Recently, the Interfraternity Council raised the minimum fraternity grade point average from 2.3 to 2.45. Supposedly, this will encourage fraternities to maintain higher academic standards, and hence improve their general image.

In reality, this new standard will do nothing to improve fraternity grades and is pointless rhetoric.

IFC has made this token gesture because image, not academics, is a high priority. The new grade standards are being installed to dupe the University community into believing that IFC is trying to solve the problem. These new standards will not solve the problem for two reasons: First, fraternities will not be penalized for falling below the standard, just "counseled." Second, and most important, IFC is not attacking the true cause of the academic problem, namely pledging activities.

As a member of a large, socially reputable fraternity, I can assure you that the primary cause of poor fraternity grades is not that fraternity members are less intelligent than other students. Contrary to the image of the "stupid frat boy" popularized by movies such as "Animal House," nearly all Greek students are concerned with their academics. Of course, there are exceptions to this, and these anomalies promote Greek stereotypes.

As I stated before, the cause of lower fraternity grades stems directly from fraternity pledging. I can say from experience that most fraternities do not respect the academic needs of their pledges. Pledges are treated more as indentured servants than fellow students and future members.

As a pledge, an individual is required to participate in work sessions that entail such things as cleaning the house, building homecoming floats or serving drinks at sorority socials. These work sessions often run late into the night, and obviously interfere with academics. For instance, during homecoming, which coincidentally occurred during a major mid-term week, pledges at my fraternity often worked until after 2 a.m. building and guarding the float.

Pledges who place academics over a fraternity are often "disciplined" by brothers or pressured by fellow pledges to conform. Pledges must either put the fraternity first on their priority list, or risk being removed from the pledge program. Essentially, the choice is between being Greek or earning good grades.

This situation leads to many pledges receiving poor marks in academics, and thereby significantly damaging their cumulative academic average. Lower pledge GPA's lead to lower fraternity grades. Although I cannot prove this analytically, I have witnessed enough fraternity pledges earn below a 2.00 semester average to empirically realize that a correlation between pledging and poor grades exists.

The real solution to lower fraternity grades is to reform pledge programs across the University. If IFC is truly sincere about academics, then they should take steps to ensure that fraternity pledges receive proper time for studying. One such step would be to require minimum pledge class grade standards as well as fraternity ones and withdraw social and voting privileges if houses fail to meet either standard. In addition, IFC should provide encouragement for individual houses to install weekly study hours into their pledge programs, similar to sororities. Currently, study hours for fraternity pledges are a "maybe next week" phenomena, rather than a standard practice.

As Rick Funk, Greek Life Coordinator was quoted in the March 17 Collegian, "If (IFC is) committed to high academics, then they should show that they are committed . . ." In my opinion, IFC's new grade standards will help solve fraternity academic problems about as well as a Band-Aid cures melanoma. If IFC wants to improve fraternity grades, then it should have the fortitude to make a legitimate effort toward achieving that goal, not pandering its way around it.