Student Rights: Interview with Nathan Parker

On Wednesday, May 3, the date of the student rights referendum and Greek voter rally, RPI TV's Mike Filippone had the chance to interview Nathan Parker, an RSE brother serving on the Student Senate.

The transcript is given below. Some of the text has been edited for clarity. The comments made in this interview do not necessarily reflect the views of RPI TV or its members.

FILIPPONE: For students who are apathetic and don't really read the Poly, or don't really know anything about it, could you kind of explain exactly what the administration wants to do?

PARKER: Sure. So, three initiatives. With recruitment, they want to push back Greek recruitment to the sixth week of the fall semester, then starting the new member process the first day of spring semester. There's a couple issues with this, there's a number of universities that have tried it. RPI's tried it in the past with really not as much success as I believe they hoped to have when they first tried it, which is why we're using the system we were now. And again, while a lot of students, alumni, will agree that there is need for change in the current process, this isn't it, primarily because it delays our ability to reach out to students. Students will start getting involved in other clubs, other organizations, and then forget Greek life, and the administration has said, and a lot of students have said, the Greek life has a lot of value. The leadership opportunities, the brotherhood, the academic and social support, it's really important to keep Greek life on this campus.

For house directors, they're proposing what's similar to an RA, except that it would be a grad student from another school who has no connection to the fraternity. And my big question is, where are they going to find twenty-seven 27-year-olds who want to come back and live in a fraternity house, being paid by the fraternity, but having to respond to the administration. In a lot of ways, we feel that it's a conflict of interest for the person who'd be holding that position.

With alcohol, they want to put the fraternities under the current on-campus alcohol policy, which is that anyone over the age of 21 can have a personal amount of alcohol in their room for personal consumption, but that alcohol is not allowed in any common areas. The question comes up, if I'm in my privately-owned fraternity house, and I'm over 21, why can't I do something legal, you know, such as drink a beer with dinner? And so a lot of student right issues come into play there. And student rights really is a big question here, in the terms of, this is a private university, and the university has the right to expel you, with no grounds at all. So if you decide to exercise your freedom of speech, and RPI doesn't like it, they could expel you. And you could not sue RPI for impeding your freedom of speech, because they didn't expel you for exercising your freedom of speech, they expelled you because they felt like they wanted to expel you. And so as a student of a private university, you really have no student rights, and no personal rights, except for those that the university decides that they want you to have. And we feel that that's an issue. We feel that, as students, we should have some rights, some, you know, inalienable rights that, you know, such as freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom to associate with groups that we want to associate with, you know, and other such rights that the university shouldn't be able to just walk in and issue edicts, and change things without having our input on those issues.

FILIPPONE: So what was the big deal with this whole calling, was it the actual initiatives [you were mad about], or was it the way that it came about?

PARKER: Well, I don't think you'll find anyone who says that they full-heartedly agree with the initiatives; it really is the process. I think the three areas that they are targeting, which are recruitment, house directors, and alcohol, are three important issues that need to be talked about, but it really is the process, and the fact that we did not have any input onto these three initiatives until after they had been handed out.

FILIPPONE: So what is this referendum about, and why was it called?

PARKER: The referendum was called for one primary reason. About two weeks ago, the Dean of Students Office decided that there was a need for change in student life, and they handed down three edicts, basically saying that they were going to single-handedly culture on this campus. And we said, why aren't you involving us? Where's the process, where's the conversation? After five years of discussion about the Relationship Statement, why are you just throwing these three things in our faces? And so the referendum really talked to that. The students really disagree with the process of how this was done, and we feel that it is in our rights to have some feedback and input into issues that are going to affect student life.

FILIPPONE: What do you hope to accomplish exactly with today's referendum?

PARKER: Today's referendum really is just a statement of support for those who are going in, trying to negotiate with these policies, saying that the students are behind those who are in the room. The students, as a whole, are saying that this process wasn't right, and we really do need to have say in what goes on with student life.

FILIPPONE: All right, and finally, if a student doesn't like what's been happening and wants to get involved, how can they go about doing that?

PARKER: There's a couple different ways. One, definitely go out and vote in today's referendum. Two, there's a website, SaveRPIGreeks.com, not Saver Pig Reeks as some people have tried to read it. There's a website with a lot of information on it. You can reach out to myself, Santosh Vaghela, who's the IFC president, the Grand Marshal, whoever that may be adjudicated to be, or Mark Anderson, who's the Alumni InterGreek Council's president. We're asking students currently not to reach directly to the Dean of Students Office, but to go through the students and alumni who've been elected to be our liaisons to Dean Wickiewicz and Dean Smith and Vice President Knowles, just so that we have one centered and solid front that the students and alumni are talking to the administration, and it's not thousands of individual students and alumni talking to the administration. It gives us a much more solid front to be able to negotiate with, and to be able to talk to the administration with.