Informed involvement decisions: Student groups without status

Hello badger parents and guardians!

A message from the dean of student Christina Olstad and associate vice chancellor for student affairs Mark Guthier went out to students in early September, offering ways to get badgers involved on campus and informing them of terminated organizations not affiliated with the university. This is a great opportunity to talk to your student about decisions around involvement opportunities on campus. It’s an opportunity to check-in and talk through positive ways to get involved. University-affiliated organizations and resources on how to get involved can be found at cfli.wisc.edu.

Please see below. Thanks for your continued help in supporting our students.

Dear Badger Students and Families,

It is an exciting time as you prepare to start your first semester at UW-Madison. In the years ahead there will be many opportunities: academic, research, public service, internships, recreation, and of course, social.

There are many ways for you to experience the rich social life at UW-Madison. Departments and programs within Student Affairs, University Housing, the Wisconsin Union, Recreation and Wellbeing, and other campus partners offer many opportunities for students to gather together, socialize, and hopefully establish lifelong friendships.

One way many students engage in social interactions is by joining one or more of the 1,000 plus registered student organizations (RSO). Membership in an RSO requires the organization and its student members to follow policies as established by the Committee on Student Organizations (CSO). When RSOs violate policies, the CSO has the responsibility to issue appropriate sanctions.

In rare circumstances, the CSO decides to terminate an RSO. This means that the RSO is no longer officially affiliated with the university and may not partake in the benefits afforded to RSOs.
In certain cases, students choose to continue to operate the group (sometimes with the support of their national office). We believe it is important to inform you and your parents that these organizations have no affiliation with the university.

While even more infrequent, student groups may also choose to disassociate with the institution leaving those groups unregulated by institutional policies.

Currently, we have five organizations that have been terminated by the CSO due to repeated and/or egregious violations of alcohol and /or hazing policies. We have one organization that has disassociated with the University. These organizations may be continuing to operate with no affiliation with the university. Given this information, the university does not recommend joining these groups. If these groups have incidents that come to the university’s attention, individual students may be held accountable through our non-academic misconduct process for any violations of university policies or crimes.

These groups are:
• Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity
• Chi Phi Fraternity
• Kappa Sigma Fraternity
• Sigma Alpha Mu Fraternity
• Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity
• Theta Chi Fraternity (Disassociated)

We hope this information is helpful as you begin to craft your academic and social experience at UW-Madison. We encourage you to access up-to-date information on organizations that are terminated, suspended, on probation with restriction or have dis-associated. If you have any questions, please contact me at dean@studentlife.wisc.edu or 608-263-5700.

Sincerely,

Christina Olstad
Dean of Students
She/Her/Hers

Mark C. Guthier
Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs
He/Him/His