Members of Delta Tau Delta, an interest group affiliated with the national fraternity, will make a presentation to the Inter-Fraternity Council tonight in hopes of convincing the body to recognize it as Duke's newest fraternity.
"What we're going to be explaining [Tuesday] is everything we've accomplished locally as a group, as well as nationally," said DTD President Peter Fernandez. "Before we make ourselves prominent in the community, we want to make ourselves officially recognized before the IFC."
Re-organized last fall, the Delts hope to become a formal colony--the stage before a fraternity is officially charted by its national organization. Duke had a DTD chapter from 1928 until 1994, when a housing dispute caused it to disaffiliate from both Duke and the national organization, Fernandez said.
The Delts' possible return comes as the latest development in the cycle of fraternities arriving on and leaving campus. The last time IFC accepted a new member group was last year, when Chi Psi joined its ranks. In the past three years, three fraternities--Kappa Sigma, Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Phi Kappa Psi--have all either dissolved or lost their official IFC status.
"Unfortunately, we lost a couple recently. It wasn't necessarily something we wanted to happen, but nationals came down on a couple of chapters pretty hard and it was a tough situation," said IFC President Brett Green. "Obviously we want more fraternities rather than less, so this is a step in the right direction. Hopefully we'll see more expansion in the future."
Tonight's presentation, which will highlight the chapter's accomplishments, will be followed by an opportunity for IFC presidents to ask the Delts questions before they vote. A two-thirds majority of the 14 IFC presidents must approve the recognition, which Green said is likely.
"I think there's a real good chance that the vote's going to go through, and that's a recognition of the hard work they've put in to get through this process," he said. "Thus far, I know the expansion committee has overseen the process and looked very positively on it. I don't want to speak for the presidents, because ultimately it's their decision... but I hope to see the vote go through."
There are currently 30 Delts, almost all sophomores. Fernandez explained that a small group of friends initially expressed interest in starting their own fraternity and chose DTD because of its national prominence and the strong Duke DTD alumni base.
"Delta Tau Delta is one of the three largest fraternities in the United States," he said. "It has a lot of outward-bound style leadership courses that any member can take [and] they have a program called the Complete Delt, a program to get you through college very successfully. They have prestige and a lot of resources to their name."
Since the University's Delt alumni were still interested in their fraternity's future, the new members were able to gain their support in recolonizing the fraternity.
"They have a really strong alumni [base] because there were a bunch of DTDs before they left campus, so their alumni have been really supportive and would like to see the chapter start up again and be what it was," Green said.
After Fernandez and his friends decided to start a DTD chapter, they worked to recruit more members and organize themselves.
"In the year that we have existed, we started off as a core group of guys who were trying to make this thing go. We rose our numbers to 15 guys [and] after IFC's official rush, we then held our own informal rush and raised our numbers to 30," Fernandez said. "We held our own informal pledging, building brotherhood, [and] devoted ourselves to one of our main tenets, community service.... Basically we're already a fully organized and set up organization."
In light of the recent attention to fraternity life on campus, some students have expressed concern about the future of greek life at Duke. Fernandez, however, believes his fraternity will help usher in a new era for fraternities at the University.
"There's been increased scrutiny, rules and regulations on the fraternities, [but] being completely new we won't have to break out of a culture we've been a part of," he said. "We can make the best of the regulations we know... and we can help give fraternities a good name again because we won't have to accustom ourselves."
After IFC votes to recognize an interest group as an official University fraternity, the group can proceed just like any other fraternity. This means the Delts would be able to participate in rush in the spring and hold social events, instead of keeping a low profile as they have up until this point.
"If IFC chooses to recognize the chapter, we're going to embark on the process of trying to go from colony to a fully chartered chapter," Fernandez said. "Up until now, we've tried to make it a point that we respect the IFC and want to be a part of it by keeping to ourselves and developing our organization."
The next step after gaining IFC recognition would be for the Delts to work toward becoming an officially chartered chapter again. This process would include meeting goals regarding membership, maintaining a certain GPA and other such details. Todd Adams, assistant dean of students for greek life, said the Delts will not be able to apply for a housing section until they have a national charter.
"They have to meet certain requirements set forth by their national headquarters," Adams said. "They would be on a probationary status until their recolonization is completed."
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