School Refuses to Recognize Jewish Fraternity

Last spring semester, six University of Tampa students decided to form a chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi), an international Jewish fraternity with 155 chapters and colonies.

However, after a communication breakdown between the AEPi national board and the UT administration, and school officials’ subsequent decision to not allow the chapter to be recognized on campus, the student founders are still trying to figure out exactly what went wrong.

“We are just a Jewish fraternity, just a common group of brothers and we are being told that we can’t associate ourselves with the University of Tampa,” said Adam DiVeroli, the AEPi Brother at Large.

In November 2010, two UT students attended the Jewish Federation Conference in New Orleans. The students approached two members of the national board of AEPi to share their interest in launching a university chapter.

In January 2011, two recruiters from the national board came to UT to help with the recruiting and colonization process.

After meetings with the national board members, the AEPi recruits were narrowed down to 12 students who would serve as the chapter’s founding fathers. The founding fathers then began campus recruitment and held chapter meetings.

But according to Kim Northup, the university’s Director of Leadership Engagement, it wasn’t until the recruiters arrived that UT administrators became aware of AEPi’s wish to affiliate themselves with UT.

“We were not contacted by the students or the national office prior to them coming to campus to recruit, nor have they followed our expansion/extension process,” Northup wrote in an email.

Northup did not respond to a follow-up message sent Monday evening requesting specific details about the parts of the expansion/extension process AEPi failed to follow.

The expansion process explained in the Fraternity and Sorority Policies Handbook states, “National Organizations shall not necessarily be granted recognition as a student organization by virtue of having been allowed to participate in Recruitment/Intake.

Rather, the newly recruited members must meet the necessary requirements to form their own organization and be recognized by the guidelines set forth by the Office of Student Leadership and Engagement.”

An additional point in the handbook indicates that all national chapters must first be “invited onto campus to form a colony.”

In October 2011, Northup contacted other fraternity and sorority presidents explaining that AEPi was not affiliated with UT. The letter, dated October 19th, 2011, stated, “Men who have joined and/or are pledging this fraternity may have been led to believe Alpha Epsilon Pi is, or will become, recognized by The University of Tampa. This is not the case. That the national organization continues to recruit men on our campus despite our attempts to have them move through the proper channels, communicates to us that their values do not align with those of the Spartan Code and does not respect the values of the existing fraternity and sorority community.”

In the letter, Northup also confirmed there would be consequences for any members of Greek Life that affiliated with the men from AEPi. “All registered student organizations that choose to hold an informal and/or unregistered event with any unrecognized student organization will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct for disciplinary action and may be compromising the future recognition of their organization by The University of Tampa,” the letter stated.

Roughly three weeks later, Northup sent an additional letter to AEPi pledges that noted, “Please be aware that, should you currently be associated with this group as a ‘member’ or a ‘pledge’ representing a chapter that is not recognized by the University of Tampa, any further association on campus will result in your referral to the Office of Student Conduct.” The letter eventually caused one pledge to drop his probationary membership.

After the first letter’s distribution to other Greek Life organizations, Michael Roitman, AEPi’s Director of Chapter Services, reached out to Northup in an attempt to make amends and see if there was any hope of moving forward.

“They basically told me ‘We will never recognize AEPi, there’s nothing that you can do. There is no moving forward’ essentially,” Roitman said. “At that point I said, ‘Well, let me know if that changes.’ There’s really not much I can do after that if they don’t want to work with us.”

In regard to the issues between AEPi and UT administration, Roitman said, “I think that the tension is probably that they would’ve preferred that AEPi or nationals come to the school, ask if we can start an AEPi [chapter], then go and recruit students. In this case, students came to us, asked us to become AEPi, we helped them organize and then allowed them to go to the school and say ‘We’re AEPi, we have this organization that we connect with, how do we become recognized?’ The school didn’t like the process in which AEPi started, and it seems to me as if they’re standing firm behind that. I don’t want to speak for the school, but that’s kind of my assumption.”

The members of AEPi have since not affiliated themselves with UT, but rather are the AEPi of Tampa chapter, recruiting students from the Tampa area. The chapter has 15 members and they are about to hand out bids to potential future members. While some recruits come from different schools in the Tampa area, including Hillsborough Community College, a majority of its recruits are students at UT.

The group continues to struggle by not being affiliated on campus. “It’s very limited what you can do when you aren’t recognized as a student group,” said Ben Wengel, founding father and AEPi treasurer.

Despite this roadblock, AEPi still manages to hold events, including what they call “Pi Night”– a night to spend together as a brotherhood for members to see a movie, play laser tag or go mini-golfing. AEPi also has an off-campus house for brothers.

“We’ll continue to support the group and work with them so they can be the best fraternity they can be and work in the community, whether that’s the campus community or the Greek community or the Jewish community to hopefully get them their recognition, but I think in the end it’s everyone’s loss,” Roitman said. “No one wins from not allowing them to use the resources of the university. And when you do good things, to not have that reflect well upon the University of Tampa, it’s a loss for the University of Tampa. It’s hard for me to understand, besides operating kind of like on principle or sticking to their guns, what the benefit is of not recognizing AEPi.”

As for turning over a new leaf for the future, Roitman explains that his conversation with Northup more or less ended in a standstill. “She said to me ‘AEPi will never be recognized’,” said Roitman. Direct quote, she said ‘AEPi will never be recognized.’”

Still, though, he maintains hope that the two sides can work together. “Maybe one day someone new will be [on the national board] who she can work with better or somebody [new will be at UT] who decides, ‘Let’s let whatever was in the past be in the past and what can we do that’s best for the students,’” he said.

While the experience has been time-consuming , it has provided the brothers with a sense of unity and strength.

“We are recovering and have a very strong brotherhood,” said Scott Dressler, AEPi Vice President. “I’m happy we’ve all gone through this together, because it has definitely made us stronger.”

Chelsea Daubar can be reached at cdaubar@gmail.com.