penn state ifc institutes bribes rewards for participation

In the continuing quest to get frats to play nice with one another and the rest of the college community, Pennsylvania State University has taken a giant step for fratkind: they're bribing them.

Not really; the Penn State Interfraternity Council recently enacted a new plan to assign points to chapters who provide community service, fundraising for charities, or other university programming. Indeed, fraternities also get points for members who attend other groups' programming, so this should encourage greater inter-greek cooperation and circulation as well. And after several smaller groups raised the specter of unfairness that larger chapters would muscle out the guppies by sheer dint of membership, the Great Compromise was reached: point assignments were tweaked to reflect a per capita assessment of chapter size. Thus a smaller chapter might actually enjoy some advantage over their larger confreres, since it is probably easier to get fifteen men out of twenty to an event than seventy-five out of a hundred.

The new plan reflects a similar arrangement already in place by the Panhellenic Council, a program fancifully dubbed "Pimp My Suite." We're not kidding. The fraternity version was passed by the IFC "by an overwhelming majority." As for the pecuniary rewards (presumably furthest from the minds of the civic-minded voters), the prizes haven't yet been finalized. IFC VP Programming Cory Will adverted, however, to the sort of items under discussion: "a big-screen TV or a sound system" were probable. Small wonder the plan proved so popular.

Penn State Daily Collegian