
@Anonymous Bwog, what the actual fuck. You are supposed to be a NEWS source, not a gossip mill. You have information from ONE SISTER. ONE SISTER. This is such a horrible thing to do to Gamma Phi right before their first formal recruitment, and I’m gonna come right out and say it: it’s sexist. You’re clearly desperate to prove the stereotypes about sororities (and groups of women because lol women right) true by buying into one person’s statement. I’m disgusted by this and so sad for Gamma Phi Beta. If you have any decency or sensitivity whatsoever, you’ll take this down. It’s NOT journalism, it’s NOT news, and it’s unkind. You don’t even have another opinion. Basic as fuck. All my love goes out to the women in GPhi right now, who don’t deserve this campus-wide scrutiny.
@Anonymous agreed wholeheartedly
@Anonymous Snaps to this…
@lol track comments …
@Anonymous eh…
@Anonymous like that’s the important takeaway…
@Lol Like that’s the important takeaway
@Anonymous It’s not solely based on “ONE SISTER. ONE SISTER”, the article repeatedly quotes actual emails, texts, and gamma phi manual. All the claims are clearly substantiated so yes, that constitutes as journalism (although your suggestion of not reporting this story (despite it being clearly supported with evidence) because sorority recruitment is coming up definitely demonstrates your understanding of what is or is not journalism)
@Anonymous You *do* realize that Bwog is about 80% female, right?
@Anonymous oh yeah, because women can never be sexist and internalized misogyny does not exist.
@Anonymous also yall lets be real. bwog doesnt love greek life. neither does spectator, and neither does anyone not in greek life. seems like some internal biases may have influenced the decision to publish a flimsy article like this.
@wrong You do know that multiple members of Bwog, including the Editor in Chief, are involved in Greek life, right? They definitely don’t hate it.
@Anonymous The implicit understanding that reporting on news related to women is sexist in fact connotes a sexist approach to understanding issues. Bwog can report on issues affecting women without it being sexist.
Bwog has time and time again reported on issues that place fraternities in a poor light, and when an issue arises regardless of a specific gender that it may affect, Bwog should investigate it. This might be poor journalism in that it rests on the comments of one person, but it is in no way sexist.
@Everything is sexist This website is sexist. This comment is sexist.
No matter what anyone does or says or believes.
everyone. and everything. is. sexist.
Don’t try and “mansplain” it away, that would just be sexist.
@alum I don’t think you get what bwog is all about. Sure, they report “newsworthy” stories whenever they pop up, but the vast majority of the time bwog IS a rumor mill. Deal with it.
@Hold up While I agree this isn’t quality news, you can’t blame bwog. This sister really should not have leaked this info to the press. It negatively affects their whole chapter, not just the former president. They could have handled the issue internally without having it become public. I see no fault for bwog. The fault here lies with the “bullying” president and the girl who’s leaking sensitive info for no good reason.
@GPB girl The issue was completely handled internally and we have moved on. Cannot speak for the sister that made this the business of Bwog.
@Also GPB girl has not been handled at all lol what
@things fall apart Chinua Achebe
@Anonymous It’s horribly mean spirited that Bwog would publish such nasty, gossipy hearsay, in the process affecting ALL the sisters of Gamma Phi in a negative way. Major Panhell love to GPhiB during this difficult time!!!
@wat ???