About the Authors
Dr. Rafael Matos is a scholar-practitioner who has worked on various college campuses and served in a consultancy capacity to multiple organizations. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Southern California, and a PhD in Communications Media and Instructional Technology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is the Vice Chair of Research and Scholarship for the Coalition on Men and Masculinities, the Research Chair for the Minorities and Communication Division. Dr. Matos is the Director of Membership & Training at the international headquarters of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. He is a lecturer at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications, at Northwestern University.
Keith D. Garcia currently serves as the Executive Director of Campus Life at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Previously the Director of Fraternity & Sorority Life at Northwestern as well as a leadership educator and fraternity/sorority professional at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Garcia travels the country supporting campuses, fraternal organizations, and community groups in tackling issues related to leadership from a lens of justice and equity. He holds a master’s degree in educational administration – student affairs from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the City University of New York – Baruch College. He is a member of La Unidad Latina, Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity, Inc., having served on the Board of Directors and as a representative to the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations
Heather Cohen (she/they) serves as the Associate Director in the Office of Community Standards at Northwestern. Heather has spent 7 years working in the respective Offices of Community Standards at Northwestern and University of Illinois at Chicago, and frequently presents on topics such as sanctioning and using assessment to evaluate equity within the process, including at ASCA Annual Meetings, ASCA’s Gehring Academy. Heather volunteers on the Equity & Inclusion, Women in Student Conduct, Assessment, and Conflict Resolution Committees. Heather earned a BA in Political Science from Ohio University, her M.Ed from North Carolina State University, and a certificate in Restorative Justice from University of San Diego. In her free time she enjoys watching Northwestern Lacrosse games and Broadway shows, attending her children’s musicals or sports, and streaming Gossip Girl and its derivatives.
Cayce Pasko-Stanley is currently the Interim Director of Fraternity & Sorority Life at Northwestern University. She arrived at Northwestern as an Assistant Director of Fraternity & Sorority Life in January 2022 and was promoted to Associate Director of Fraternity & Sorority Life in July 2023. Prior to Northwestern, she previously served as a coordinator for Fraternity Sorority Leadership Development at the University of Southern California. She earned her Master of Education degree in Counselor Education, with a Student Affairs Emphasis from Clemson University, and a Bachelor of Fine Art degree in Digital Art from Bowling Green State University, where she joined her Panhellenic Sorority, Kappa Delta. Outside of her professional work, Cayce enjoys painting, baking, and walking her German Shepherd.
Abby Ross serves as an Assistant Director of Fraternity & Sorority Life. Prior to joining Northwestern, she worked as a traveling educational consultant for Alpha Epsilon Phi, as a social justice programming coordinator for Hillel at Washington University, and as training development manager for Kappa Delta Sorority. She has a master’s degree in higher education administration and policy from Northwestern and a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and a minor in public policy from American University, where she was heavily involved in her Panhellenic sorority, Alpha Epsilon Phi. In her free time, she loves going for long walks along the lake, a good cup of coffee, and trying new restaurants.
Transcript
Dr. Rafael Matos (RM): All right, welcome, Perspectives listeners. We’re so excited to have you here. This month is a special edition of Perspectives as we are looking into conduct. So we’re partnering with the Association of Student Conduct [Administrators] into looking at ways in which we can make the conduct process for our organizations more smooth and a greater learning experience. So today, I have the honor of sitting here – now last issue, I talked to my buddy, my friend, Keith Garcia, who heads fraternity/sorority life, well, who used to head fraternity/sorority life at Northwestern, so he got some exciting news around that. But today he has his team as well as a representative for the Office of Community Standards at Northwestern University. So we’re going to get excited because they’re going to share with you some of the practices they have in terms of creating the most robust and equitable learning experience for students who happen to, well, you know, want to test the waters and kind of go outside of, color outside the lines, they have a way to sort of work with them and teach them how to stay within bounds, right? So I am going to turn it over to Keith to introduce himself and joining us, we have Abby Ross, Cayce Pasko-Stanley and Heather Cohen. And they’ll introduce themselves and tell a little bit about what they do. So Keith, tell us about yourself.
Keith Garcia (KG): Thank you, friend. Happy to be back in conversation with Perspectives. So, my name is Keith Garcia, I utilize he/him pronouns. As of December 9th, I have taken a step away from the role as director of fraternity and sorority life at Northwestern and assumed the position of executive director of campus life at Northwestern, which oversees fraternity and sorority life and student organizations and activities. Excited to stay in the work and that fraternity and sorority will continue to be a part of the portfolio of responsibility. But I am looking forward to this and I’m going to go ahead and pass it over to the current associate director of fraternity and sorority life who, come January, will actually be serving as the interim director of fraternity and sorority life at Northwestern, Cayce Pasko-Stanley.
Cayce Pasko-Stanely (CPS): Thank you. Hi, my name is Cayce Pasko-Stanley, I use she/her pronouns, current associate director of fraternity and sorority life. As Keith mentioned, will be serving as interim director come January. I’ve been at Northwestern about three years now and in my time as an associate director, I’m currently working with our Interfraternity Council and our Multicultural Greek Council in addition to a portfolio of chapters from all four of our councils that I coach. And I’m also responsible for our office’s harm reduction educational initiatives. And with that, I will go ahead and hand it off to Abby.
