Plan for Prominence system discontinued

By Carleen Boyer

Assistant News Editor

The Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs has recently decided to remove the Plan for Prominence (P4P) system of accreditation for fraternities and sororities. It will be replaced with the Standards for Fraternity and Sorority Life, which will remove various requirements such as community service and mandatory attendance to certain speakers for Greek organizations.

“One of our goals is to move away from a ‘checklist’ model and create a process that gives chapters and individuals ownership for their experience,” said Amy Badal, Associate Dean of Students.

The P4P program first went into effect in 2002. It consisted of 11 “strategic goals” which were developed by the Greek Life Strategic Planning Steering Committee. The goals consisted of various items which were intended to strengthen the overall benefits of a Greek experience at the University. Individual organizations would earn “points” depending on various categories of the strategic goals. A given sorority or fraternity had to be in “good standing” with a score of 90 points in order to be granted full campus privileges.

Some aspects of P4P were criticized by the Greek community.

“You’d get these speakers where pretty much every fraternity and sorority went to it because it was required. Sometimes it was hard to relate to the speaker, and when you get all of these people that have to go to something, you get this rude behavior,” said Grant Zeller ’12, Recruitment Chair of the Interfraternity Council.

With P4P gone, Greek organizations no longer have to meet certain standards involving community service.

“I feel like maybe it’s a little friendlier, a little more of a community. On the other hand, there are some things that worry me. I think we’ll have to see which organizations hold themselves to high standards, and which don’t. There are definitely going to be fraternities and sororities on different ends of the spectrum,” Zeller said.

Individual sororities and fraternities now must pick one specific charity organization in which to dedicate their time. For some organizations, this is a concern. Chi Phi typically sponsors a Special Olympics event every year, but some are worried that with new changes, it won’t be able to stand as their single organization.

“With Special Olympics, it’s only four hours one day a year, so you can’t really use that as an organization despite the fact that we [Chi Phi] have a committee for it. I don’t think that having everyone pick one organization is the best way to go about changes,” Zeller sad.

Not all students are opposed to the changes, though.

“I’m not convinced that P4P really helped to increase sorority and fraternity involvement on campus. Sure, we had a certain number of events to host and attend each semester, but with so many requirements to meet, Greek students often felt like they were being forced to attend events just to be able to check them off a list,” said Julia Giordano ’13, president of Chi Omega Sorority. “Having each chapter focus on one local organization—and forming a (hopefully) longstanding relationship with them—is definitely more along the lines of the direction we should be heading.”