At the weekly meeting of Interfraternity Council presidents, chapter executives voted to officially remove the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity from the IFC.
IFC President Alex Krupiak, an LSA senior, said the fraternity was removed for attempts to merge with Sig, a rogue fraternity no longer recognized by University Greek life or their nationals.
“They were forming a merger with an off-campus that was formerly known as Sig and they had a lot of different allocations and problems with them,” Krupiak said. “The IFC did not approve of that merger.”
DKE President Evan Field, an Engineering junior, said in an e-mail statement that the fraternity is “tremendously disappointed” with the result of Wednesday’s IFC meeting.
“It was, and still is, our belief that the right to choose our own members is a crucial part of self governance,” he wrote. “We will appeal this decision and believe that we have a strong case. The fact that the IFC came to this decision without a precipitating incident is extremely disheartening and calls into question the motives and values of the member chapters.”
LSA senior Nick Swider, the Delta Sigma Phi president, said IFC chapter presidents voted on the issue at last week’s meeting, but did not achieve a two-thirds majority to expel the fraternity. Swider emphasized he was not speaking on behalf of his fraternity.
“We’ve been alerted multiple times through the Office of Greek Life that we are not allowed to affiliate ourselves with these particular individuals, that they’re bad news, just stay away,” Swider said.
Swider said a DKE national adviser attended the meeting in support of the merger. He said members of the DKE executive board in attendance requested a lesser punishment, suggesting IFC keep a closer eye on them rather than expelling the chapter.
After DKE declined to abandon the merger before Wednesday’s meeting, the expulsion was brought to another vote, this time receiving the necessary majority.
“We have bylaws for a reason, the bylaws that we do not affiliate with a rogue organization and if we do, we have consequences through the Greek Activities Review Panel or there’s consequences that the presidents can directly take against us which is what we saw tonight.” Swider said.