skullduggery evident in rider αεπ closure

In what amounted to an ignominious coup d'etat, Rider University shuttered the local Alpha Epsilon Pi while the brothers were away on winter break. They were acting at the behest of the national, which had decided to close the chapter for a laundry list of reasons: “The national fraternity chose to close the Beta Psi chapter due to a long list of risk management violations; there had been over 100 write-ups by the university,” said an AEPi spokesman. “Employees of the university and national fraternity were disrespected by brothers of the chapter. Lastly, membership dues checks continually bounced.” Erstwhile president Sal Bruculleri disagrees: “We don’t think they bounced. Our money, as far as we know, was fine.” AEPi senior Jason Sullivan said, “we had no warning; we didn’t know. It just hit us like a ton of bricks.”

Even Director of Greek Life Ada Badgley expressed surprise at the suddenness of the closure. Indeed, the university conspired to hide the impending doom to the students until after they had finished finals and returned home for winter recess. Dean of Students Anthony Campbell admitted deliberately waiting until after the school term had expired to hold the meeting, though he claimed only to be trying to avoid distractions to students during exam period. Mr Bruculleri objects: “we are adults, we can multi-task. They basically said that if they [told us] then our minds would not be on our academics as much as they would be on our fraternity.” And Mr Sullivan was told by resident advisors that "another reason no one was told about the closing earlier was that it was feared the brothers would throw a party and damage the house."

Meanwhile, skullduggery was also alleged at the national level. Alpha Epsilon Pi was founded as a Jewish fraternity, though they presently maintain a policy of inclusiveness. Nonetheless, Mr Bruculleri explained that they were often excoriated for their demographics: “We were told by our fraternity adviser that we were supposed to have a quota of Jewish males, and we just never followed that quota. He advised us to get at least 10 Jewish brothers [each] semester,” adding that a previous fraternity advisor had criticized them for "not doing a good job promoting AEPi nationally," though only intimating at how they could better embody AEPi's mission. Chapter advisors had also reported feeling "disrespected," "harassed and intimidated" by brothers, and one quit after words with the then-chapter president.

Whatever the truth, the AEPi closure at least raises serious questions at both the university and national level. Even in the aftermath, authorities couldn't seem to comport themselves with any surfeit of civility. Brothers had to return from their winter recess to collect their belongings from their rooms, all under the watchful escort of security personnel. And Mr Bruculleri was singled out and stopped in a public shop by a campus cop and told "to cover up his AEPi jersey or take it off." Greek Life Director Badgley and Dean Campbell uttered mollifying platitudes about policy, and claim they haven't the faintest idea why the harassment took place.

The final word goes to Mr Sullivan: “They decided to wait to tell us until we’re all home and split up because if we’re banded together we can somehow think of something. They took it away from us while we were all home. We were put in a situation where we couldn’t win.”

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