02/04/2016
To the students of the University of Chicago,
We are sorry. We are sorry that our fraternity was ever a safe haven for the kind of vitriol you have now all seen, and we are sorry for the fact that when it was, none of us did enough to stop it. We are sorry and we are ashamed that we previously had no formal system in place to address hatred and hate speech. We are sorry to have acted in a way not only inconsistent with our fundamental human values, but with the particular values of our faith and our heritage. To those we have offended, to those we have hurt, we are sorry.
It would be easy to try and remove ourselves from responsibility, to say that this was a few brothers or that it happened in the past. Such a defense, however, would be as deceptive as it is reprehensible. We are one fraternity, and we all bear responsibility for all of our actions and the culture that we all allowed. Our past behavior cannot be defended and cannot be undone. What we can do, what we must do, and what we will do is take this opportunity to be better. We are committed to making sure that this will never happen again, and to that end we have taken the following steps:
1. We have amended our constitution so that there is a zero tolerance policy towards hateful actions or speech. Our Code of Conduct now reads in part, “Brothers are expected to express or display absolutely no degree of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia or other forms of hateful actions or speech, whether spoken or written. Violation of this clause is grounds for an immediate hearing by Standards Board.”
2. We have amended our constitution so that the responsibilities of the Pledge Committee now formally include mandatory sensitivity training. This year’s pledge class has already undergone such training.
3. We have agreed as a fraternity that all potential rushes will be informed of the expectations of the Code of Conduct before they are given a bid.
4. We will have ongoing open forums for the University community to discuss these and other issues so that we can make further change to our fraternity. We also want this to be the beginning of a dialogue on campus about how to improve Greek life as a whole. We recognize that we cannot solve these issues on our own, and we welcome the opportunity to work with everyone, especially non-Greek students, to make our fraternity more welcoming to all.
We know that the harm we have inflicted is not undone by a couple of paragraphs and a few constitutional changes of which many among you are likely skeptical. We know that this is too little. We know it is too late. We hope and pray, however, that using the above as a starting point, we can work with others and among ourselves to create a better AEPi.