Abby Ross (AR):Â Hi all, I’m excited to be here in community with everyone. My name is Abby Ross and I serve as the assistant director in the Office of Fraternity & Sorority Life. In my role, I advise the Panhellenic Association and the National Pan-Hellenic Council. I have a portfolio of chapters across all four of our councils and I oversee our office’s leadership education initiatives. And I will pass it over to Heather.
Heather Cohen (HC): Hi, folks, so happy that I can join for this special issue. I’m Heather Cohen, I use she or they series pronouns and I serve as the associate director over in the Office of Community Standards. Part of my role often includes working with student organizations as they might engage with our process and also get to work closely with our assistant director, Evan Williams, who can’t be here today, but sort of leads our coordinated efforts to reach out to student organizations and works with them as they kind of go through our process.
RM: And I’m Dr. Rafael Matos, I’m the director of membership and training at Phi Beta Sigma’s headquarters. I’m also excited because these are my colleagues as I teach over at Medill at Northwestern and I’m also part of the Perspectives board of editors, so very excited to be able to be in this moment in this space. So, let’s get into this because we have a lot of great conversations to be had. So first, can you share a little bit about the history of the relationship between the Office of Community Standards and FSL at Northwestern?
KG: Yeah, I’m happy to provide some of that context. I think one of the things that I’ll name is, I often share with people that I’ve worked in a couple of different contexts and universities, and I’ve been witness to a lot of different structures around community standards and fraternity and sorority. And I’m biased, obviously, but I would like to say that at Northwestern, I think we have one of the strongest relationships between fraternity and sorority life and an Office of Community Standards that you can hope for. But that was intentional, right? And I don’t know that it always existed in those ways on our campus. I think that there were times where we had to traverse maybe a bit of a lack of trust between the two offices for varying reasons and to varying degrees, concerns about people’s shared commitment to these experiences. There were times where admittedly, there might have been some concerns about chapters being coached out of accountability, or of reticence of our colleagues in community standards to maybe understand or hear the perspective of the team in fraternity and sorority life. And so over the years, it’s been incredibly iterative of trying to figure out where do we want to be and how do we want to be in service of this community of students and the stakeholders that are connected to it. I’m proud of the work that we’ve done. It hasn’t been easy, but we have a really strong trust and bond between our offices that I think ultimately is in service of the wellbeing of our students, the strength of this fraternity and sorority community at Northwestern but also ensuring that it remains a positive contribution to the broader student experience at the university. So, we all know fraternity and sorority extends beyond the confines of the community itself. So, when I arrived at Northwestern in 2017, I would argue that I inherited some of the, like, forward progress and trajectory that had been made on trying to address some of those things. There was a point where there was a staff member of FSL at every initial meeting with groups that might have received a charge letter from the Office of Community Standards to help kind of serve as a translator of institutional policy into the fraternity and sorority context. Over time, we’ve evolved that further to maybe come up with resources and documents that support students’ engagement in those conversations, that maybe support other stakeholders in understanding how this is going to work. And our teams meet regularly. So, we have a monthly standing meeting between FSL and OCS. And I think in those meetings, we aren’t just having conversations about the cases that might be pending within the community, but we’re also having conversations about how to improve upon the work, where the tensions might exist and we’ll get into a little of some of those things in the future, but understanding that we’re all coming from the same place. I’ll also just pitch that I am incredibly fortunate, and we are incredibly fortunate, at Northwestern that we have worked with a group of colleagues in community standards who are also all affiliated and who also believe in what fraternity and sorority means and can mean for our community. And so, I’m grateful that that is the context within which we do this work. So, that’s a little bit of kind of like the backstory of how fraternity and sorority and community standards at Northwestern have evolved to connect with one another. But it continues to be a process and an open dialogue between our offices, again, about what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and what ways it’s impacting not just the students, but the staff who are doing the work and the stakeholders connected to it. But I’m excited. I’m excited about the trajectory on our campus.
RM: Incredible, incredible history. And I really appreciate that the two offices collaborate because I think it gives a space for one to hold accountable the students, but then also to support the students. And sometimes we forget, students need that support through the conduct process because it helps them to really make sense of why they were there or the sanctions and then really buy into why it’s happening and feel like somebody’s advocating for them. And so, based on that history, where do you feel you are at today?
HC: When I think about some of the things that are going on with how we approach it today, I really think about three things. First, how do we communicate with each other? Kind of pulling that string and explicating on what Keith started talking about with, this isn’t always easy, but we put a lot of work into it. And I think it’s been one of our most successful relationships. Second, how does that inform our strategic plan around how do we communicate with folks outside of our two offices when things come up that have implications, not just for what we do, but for what a lot of other folks do and how students get to show up at the university. And then finally, all of our communication around the steps that are involved in sanctioning. So, from picking a sanction all the way to seeing that sanction through to fruition. Abby, do you think you could talk about that first component where we’re talking a little bit on how we communicate with each other?
