Inter-Greek Council to get Barnard funds

Barnard’s Student Government Association voted by a two-thirds majority Monday night to approve the Inter-Greek Council for stage two recognition, meaning it will now receive Barnard funding.

The IGC is a governing board that heads the Interfraternity Council, the Panhellenic Council, and the Multicultural Greek Council, and the decision marks an upgrade from its current stage one recognition. Stage one allowed it to put up flyers and reserve space at Barnard, and was awarded last November when SGA voted to recognize Greek life.

Before the Monday vote, SGA members debated the IGC’s immediate need for additional funding.

Diana Rastegayeva, BC ’11 and vice president of communications for SGA, described the decision to move IGC to stage two as not a matter of whether the IGC would get funding, but of whether it would get funding right now.

“It isn’t about whether IGC will get money in the future, but whether Greek life has utilized their stage one recognition well since they were recognized,” said Rastegayeva.

Lauren Perrine, BC ’12 and Panhellenic Council president, emphasized that additional funds were needed because of their membership growth—10 percent of which was Barnard students. Perrine said that their hope is that with stage two recognition, the Panhellenic Council can also begin to add a new sorority—a process that would need to start this summer in order to have a chapter begin operations in fall 2012.

“The chapter size had become unmanageable and another chapter was desperately needed,” Perrine said.

Some SGA representatives, including Verna Patti, BC ’11, raised concerns last week about how the IGC had utilized their stage one privileges since receiving them in November. Patti said that the IGC hadn’t been meeting SGA halfway by continuing to use Barnard spaces throughout the semester.

“Right now they are standing outside the Columbia gates, but haven’t crossed the street yet,” Patti said.

Perrine and MGC President Jason Tejada, CC ’12, both highlighted the IGC events that have taken place on Barnard’s campus since recognition, like a scholarship lunch held by Delta Sigma Theta on April 23 in the Diana Center and Delta Gamma's Rent the Runway event, which took place in Lefrak Gym last November.

When asked about the lack of additional activity on Barnard’s campus by the IGC this semester, Perrine explained that the focus for spring semester was on recruitment.

“There isn’t a lot of time to plan other events outside of that. During the fall we will have a lot more time to plan other events,” Perrine said.

The reason most recruitment events took place on Columbia’s campus was because the large number of women who participated made it impossible to trek back and forth between spaces like the Diana and Wien Hall, Perrine added.

Alexandra Voss, BC ’11 and SGA representative to the Columbia College Student Council, said that the individual chapters were the ones to be held responsible for holding events on Barnard’s campus, not the IGC.

“I know that a lot of activities are not governing board-initiated, they are club-initiated. I think that asking IGC to program as a club doesn’t make sense,” she said, pointing to Alpha Chi Omega’s biweekly study sessions at the Diana Center, which used to be held in Butler Library.

Although the vote passed, the debate showed that the issues surrounding Greek organizations’ role at Barnard haven’t been fully resolved.

“We are starting the year and ending the year with the Greek life debate,” Lara Avasar, BC ’11 and outgoing SGA president, said.

amanda.evans@columbiaspectator.com