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Tri-Kap suspended for alcohol and hazing violations

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Tri-Kap suspended for alcohol and hazing violations

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by Jasmine Oh | 3/6/18 2:50am

The Organizational Adjudication Committee suspended Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity for three terms, beginning this past fall, after the fraternity admitted to multiple violations of the College's hazing and alcohol policy. A police investigation into the fraternity's conduct is ongoing according to Hanover Police lieutenant Scott Rathburn.

The suspension, which ends on June 21, will be followed by four terms of alcohol probation and then two terms of College probation, according to a Feb. 18 statement from College spokesperson Diana Lawrence. The alcohol probation will end on June 20, 2019 and the following College probation will end on Jan. 6, 2020.

The Hanover Police Department began an investigation into Tri-Kap's activities on Sept. 20., Rathburn said. The Hanover Fire Department initially reported Tri-Kap to Hanover Police after discovering "the interference of [a] fire alarm apparatus," he said.

Hanover deputy fire chief Michael Hinsley said he then advised Hanover Police to begin an investigation. Rathburn declined to comment on the current status of the investigation, as it is still ongoing.

Interfering or tampering with a fire alarm apparatus is a Class B felony offense, per New Hampshire statute 644:3-c. After the police investigation ends, the Grafton County Attorney's Office will determine if the charges are appropriate and decide whether to indict specific people or an organization, which would begin the felony process.

An individual found guilty of a Class B felony could face, apart from a fine, one to seven years in prison, and an organization could face a monetary fine.

According to director of Judicial Affairs Katharine Strong, Tri-Kap's policy violations took place sometime between the end of September and the beginning of October, when the College investigation began. Both Rathburn and Strong said there was no significant recent disciplinary history that played into the decision to suspend Tri-Kap.

Once the Office of Judicial Affairs concluded its investigation at the end of fall term, the OAC reviewed the report in its entirety and determined which allegations would go forward, Strong said. The OAC then notified Tri-Kap of the allegations against it, and the fraternity had a chance to respond to those concerns.

Following winter break, Tri-Kap and the OAC met at the start of January to begin the hearing process to determine whether Tri-Kap violated College policies, and if so, to determine sanctions. Both parties had the opportunity to review all the materials, and Tri-Kap responded to the allegations. Deliberations concluded by the end of January, Strong said.

The College's disciplinary procedures state that the suspension of a student organization requires the cessation of activities. Alcohol probation prevents student organizations from hosting or sponsoring events where alcohol is served. College probation may include prevention of participation in College-sponsored activities, such as intramural sports, among other restrictions.

Tri-Kap is not the only Greek organization that has been suspended by the College this academic term. Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity was suspended for one term this winter for violations of the College's alcohol policy while on College probation. Sig Ep will also face two terms of alcohol probation, which will conclude at the end of the summer 2018 term, according to Lawrence.

In the past, several organizations have been sanctioned for allegations of hazing. Tabard gender-inclusive fraternity was suspended for three terms in 2016 for hazing, alcohol and recruiting allegations. Last year, the women's swimming and diving team was placed on probation and banned from three fall 2017 meets after violating the College's hazing policy.

Tri-Kap extended 21 bids this fall and none this winter.

President of Tri-Kap Jonathan Schwartz '18, chairman and vice-chairman of the Tri-Kap Board of Directors, Gregory Smith '85 and Michael Brasher '10, respectively, did not respond to multiple requests for comment by press time. Interim director of Safety and Security Keysi Montás and director of the Office of Greek Life Brian Joyce declined to comment.

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Tri-Kap suspended for alcohol and hazing violations

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by Jasmine Oh | 3/6/18 2:50am The Organizational Adjudication Committee suspended Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity for three terms, beginning this past fall, after the fraternity admitted to multiple violations of the College's hazing and alcohol policy. A police investigation into the fraternity's conduct is ongoing according to Hanover Police lieutenant Scott Rathburn.

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Hanover, NH

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Fighting Poverty, Drugs and Even Violence, All on a Teacher’s Salary

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Fighting Poverty, Drugs and Even Violence, All on a Teacher’s Salary

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The statewide strike began nearly two weeks ago in protest of a plan to give teachers a 2 percent raise this July and 1 percent in each of the next two years, after years of stagnating pay and rising health insurance costs. The State Senate has since approved a 4 percent pay increase, but the teachers have been holding out for 5 percent, the amount the State House passed.