AR: Yeah, so I’ll start off by saying how incredibly grateful I am for the relationship between our two offices. I think truly it goes beyond relationship and is a true partnership. So, Keith started to mention that we have monthly meetings with our two offices. And I think what’s great about that is, yes, we talk about some of the current cases happening, but we also talk about what is going on campus, campus culture, campus climate, and how we might work together as two offices. And I think the other great piece about that too is when an organization is in some sort of conduct process, it is typically their chapter coach who is the most highly touched person in our fraternity and sorority office. But in those monthly meetings, we all have the opportunity to have a high-level overview of the current cases that are going on. And so, I think that helps us better support each other and better support the students through the process. I’ll say it is constantly an iterative process, right? We’re consistently updating our resources based on the meetings that we have to talk about what the current students need. And also, what our staff needs, right? Like thinking about staff capacity and where we are and the volume of cases and things of that nature. I’m so grateful for the trust between our two departments because I think that allows us to be true partners when we are communicating with other stakeholders such as senior administration at the university, other university departments, headquarters, parents, students, whoever it might be. I think the trust that we’ve built together has allowed us to truly be partners in that aspect. And when we step out of the fraternity, sorority and Office of Community Standards lane, we’re able to really be one in the same in our messaging and our voice. And I really also appreciate that we’ve been given the opportunity to put students up for opportunities within the Office of Community Standards realm such as the student handbook committee. We’re often recommending some of our student leaders to serve on the student handbook committee who, and they have the opportunity to review the student handbook, to review revisions to policy. And I think that is in large part due to our successful and ongoing relationship.
HC: I can talk about that next component regarding strategically communicating with others. And I really do think that this relationship and the level of communication that Abby talked about is informative towards that. There are two examples that I’m going to use a few years ago, and this is sort of probably like the earliest example in my time here at Northwestern. We had a period of time where we did not have very many suspensions or housing suspensions. And then all of a sudden, we had a period of time where we had a lot. And so, once we got to those, that space where chapters had made behavioral choices that put them at that level with the university, it really quickly highlighted this urgent need for a more robust communication strategy when we were putting that level of sanction into place. And we had some tight timelines imposed by sanctioning processes, but because we have that high level of trust and collaboration that Abby spoke about, it really enabled us to swiftly identify, here’s the communication gaps that we see, who were the other stakeholders here at the university or at headquarters that we need to bring into the conversation. And then how do we ensure consistent messaging across all levels? And thinking through those things, we were able to implement a phased communication strategy. And that really started with chapter leadership. So, when we deliver an outcome letter, delivering that straight to the president and the headquarters, but then created this strategy around cascading that to local advisors, to the chapter executive, to general members, and also by extension, their parents. And that was really all born out of this feedback loop that we’ve been talking about. So, students were sharing with us, but primarily sharing with FSL that they needed more support on messaging. We would send a president out to tell their peers, a 19-year-old president, usually to tell their peers about what happened. And a lot of times there was so much pushback that some of the, what we wanted in the messaging was getting lost. We and DOS were also, Dean of Students Office, we’re also hearing from parents and campus partners about a higher level of need to understand details regarding how would this impact students and in particular impact student living arrangements. And so having this close relationship where we could frankly discuss and kind of work through some of these things, it really helped us hone in on what should the strategy be. And that the strategy needed to focus not just on the what, which is what I think it kind of was originally, but also helping people from the newest general member all the way to the president and the headquarters, the why behind what put them in this space, why are we choosing the sanctions that we are, how those sanctions are meant to actually support the chapter and bring them back into alignment with the university. But also, how are we going to support them both at the chapter level and the individual level. So, like if they need to transition out of the house, how are we going to make sure that there are supports in place at the university that they can do that and do it with a lot of seamlessness. And also, if they need mental health supports, because certainly with that type of case, we were seeing a lot of students who were impacted in that way. And so I think that’s something we’re really proud of and feel like we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from students around that this has made a difference in kind of how they experience, and particularly our chapter leadership who sometimes were put in hard positions of trying to deliver this message to people who were giving them a lot of feedback and yet they didn’t have a lot of control over what it was and kind of how to move forward. It made it a lot easier to have chapters get to the purpose of sanctions in ways that I think made them healthier moving forward. You know, this is an iterative process for us. And so, the second example I’ll use is last year, we had several hazing cases all at the same time. And a lot of those hazing cases involved interim actions that suspended new member involvement. And again, that feedback loop was really incredibly helpful to us, and we were seeing students particularly going to FSL sharing this with community standards too, but mostly through their chapter coaches that new members as well, that they had really strong feelings of disconnection and uncertainty during the investigation process. And it was creating a lot of consternation for students and particularly those new members who were going into housing selection. And again, like that constant monthly meeting, but also talking to chapter coaches as they’re getting this feedback even before the monthly meetings was really helpful that we could identify like, oh, we have a really good communications plan at the end of a process, but we clearly need to have a stronger communications plan during the process. And so Evan Williams, who’s in our office, led a big effort this summer to enhance that communications plan at all stages. And part of the conversation that we were able to have, and again, I think this is like where we had to be frank with each other sometimes. We had to talk about like, hey, like that sounds great in theory, but that’s not actually something we’re resourced for or how those communication elements would look like and also who’s going to own what between the two offices as we move forward. Cayce, maybe you can talk about the sanctioning management component now.
