Survey conducted on rush ban

The implementation of the ban on freshman affiliation with a fraternity or sorority was furthered last week, as an online survey soliciting suggestions on how to administer the new policy was made available to students on Thursday.

Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan sent an email to members of the Princeton community on Thursday afternoon with the link to an eight-question survey asking for feedback on various aspects of the rush ban.

Deignan is the chair of an 11-member committee charged with describing “as clearly as possible the kinds of actions and interactions that it believes should be prohibited under this policy by freshmen and by other students,” President Shirley Tilghman wrote in her charge to the committee.

Additionally, the committee is responsible for determining appropriate penalties for violators of the new policy as well as suggesting ways to communicate the terms of the policy with the student body, according to Tilghman’s charge. The questions on the survey mainly asked for input on these three aspects of the charge.

First, students were asked whether they live in a residential college, an upperclassman dormitory or off campus. The next question asked for students’ primary dining venue, and the following question asked whether students were in a fraternity or sorority.

The questions that followed touched on potential problems with the implementation of the ban, many of which had been pointed out at open forums by students concerned about ambiguity in terms of what would constitute a violation of the new regulations.

The survey addressed this in the first open-ended question, which asked students what activities they thought should be prohibited under the ban. The next gave students another chance to avoid vagueness in the policy’s wording and scope by asking them to describe activities the ban should not prohibit.

In open forums and in comments in The Daily Princetonian, Greek-affiliated students have said that, if the terms of the policy are not sufficiently clear, members of their organizations might have to cut off most forms of social contact with freshmen. Many were concerned about the possible lack of specificity about where the University would draw the line and whether actions such as having a meal with freshmen or inviting them to parties could be considered a “rush activity.”

One of the committee’s principal purposes is to help ensure that the policy is as specific as possible, and according to Deignan’s email to students, the survey will help them “gather input from all members of the Princeton University community” to make the strongest recommendations.

The final three questions asked for students’ opinions on appropriate penalties for violations, how the University should best communicate the terms of the new policy to students and for any additional input survey takers had.

Last year, the report the Working Group on Campus Social and Residential Life suggested that a suspension would be an appropriate penalty.