IFC Elects Leaders; No Rush Chair Found Yet
On Wednesday, Alberto Mena ’09 and Reid C. Van Lehn ’09 were elected president and vice president of the Interfraternity Council, respectively. Mena said that one of his primary goals is to improve IFC transparency and communication.
Mena and Van Lehn will be joined by four other newly-elected executive board members: Jacob A. Levinson ’09 as Judicial Committee chair, David J. Hutchings ’10 as risk manager, D. Ballin Smith ’10 as program development chair, and Daniel Chen ’11 as executive assistant. Chen ran unopposed for his position.
The position of recruitment chair is currently still open. According to outgoing IFC President Daniel S. Eads ’08, the people nominated for the position ultimately decided not to run for election. Mena said new nominees would be named at the next IFC meeting. The exact date for the election has not yet been decided, Eads said.
Mena’s primary goals for his term include “leading all of the fraternities and work on creating more transparency within our system, both to fraternity members and the rest of the MIT community,” he said. Mena said he also wants to “inform the MIT community about what the fraternities do both on and off campus, since we want to make people realize we’re doing a lot of things that the MIT community appreciates.”
Mena said that, to achieve these goals, “keeping open lines of communication is the first step. … I want to make sure that everyone is on the same page.”
He said he also wants to examine the possibility of creating task forces to handle IFC relations with the Cambridge Licensing Commission and Cambridge Police, as well as the Boston Licensing Commission and Boston Police.
Incoming vice president Van Lehn, whose job is to work with the president and focus on managing internal relations between the IFC member chapters, said his primary goal is to improve communications between fraternities. “Right now, I think we’re not communicating very well, and there is a lot that the fraternities could learn from each other with improved communication,” Van Lehn said.
Van Lehn explained the rationale behind his goal: “Each chapter is working towards effective house management and, since we are not competing with one another, we might as well share our knowledge.” He would like to use the IFC Delegates Council, over which he presides, as a vehicle for this communication.
Like Mena, newly-elected risk manager Hutchings said he would like to more closely examine IFC rules and policies over the next year. “The IFC is an organization with many constituents and my job is to work with them to produce the safest and most effective policies for everything the IFC does,” Hutchings said in an e-mail.
Hutching’s goal for his term is “to make sure that all the fraternities are aware of the resources and support that MIT provides” and also “to make sure everyone has a safe and fun time.”
Eads expressed satisfaction with the progress the IFC made during the past year, noting in particular a slight increase in the number of people joining fraternities and high levels of participation in fraternity events. “We did some excellent work improving our relations with the MIT administration and the MIT Police, as well as the Boston and Cambridge city officials,” Eads said.
Eads said he would like to see the new board expand on recent initiatives to improve communication with the MIT faculty.
“I’m really excited about the new board,” he said. “They have already proven that they have extreme commitment to the IFC based on work they have already done in the past year.”
The elected board will be installed at the next IFC executive meeting on Dec. 12.