Immediately following the February 2014 James Meredith statue incident, the IFC fraternity presidents signed a letter joining our university community in expressing our common goal of becoming more inclusive and unified.
Leadership is a key component of Greek life, and we felt compelled to do our part and lead our community in finding ways to make our campus climate more accepting of other cultures and identities.
We appreciate the work done by the university and the encouragement for students to be leaders in producing ideas and plans for achieving progress. To that end, the IFC presidents have been meeting on our own to develop ways to improve the climate of the IFC Greek organizations and ultimately contribute to an improved climate for the entire Greek community.
Not only have we been meeting with each other, but we have been meeting with individual chapter members, national organizations, alumni, campus administrators and faculty to engage in open dialogue and discussion of the issues we face, the problems we wish to fix, the barriers to solving these problems and identifying certain tactics we could use to help our organizations become more inclusive and provide better cross-cultural engagement for our members.
At this time our primary focus is on improving the climate of our organizations. To extend our dialogue into action we have set the following goal: develop the IFC community into one that respects the dignity of each person, seeks an understanding of all cultures and identities and becomes a force for inclusion and cross-culture engagement on the University of Mississippi campus. These are goals that may be passed on to future fraternity presidents who can continue what we have started. We hope our efforts will inspire the entire Greek community, other campus organizations and campus communities across the country to find ways to become more welcoming.
We hope our fellow students and colleagues will recognize this as a sincere effort to set our organizations on a path towards becoming more open to all members of our community, and not simply an effort to improve our reputation or achieve positive press. IFC takes this important work very seriously. We have a long road ahead of us, though we are committed because it is the right thing to do.
Sincerely,
William Fowler
William Fowler is the chapter president of Phi Delta Theta Mississippi Alpha and the outgoing director of diversity and multicultural affairs for the Associated Student Body. His words are printed here on behalf of the IFC chapter presidents.