CPS: Yeah, I can definitely talk about that a little bit. So as both Abby and Heather have talked about quite a bit, the communication between the two teams in Fraternity & Sorority Life and the Office of Community Standards is really strong throughout the process. And this definitely extends into sanction creation and sanction management. So, there’s a pretty significant amount of collaboration that happens in the sanctioning period. But one thing I’ll name as well, too, that I find really helpful as a chapter coach is before the letters even go out to our students, the chapter coach and the director typically have a heads up on that. So, it really positions the chapter coach well to be able to kind of immediately intervene and check in on the student organization that’s experiencing that, particularly the student leader as soon as that message goes out. And I see that kind of echoed in some of the processes for sanctioning as well too. So, with sanctions in particular, we will typically check in with the Office of Community Standards as they’re creating some sanctions based on what they find in the investigation. So, we learn a little bit about that and then can come to the table with some recommendations and collaboration as well as an opportunity just to share. Like, yeah, we can totally help out with this or no, maybe that’s something we look to a different campus partner or potentially a headquarter staff or volunteer to help kind of lead in that space if for whatever reason, our team doesn’t have capacity. It’s also a good opportunity because as the chapter coaches, we typically have a really good finger on the pulse and the culture of the chapter itself. So sometimes the sanctions might need tweaked or there might need to be an additional layer of consideration that we can provide just because we have that relationship. So, I’ve been really grateful for those kind of pre-sanctioning check-ins. And then we also, as the chapter coaches have a really deep understanding of what our chapters need to do next. So, by the time the chapter receives that outcome, we can immediately jump back in like we did at the beginning and just say, okay, you’ve got your outcome letter. How are you feeling? What’s the plan? What do you need from us to support? Which really kind of brings me to my next point as well too with chapter coaches and with our coaching model. This really kind of positions as well to be the support arm for the chapter. We’re very intentional about this throughout the entire investigation process. Whether that’s when it initially kicks off and they’re asking us a lot of questions about the process, we’ll go ahead and kick them over to our friends at OCS to help kind of delineate between the two entities. And then through sanctioning as well too, it helps position us as folks who can be there to help them through that process or help liaise if they ever do have some questions or concerns about what’s going on as well, too, as they’re completing their sanctions. So, one of the examples I can think of here as well, too, is as we’re coaching folks through this, we have their deadlines as well too. So, we can also serve as that piece of like, ooh, you know what, it’s the 15th and I know this group has this coming up and I haven’t heard anything. So maybe I’ll just nudge them one more time, see if they need any help completing something. And then sometimes that chapter will be like, ooh, yeah, you know what, actually we have this event for this yesterday and we’re having some trouble getting the attendance form uploaded. And I’m like, cool, reach out to your OCS case manager and on the back end on Teams, I’ll just be like hey, by the way, they’re running a little bit behind, but they did communicate with me. So, it does definitely help in that regard. I think another piece that OCS has done recently that’s been additionally really helpful in outcomes, just moving forward even beyond the sanctioning process, I think is the conduct history recap letters to new presidents where they offer an OCS meeting but can discuss with chapter coaches, their individual conduct history. This has been really helpful in this era of younger leadership, perhaps a sophomore or even somebody getting elected within their first year of joining. A lot of times, especially as we are at the first joining campus, some of those events happen in the fall and those folks weren’t even a part of the chapter yet during that time. So, they had no idea that there was a conduct history. So as a chapter coach, that’s really positioned us well to kind of onboard new leadership to some of that history and context. And even for some older, more seasonal leaders as well too, it’s just helpful for them to check in and kind of hear from all sides about, you know, where have we been, where do we need to go, what do we need to work on, what do we need to be aware of? And it has been really helpful to sit down with those chapters and to be like, hey, by the way, this has happened every year. Maybe this can be the year that does happen, now that you’re aware. So, and then I think as well to one thing I’ve been really, really appreciative of that our colleagues in OCS do when they are creating sanctions is they always try to center a lot of these educational outcomes being student driven, whether that’s through programming or other education that the students themselves can take initiative and lead in. So, I think an example of this that Abby and I really worked on in partnership with the students over the last, gosh, I think it technically started in the spring quarter was the creation of a hazing prevention round table where as Heather mentioned earlier, we had quite a few hazing investigations happening around the same time last year. And one of those outcomes was this student created planning committee to host a hazing prevention workshop of their choosing. It was very open-ended to the committee forums. Abby and I were able to through the language that was used in the outcome letter, really position ourselves as, hey, we’re here to answer questions about things like space. Any questions you might have about what, you know, in the hazing landscape is most relevant and things like that, but this is your show. We’re not doing this on your behalf. And they really took a lot of initiative in that space to plan. They created subcommittees. They decided to do a workshop using some media examples and some Q and A and created something really interactive for their peers to attend. So I think that was a really creative outcome that our students not only learned a lot about what they were supposed to learn about, which was hazing prevention, but they also got some really cool leadership development in terms of just skill-building, figuring out how to assign tasks beyond a committee, work in partnership with cultures, within different chapters that might look a lot different than yours, and build connections outside of that.