Teachers in the state earn an average of about $46,000, $13,000 less than the national average. In only three states do teachers earn less: Mississippi, South Dakota and Oklahoma. In the last week, 40,000 people have joined a Facebook group calling for a walkout of Oklahoma teachers.

But some West Virginia lawmakers have expressed concern about the cost of the raises. While the state's cost of living is in the middle of the pack, the state is poor: Its median household income of $43,385, according to Census Bureau estimates from 2016, placed it 49th in the nation, ahead of only Mississippi.

West Virginia has the nation's fourth-highest unemployment rate and an opioid overdose death rate that is more than three times the national average. All of this plays out in the classroom.

"I can't tell you how many students we have being raised by grandparents because of parents' drug addictions," said Jay O'Neal, a seventh-grade English teacher and a leader of the strike. While the immediate demand is for higher pay and more affordable health insurance, "it's just part of a broader problem teaching here, dealing with the effects of poverty."

At Mr. O'Neal's school, Stonewall Jackson Middle School in Charleston, teachers use their own money to stock a closet for students whose clothes are dirty or do not fit, or who come in wearing shorts when it is freezing outside. At faculty meetings each year, they draw some children's names off an "angel tree" and provide them with Christmas gifts, because otherwise they would not get any.

Recently, Mr. O'Neal said, teachers have noticed that some students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D., have been coming to school unmedicated and disrupting an entire class; the teachers suspect parents are selling their children's medications.

Since the mid-19th century, it has generally been the women who have been expected to do this kind of difficult, nurturing work. That gender divide played a big role in early teacher activism.

Today, about 75 percent of teachers in West Virginia and across the United States are female. When teachers first unionized in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century, 97 percent were women, and they were paid little more than maids.

Policymakers did not see that as a problem. Instead, they wanted to devote their extra funds to recruiting male teachers, who they thought would be tougher, and thus better able to control those massive, 60-student classes.

The women teachers got angry, launched their federation, and within several years had secured a raise. They shocked the nation's elite by marching, in petticoats, alongside Teamsters and other male unionists.

Margaret Haley, a founder of the Chicago Teachers Federation, was inspired by Susan B. Anthony and other suffragists, just as today, some West Virginia teachers have come to activism through the 2017 Women's March, the #MeToo movement or Black Lives Matter.

The politics of teacher strikes shift over time, but in every generation, their leaders have forged ties to broader social movements. Many of the union leaders who led the nation's most famous - or infamous - teacher strike, in New York City in 1968, were first active in the civil rights movement, including the 1963 March on Washington and Freedom Summer in 1964. Nevertheless, when black and Latino activists pushed for community and parent control of struggling schools, including the right to remove teachers, the union went on strike to protect teachers' tenure rights.

The seven-day teacher strike in Chicago in 2012 came a year after Occupy Wall Street, and rode a wave of dissatisfaction with elite influence in public education. Teachers won a raise and successfully pushed back against Mayor Rahm Emanuel's desire to evaluate teachers based on their students' test scores.

Today in West Virginia, policymakers have their own ideas about how to improve schools. The State Department of Education has revamped vocational education, while the Republican-controlled Legislature has debated weakening teachers' seniority protections and providing parents with tax incentives to pay for private school tuition.

But striking teachers are asking that first, the state Legislature consider the basics: the salaries and benefits that they say will keep them from fleeing the state. Terry Moe, a Stanford political scientist and often a critic of teachers unions, said that West Virginia teachers were not asking for anything radical.

"A 5 percent raise is not much," he said. "There's a good case to be made that West Virginia ought to put more priority on education, and they're not. Maybe this is a fight that needs to be had."

President Trump has suggested one way teachers could earn more - by agreeing to become armed, in order to protect students from school shootings, like the one that killed 17 people in Parkland, Fla., last month.

Ms. Hilliard's school, Spring Mills High School, has had drills and lockdowns to prepare faculty and students for threats such as a potential school gunman. Recently the school ran a "code red" drill that she thought was real, because teachers were not warned in advance. "It was nothing short of terrifying," she said.

"Our job descriptions are expanding," said Ms. Hilliard, who opposes the idea of arming teachers, which West Virginia currently does not allow.

"It becomes, 'Lay down your life if you have to.'"

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Fighting Poverty, Drugs and Even Violence, All on a Teacher's Salary

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The statewide strike began nearly two weeks ago in protest of a plan to give teachers a 2 percent raise this July and 1 percent in each of the next two years, after years of stagnating pay and rising health insurance costs.