I’ve really been try­ing to hold back my opin­ion on the recent scan­dal in Alpha Phi Omega. First, because I’m an SAA, and when I’m chair­ing the meet­ing, I hon­estly try to be as impar­tial as pos­si­ble; sec­ond, because I feel every­one should get noth­ing but the facts and come up with their own solu­tion; and finally, although Will O and I are not the great­est of friends (or friends at all any­more, accord­ing to Face­book), I don’t have any­thing against him per­son­ally, and I didn’t want this to be about per­sonal feel­ings or vendet­tas or witch hunts. That said, after hear­ing yes­ter­day that Brother Mo W was get­ting shit from some mem­bers of the chap­ter and even from advi­sors, I really want to speak my mind.

Will O did wrong, and he should be pun­ished. Some say that oth­ers have done worse and got­ten away with it. I don’t know of any of these cases, but if some­one else in the chap­ter has com­mit­ted a felony, I would want to expel him as well.

Some say that the motion passed this time because we strong armed the chap­ter into sub­mis­sion by imply­ing that we would con­tin­u­ally bring this up until the motion went our way. Believe me, that was con­sid­ered and dis­cussed before the motion was brought up again. If the chap­ter did feel strongly that Will O should be allowed to remain a brother, then I explained the “Objec­tion to Con­sid­er­a­tion” motion in my e-​mail and any­one could have made it at the meet­ing, but no one chose to.

Some say that the motion passed this time because Brother Alice C wrote some num­bers on the board, and the total was higher than before. I hope that’s not the case. I hope that there’s no magic amount of money in brother’s heads, and a cor­rupt brother should only be expelled if he takes more than that amount. To me, it doesn’t mat­ter if he emp­tied out our cof­fers or if he took a sin­gle dol­lar. The fact is, we pay dues and raise funds to advance the chap­ter, the fra­ter­nity, and our valu­able pro­grams of ser­vice. We trust our Trea­sur­ers to safe­guard those funds. Will O vio­lated our trust by tak­ing money with­out our per­mis­sion and using it for his own per­sonal gain.

And while I’m on the sub­ject of trust­ing our Trea­sur­ers… some seem to think that Broth­ers Michelle F and Jes­sica C are respon­si­ble for this scan­dal. That is ridicu­lous! First, trans­fer of office (and the bank account) is a duty that falls equally to out­go­ing and incom­ing offi­cers. And sec­ond, there is no rea­son why they should have sus­pected that Will O was going to take funds for per­sonal gain. They trusted him, as we all did. He, and he alone, is respon­si­ble for his actions and his vio­la­tion of our trust.

Some say every­one who was involved in or even knew about what Will O was doing should be expelled. That is stu­pid. First, the Trea­sur­ers were not respon­si­ble, as I said before, and on top of that, they brought this mat­ter to the chapter’s atten­tion. If any­thing, we should praise them! Sec­ond, his house­mates may or may not have known what was going on. It would be impos­si­ble to prove who knew what, and it would be a fool­ish witch-​hunt to try to find out. Also, none of them would have been involved if not for his first action to pay rent with chap­ter funds.

Some say that the pun­ish­ment should fit the crime, or ask if there’s any other way to pun­ish him short of expelling him. Pay­ing back the money doesn’t make things right, because the real crime wasn’t tak­ing our money. It was break­ing the solemn trust we had put onto him to act respon­si­bly as our trea­surer, and he broke that trust. There is no way for us to now go break a trust with him. As for other pun­ish­ments, such as a tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion — we have no pro­vi­sion for such a pun­ish­ment. In fact, all Alpha Phi Omega events (other than our rit­u­als) are sup­posed to be open to the pub­lic, so ban­ning Will O could be con­sid­ered a vio­la­tion of that. But tech­ni­cal­i­ties aside, how does a two-​, four-​, six-​month, or “until he pays us back” sus­pen­sion help restore the trust that was bro­ken? Would you want to entrust him with any ExComm or chair posi­tion after this? Do we really want to cre­ate a caste sys­tem of mem­bers? (And yes, I know in a way we do already, but a “pledge” class is unavoid­able, and I don’t really agree with the “asso­ciate” class, either.)

Maybe if it was a one-​time thing when he was really des­per­ate, and he paid it back as soon as he could, I could for­give him. But it was sev­eral times span­ning sev­eral months, down to an ATM with­drawal of $20 because he was “just short on cash that day.” And if he could pay $1000 off his bal­ance within a week of his trial, why couldn’t he have just paid that back before the trial came up?

Maybe if he had shown some remorse, I could for­give him. But he said him­self that he does not value mem­ber­ship in our fra­ter­nity. When asked about his actions in e-​mail form by the inves­ti­gat­ing com­mit­tee and in front of the rest of ExComm, he tried to joke it off.

… and that is why I feel we had to expel Will O.

(Part 2 next.)