RM: Incredible. Now as I sat here listening, there were a few words that stood out to me. I heard: iterative, strategy, collaboration, intentionally, educational, impact, skill-building. Now when I reflect in those words, it’s clear to me that the team, because that’s what I’m calling you, y’all a team, the team really takes great care in making sure that whatever you’re doing, centers all your stakeholders in the process. So, I appreciate that. So as a member of a culturally-based fraternity, I’m curious to learn about how the two offices, how does the team work to ensure that the conduct process is equitable to all organizations across all councils?
HC: Yeah, so I can speak to that. I think there are two things that we’ve sort of tried to build into many others, amongst many others, but I think two things that sort of most strongly play in this place is one, a couple years ago, we started building questions into our sanctioning process around impact and use the four harms in restorative justice, which are emotional/social, material, relational, and structural/historical. And so oftentimes in this like structural/historical question coming up, we have questions that might relate back to like, you get to live in a house, what does that mean when you do something in the house that other people might not have that same sort of level of access to private social space and how that interacts with the rest of our campus? And so, I think that’s been something that then informs sanctioning and helps the students reflect on things that maybe aren’t front of mind for them when they move into a house, but that really play to their social strata on campus and what they have access to. The second thing that we did, we had a case, and I think this was an ongoing conversation for us in those monthly meetings, and in addition to talking about cases, we’re often pulling out what’s like a theme that’s going on within our community that we want to be really aware of. And so we’ve been having those conversations in those monthly meetings around, how do we make sure that we aren’t sanctioning one council differently than another because of, for instance, like access to a house, and maybe if you don’t have access to a house, the party you throw is a little bit easier to be detected by police because you’re outside or in a garage or something like that. And we had a case specifically where headquarters was able to bring a lot of resources to play in terms of particularly educational interventions. And the panel in that case really sort of interpreted that as, oh, well, because their headquarters is doing so much for them here, we as an institution can actually do a little bit less. And also chose to have that impact the level of disciplinary status that they had and all the restrictions that they had. And as our teams reflected on that, I think we really felt like, ooh, we don’t love that, right? Like we don’t love because a headquarters was able to bring this level of resource that they then had a lower disciplinary outcome than a chapter who was in a similar situation but wasn’t able to bring all of those resources to bear. And so in the year after that, we made a decision both for us when we do administrative level cases that the staff is deciding the sanction but also for our sanctioning panels that headquarters ability to bring resources to the table would definitely influence the level of educational intervention we might use as an institution but wouldn’t influence disciplinary range that might come about as a part of a status. And so, we’re very careful with our sanctioning panels to help them understand where that might be considered and where it should not be considered because it’s outside of the scope. And a good example of that is we’re also able to use, like if a headquarters has a lot of resources and can bring educational interventions to play, that’s actually great for us because it also means that, for instance, we have a Health Promotion & Wellness Office that does a lot of alcohol, cannabis, and other drug education for both our individual students but also our groups. And so if a headquarters is able to bring that level of resource to play, then we can make sure that, “Oh, well, HPaW only has so much capacity.” So we’re going to use the headquarters in that instance. And then when we have another group who doesn’t have that level of resource, that’s when we’re kind of prioritizing, this is a great place for HPaW to use the capacity that they have to be able to have impact with a group who can’t get that from other places necessarily or doesn’t have it as readily available.
RM: Wow, great answer. And as I was listening there, two themes came out that I really have seen throughout your entire discussion. One, the first theme: self-reflective. And like what you said that, yes, you could have taken the easy way out, received this and give a lower sanction, but you say, “Wait a minute, how does that look for the other organizations that maybe don’t have that there?” And I think that’s an important piece. As I was talking to one of my colleagues about student conduct, that’s one thing that they said, right? You have to think about your policies, your procedures, and how do the students show up in there. So, I appreciate you making that call out. The other one is going to sound very interesting, but I think you’re intentionally accommodating. You’re not saying, “No, we won’t let you do this.” You’re saying, “Yes, you can do this if it makes sense.” And I think that’s an important piece because sometimes we may cut the nose to the face and we don’t want to do that. And then also it helps students feel good about the fact that you’re able to meet them some way. I’m not going to say halfway, but maybe you’re going to meet them a quarter of the way, maybe two steps in. But if you can at least budge and give them something, I think that makes the experience much better. So again, I appreciate you sharing. So, if, let’s see, now, can you talk about how have your offices navigated challenges when balancing the different roles played by FSL and OCS?
KG: Yeah. And I think what I’ll do is I’ll invite the team to share a little bit in this too. It there can sometimes feel like there’s inherent tension in the roles that our offices play, right? And whether that’s self-imposed or it’s how other people perceive of what our roles might be, we’re consistently needing to assess what the function of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life and the Office of Community Standards is in what this outcome could look like for our groups. So, one of the ways that I think we navigate that is in direct dialogue with colleagues. We don’t hold back when we feel like, “Hey, I don’t know that I feel great about this,” or that our office is the office that should be either delivering this news or this particular message or who the person is, right? Sometimes it’s a function of maybe it can’t be Cayce because Cayce needs to retain a level of rapport with either the chapter or the council that’s impacted by the decision that’s being made. And so, is it instead better positioned for me to be able to be in that room sharing that information? Or should FSL be delivering information at all? Is this something that maybe should be coming from our colleagues and community standards explicitly? I’ll, I think I’ll invite Heather, Cayce, to share a little bit about how we had to navigate some of that in the winter/spring of last year when we were navigating some of the investigations that were occurring and the tensions that existed of the need to accommodate and get things done while also navigating some of the impact of that as well.
