WSU students registering to join a fraternity can no longer be turned away because of their grades.

The Interfraternity Council (IFC), used to require all students registering for recruitment to have a 2.9 or a higher Grade Point Average (GPA), now only recommends it in order to “optimize opportunity” according to a tweet WSU IFC sent out last month.

“The purpose of fraternities and sororities are to better students and help them grow,” IFC Director of Recruitment Taylor Swanson said.

Swanson sees college as a clean slate and thinks a GPA from a previous school or from a time where keeping up with school was difficult for someone, should not interfere with their ability to register for a fraternity.

Academics are still an important focus, but IFC did not want a GPA to get in the way of the opportunities fraternity life can bring to an individual, Swanson said.

“It was becoming difficult to turn someone away because of their grades,” he said.
Swanson said IFC senate is not in session during the summer, but following Robert’s Rule of Order, the executive staff members on the IFC council brought up the change and the decision was unanimous.

This recruitment season, 106 people coming out of high school and 32 current WSU students would not have been able to register, he said.

Swanson also said it will be interesting to see where the GPA for IFC stands after this new implementation considering over the last few years, a lot of the numbers within IFC have been increasing including grades and volunteering.

This decision puts IFC on par with WSU’s Panhellenic Council, which also does not have a GPA requirement. This is also similar to WSU’s rival school, the University of Washington (UW), as their fraternities and sororities also do not have a university or departmental requirement according to Lindsay Wright, assistant director of Fraternity and Sorority Life at UW.

In addition to opening up the opportunity of fraternity life to people, Swanson also thinks it could help the three fraternity chapters at WSU that do not have a house to boost their membership.

“In order to be in a frat, you don’t have to have a physical chapter house,” he said.
Despite the change, Swanson wants people to know that chapters have their own set requirements as well.

“The whole purpose is to give people the opportunity,” Swanson said.