However, according to Andrea Dorrow, Assistant Director for Student Activities and Greek Life Advisor, the adoption of the resolution is not a unique implementation at WPI. "BYOB has been a national policy for at least ten years. It is nothing new " Dorrow commented. Dan Herbert, the president of the IFC, stated that the resolution was already on the IFC rules "...but it hasn't been enforced very well. A lot of houses have been able to get by."
Dorrow also explained that the measure was taken due to the several social and legal issues that have arisen on other schools in the past years. According to James Petro, IFC Vice-President, "given the numerous social and legal issues that have arisen over the past couple of years, the liability assumed by any fraternity that provides alcohol to its guests has skyrocketed."
"We want to avoid any kind of action that might happen and could hold any house liable," Hebert said. The national policies for fraternities already state the BYOB rule because, "it is safer and protects fraternity from liability on accidents," Dorrow said.
At WPI however" there have been incidents in which people could have sued and they didn't." said Dorrow, " If somebody goes to a fraternity house and drinks too much and the house is serving them and he gets into an accident they can sue every member on the fraternity, the alumni corporation, the nationals, and everybody in the school"
But safety is the main issue, said Petro. "The Greek community at WPI cares about its relationship with the other members of this institute. It has chosen to make this mature decision regarding BYOB so that it can communicate to the rest of the WPI community its concern for its members, guests, and neighbors."
According to Herbert the whole purpose of the IFC is to act as an organizing board for all the Greek chapters at WPI to come together and act as one. However, the resolution has brought a lot of controversy among some other chapters.
The controversy comes from the fact that under the new resolution all guests have to provide their own alcoholic beverages if they intend to drink at parties. This will include female guests as well. Fraternity brothers are afraid that if women have to bring their own beer they won't come to the party at all. "I'll be realistic: It might happen," said Hebert, who quickly asked the question that if that is the type of people any fraternity wanted at their parties, "people who are there not to see their friends but for the free beer."
The ruling will start August 25th and to enforce the rule the IFC is looking into increasing the party patrol size to allow people to remain longer time at parties and implement a wristband code for guests at parties.
Among all the controversy, however, things could be a lot worse. In Colorado State all the fraternities were made dry, that is that no alcohol is to be served at parties. "That is exactly what we are trying to prevent here," said Hebert.