HC: I can kick us off a little bit. We had a situation last winter where we, within about a 48-hour period, we already had a chapter who was being investigated around hazing and then within this 48-hour period had seven other chapters reported. And it just happened to coincide with a week of travel for a lot of folks in our office, in the Office of Community Standards. And so, I was sort of the lone person holding all of that down. And, you know, we’re incredibly grateful because the way that we conduct hazing investigations is in addition to the folks in the Office of Community Standards, we’ve also trained some other folks, including folks in FSL, to help with hazing investigations, mostly on that sort of front-end step of talking to new members and trying to gather information. You know, there’s some inherent tension there, right, especially for chapter coaches. And so, we try to be really intentional when we do that about not having a chapter coach ever participate in a new member conversation with one of the chapters that they advise. But also, there’s still tension in that, even if it’s not a chapter that you advise. And there’s also some really great things that come out of that, you know, like having a FSL person as a part of those investigations versus somebody who works in res life and maybe doesn’t have FSL background or doesn’t have the context of the Northwestern FSL experience. You know, we get information from the FSL team that other folks might not pick up on, but we do try to be really cognizant of not over-involving them and making sure that they’re not usually the ones speaking to a chapter president or somebody who they might have direct contact with as it results in their chapter coach role. But still, I think, like, and Cayce you can speak to this so well, there’s still some hesitation around that sometimes.
CPS: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s your point, Heather. We, I think, have seen the pros and cons of that participation. I think there were definitely moments when I was participating where I asked somebody who has worked in fraternity/sorority professionally for a few years, would ask questions that felt very natural to me and yielded some information that I think was helpful. I think on the flip side of that, to your point, and what we’ve talked about, about protecting rapport with students outside of the investigative space as well, too, as chapter coaches, that certainly showed up through that process as well, too. I remember having a conversation with a member in that space when we were supporting you all during that time and then a couple months later, having a meeting with that same person where we discussed some financial access and scholarship support and had in that moment where I clicked where I knew that person from. I was like, oh, gosh, that probably is a little bit uncomfortable to come back to the same person in such a vulnerable state after that was kind of our first introduction. So, it definitely can get kind of complicated. I think, you know, it, like you mentioned Heather, it was just probably the worst possible timing in the year for that to happen, but that’s how it goes sometimes. So, we certainly made it work, but I think we learned a lot through that process, too, in terms of how we show up and what we learned about what potential impact that could cause from the student side of things. I think the other thing that came up during that time, too, that was really helpful, but it was a lot was just the ability to go as chapter coaches and kind of explain the initial notice of investigation in the chapters. I think that was something that was really worthwhile in the sense of it just helped us get in front of a whole chapter and talk through, hey, here’s this letter you received, here’s what this means, here’s, you know, Evan or Heather, or Christine, who you can go to with questions pertaining to process. If you’re feeling really stressed or really uncomfortable about navigating the next steps, like you can come to us, and we’ll help you through in that supportive lane. So, it helped us kind of draw that distinction, but since we’re at Northwestern and our students are really busy all the time and they’re always studying, almost all those meetings happen in the evening or on Saturday or Sunday. So, it was a couple straight-through weekends of going to chapter’s chapter (meeting) in person, but it was helpful. So it definitely, it has its pros and cons. Like I said, I think we learned quite a bit through that process last year. But it certainly is something that I really hope we don’t have to do again this year. So, we’ll see in terms of the volume. I’m happy to help us. We need to still to.
KG: Yeah, I would ask Abby maybe to share a little bit too. Like we’ve talked about how we navigate, you know, Heather’s alluded to the pre-sanction assignment piece. But I think that that’s another area where we sometimes have to have conversations about where tension might exist or capacity constraints. And so, if you want to share a little bit about some of those conversations that we’ve had.
AR: Yeah, absolutely. So oftentimes what will happen is whoever the case manager is for the case in OCS will either send a Teams message or say like, hey, can we hop on a quick call and say, hey, I was thinking about assigning this sanction and it would require some work on your end. It would require you to have monthly meetings with the entire chapter executive board. It would require you to review their new member education plan. Do you have the capacity to do this? And I think there’s some tension there, right? Because obviously I always want to say yes, because I think our colleagues in OCS do a really great job of creating sanctions with the intention of bettering the chapter’s behavior and creating, like, a healthier, safer environment for our students in the future. While also noting that, like, we have so many things going on and sometimes I don’t have the time to have an additional meeting or two or three or don’t have the time to review an additional document. And so being able to have that open dialogue with our colleagues in OCS I think is really important and something we’ve worked on, I think, significantly over this last year of like, it’s never just put in a letter of like, hey, Abby’s going to do this for you. It’s a conversation about, Abby, do you have the capacity if we add this to the letter and if not, what might be a good alternative? Which I certainly appreciate keeping in mind that there are only so many hours in the day and at the end of the day we all have the same goals for our students is to achieve better going forward.
