AFA

The Risk Management Café solicits questions from Association of Fraternity Advisors each month. The Essentials Editorial Board will share selected questions with risk management experts for responses. This information is provided merely for educational purposes and is not intended to take the place of seeking legal counsel. To submit a question for the Risk Management Café, send an email to info@fraternityadvisors.org.

Question:

On my campus the IFC has passed a bylaw that all fraternity houses are to be dry houses. The problem is that some fraternities do not have a house that is owned by a Housing Corporation, instead they rent from a landlord with individuals leases. These organizations still host events at the house in the name of their fraternity. When can an institution or an IFC differentiate between whether a house is a Fraternity House or not? How can we ensure that all organizations are being held to the same rules? (P.S. It is not required that the university officially recognizes a fraternity house for it to exist.)

This is a much more complicated question to answer than one may think. That is because there are many variables:

1.	If this IFC is a creation of the institution AND the institution is PRIVATE, the regulation is enforceable effective the beginning of the next semester on all students who choose to attend the institution. This is because the student-institution relationship in a private college or university is one of CONTRACT law. In that case a regulation that says that all fraternity houses must be dry AND where there exists a definition of "fraternity house" the regulation is enforceable. It matters not who owns the property as a fraternity is an organization not a building or a type of property ownership.
2.	If this is a private or public institution but the IFC operated independently of the institution (rare but this does exist), the regulation is enforceable on all organizations that wish to be part of the IFC. In a private institution that requires fraternities to belong to the IFC, the regulation has the same strength as #1 above.
3.	If this is a PUBLIC institution where the IFC is a creation of the university, the IFC may create such a requirement, and the university can enforce it AS A CONDITION FOR RECOGNITION. Fraternities that lose or do not obtain recognition may not be disciplined merely because they refuse to go dry, UNLESS it can be proven that in being wet, they have routinely violated law as a result. In this scenario, refusing to go dry may result in loss of IFC recognition, but nothing more.

In any case, there needs to be a definition of "fraternity house" in the regulation. Institutions may discriminate against fraternities by creating special regulations where those regulations are reasonable and they are balanced by special privileges accorded to them.