RM: If y’all were here, you have to feel the energy in here. This, because this really got me pumped up and charged for doing conduct. That’s the one thing I miss from residence life. And let me tell you, here’s what I heard. I heard a resounding call in favor of relationship building at all different levels, whether with the students, with colleagues, external stakeholders. And I think that that’s an important piece, is this very essential to the conduct process. Specifically, one thing you said that I think is really important because I feel like some colleagues kind of think like they shouldn’t do this, but I heard transparency, particularly like this idea, you going before the chapter, if you need to say, hey, this is what you got, here’s why you got it. What questions do you have? Because even if they don’t agree with it, I think they will at least appreciate the fact you walking into the proverbial lion’s den and just sort of sharing with them, this is why you did what you did. So, I totally appreciate that call out. And as we continue, you talked about your history, you talked about where you are at. But now let’s talk about what are you doing as we look towards the future.
KG: Yeah. I think one of the things that, and I want to appreciate kind of like the staff in OCS current and past who contributed to this, but we are incredibly fortunate to be sort of kind of part of two different consortia in the existence of like the Big Ten Conference and how collaborative it is as a conference, but also Northwestern being the type of institution that it is being a part of COFHE, which stands for the Consortium of Finance in Higher Education, which most folks don’t know what that is or that it exists. But it’s schools like Vanderbilt and Stanford and Wash U and that type of collective, we have been fortunate to be able to be in proximity to colleagues who do work in those spaces. And while we feel very strongly that we do good work at Northwestern, I think it doesn’t lend itself to any hubris because we are also willing to say, “What can we do better?” And who might we be able to learn from along the way? And we’ve gotten to a lot of different places, in large part because of those open dialogues with colleagues from other institutions, peer groups that we can discuss. I’ll invite Heather to maybe share a little bit about how some of the work we’ve benchmarked in the past from some of our colleagues has informed some of the processes in OCS. And then invite Abby and Cayce to share a little bit about some of the taskforce that we’ve sat on as team members across the university that draw on our ability to connect with colleagues in different spaces.
HC: Yeah, so here at Northwestern, we update our student handbook every year. That’s at least traditionally been our process. And that involves a lot of different feedback loops. Of course, things that we experienced throughout the year that we felt like maybe didn’t work the way that we wanted them to or policy where we thought something was missing or maybe we had a level of detail that we didn’t think was working for us. A good example in this space is that we really wanted to create a mechanism where students had more ownership over the sanctions that they had to complete and just an easier way to sort of navigate throughout the process. And so in doing professional development work was hearing about what Indiana was doing and how one of our colleagues had taken that to also John Hopkins. And then also heard that Iowa was doing similar stuff around acceptance of responsibility where an organization could accept responsibility and then actually propose what their sanction should be. And so, looked at the language there to say, like, oh, is that something we would be interested in? And then took that back to that student handbook committee that Abby was talking about before, which is almost always inclusive of students and student organizations, but in particular, FSL, student organization leadership, and sort of said, like, is this something you’d want? Do you think this would be helpful? Got some really good feedback on it. And then also, of course, we’re taking it, and vetting it with campus partners too. And so, we’re always trying to make the process one where it’s more transparent, but also that it offers students more ownership in it. And so AOR is a good example of that, but there are lots of others as we go through every year and are always trying to get students to weigh in on that. There’s also some great committees here at the university that I think you all could talk about that also kind of do similar work and that will inform kind of different policies at the university.
CPS: Absolutely. I can jump in and talk a little bit more about that. In particular, I sit on the Alcohol, Cannabis, and Other Drugs Committee at the university right now. And one of the topics that’s come up quite a bit in that space is alcohol at student events, which definitely impacts our community, but in particular for organizations that do have chapter facilities on campus, there has been language in the student handbook for the past several years about how those houses are dry in comparison to our residence halls where if you are over 21, you’re able to have alcohol in the facility that currently doesn’t extend to our fraternity/sorority facilities. And part of the conversation within that has been, what do we need to do to benchmark to figure out what is the norm in FSL facilities at other campuses? So we, our team in addition with OCS, kind of even before the ACOD committee really even kicked off, did some pretty intentional benchmarking from other Big Ten schools, other COFHE schools, other schools with a similar housing facility and leasing process to the Northwestern, other schools with a similar campus culture to Northwestern to figure out what, one, if any, is their requirement for those facilities to be dry, what is the alcohol policy for those facilities if not, what is their event registration process like to help kick us off? And I think that’s been a really worthwhile investment – kind of springboarded a lot of the conversations that we have had in ACOD, which are moving along in an exciting way, but it’s definitely something that is helping kind of push along this partnership as well too. And I know Abby, I think you can speak a little bit more to the engagement about our students and those processes as well too. So I’ll go ahead and pause there and let you jump in.
AR: Yeah, I think looking to the future and the ways in which we are working to improve upon our work within the fraternity and sorority landscape and our conduct landscape, I really value and I think that we are working to maintain and even escalate the ways in which students are involved in the feedback process, right? Getting student feedback at each and every step of the way allows us to provide policies, processes, procedures that will make the best impact on our students.
RM: Well, friends, you know, one little unknown fun fact that I alluded to, I loved conduct. I feel like I get to live my CSI dreams. I promise you I do, but everything good has to come to a halt and so while this conversation may have ran its course, for now, I encourage all our listeners to really dig deep into your conduct process. Think about areas that you can grow. If you can change one thing, even if it seems like it’s just basic to you, that’s an improvement in the right direction. Again, remember, I like the word iterative, right? Going to take different versions of it. So, as we close out, I want to ask this awesome team, if you can please provide one piece of advice or a recommendation you will make to our listeners looking to enhance their conduct process.
HC: I can kick us off and for me, I think this is aimed more at conduct folks. We’re very lucky in our office to have, as Keith said, folks who are all affiliated. But one thing I would encourage you, even if you’re affiliated, is to familiarize yourself with the other councils that you weren’t a part of as an undergraduate or if you weren’t affiliated to familiarize yourself with the way each council works across the board. I was very lucky when I was in grad school. I had a fraternity and sorority life assistantship. I was familiar with the Divine Nine and those chapters, but I didn’t really understand how they operated differently from my sorority. Learning that has really been so incredibly helpful to me in this role because we do try to be very intentional about being equitable across the board. For us, that really means understanding that each of the councils, and even maybe different chapters within the councils, operate a little bit differently and that that operation can impact the way that a sanction or a process is interacted with. So just really trying to educate yourself in that area I think is so incredibly helpful to create an experience that students can engage with in the ways that we want them to at the end of the day.
CPS: I can go next, and I have two examples. I’ll keep them brief, but I think for myself, for myself and for FSL folx who are listening as well too. I think a lot of times we’re really uniquely positioned because we are both support and accountability sometimes. I think when you have organizations in a conduct process, depending on what your collaboration with your own office’s conduct team is, it can get really great for you really fast. So just having the candid conversation with the folks on those teams to help figure out where that line is. And then referring back to that when it feels like it’s putting you in a position where it might not be as productive for the chapter moving forward if you continue. In that way, I think it’s really helpful and that’s been something, as we mentioned earlier, we’ve had really candid communication about with our OCS team that’s been really helpful. I think the other piece is really just continuing to center the student as a partner throughout this. We’ve talked about this quite a bit, but I think our OCS team does an amazing job with this. And an example that comes to mind in that bubble is a group that kind of just finished up some sanctions from a case last year, had a really excellent chapter president who took everything incredibly seriously and has completely through those educational outcomes I think altered the course of that chapter moving forward. And I don’t think that would have happened if Heather, in particular, hadn’t put as much trust and partnership in with that student throughout that process as she did. So, I think continuing to do that will continue to yield results that actually stick and help the students grow. But I have really, really appreciated that about our team here.
AR: I feel like I’m going to sound like a broken record here. But I think the biggest piece of advice I would give is build those relationships, take that time to go to lunch with colleagues across these two offices, because I think our work really does touch each other so heavily that because we have these really great relationships with the Office of Community Standards, we’re able to have important dialogue about, hey, this process isn’t working, or hey, this seems great, but we don’t have the capacity to execute on this. We have even just lunches at the end of the year with our two teams. And I think just being able to share space with one another in a way that’s somewhat outside of work, I think, has allowed us to be so successful in our partnership. And so, I think really just taking the time and building that relationship is really the one thing I think has made our work so meaningful and impactful.
KG: Yeah, if I had to think about something that I want folks to think about is take accountability for the impact of the work that you do on the stakeholders that we do this work with. A lot of times I have heard people talk about this in a lot of different ways, but when I talk to my students, I’ll hear them say things like, “Northwestern doesn’t care about me,” or, “Northwestern doesn’t care about fraternity or sorority,” right? And what they might be referencing is a frustration with maybe an outcome that might have come out of community standards or a different approach that we’re choosing to take to something. And what I typically respond to that with is, “I am Northwestern University.” And so when you say that, I hear you, but I’m willing to take accountability for the parts of how the institution has impacted you that then mean, “I need to take a look at what the work is to try to get you to a place where you might feel differently about that.” And the reason why I say that is because it’s also critically important to me that we not use our peers as scapegoats for things that aren’t comfortable for us, right? When my colleagues make a decision, we have been through the gauntlet of getting to the place where that decision is what it is. And at the point where the decision is being made, it is a decision that we as a university have then made. And so, I am not going to pass the buck and say, “Well, that wasn’t me. That was community standards.” No, the answer was, “That’s Northwestern, and that’s where we’ve landed.” And so, I know that you might not necessarily appreciate that, but I’m going to take accountability for the fact that that’s the decision we made. And so now the answer is, “How do we move forward from this place with you and what the impact is there?” So that’s what I would offer, right? For me, from the seat that I sit in, I take accountability for the decisions that come out of the institution, even the ones that I don’t have agency in deciding, right? Because at the end of the day, I still need to live with what that impact is on the people who I do this work for.
RM: Well, Keith, Cayce, Abby, and Heather, thank you so much for joining us, for taking the time to share your wisdom and your experiences. To all the listeners out there, thank you for tuning in. And we will see you in the next issue of Perspectives.
