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Setting Chapter Standards: Respect as Brotherhood

For Chapter Leader / Exec Board

Your chapter's culture is shaped by what you tolerate. This playbook helps chapter leaders establish explicit standards around respect, consent, and bystander intervention as core values of brotherhood — not external rules imposed on the chapter, but commitments the chapter makes to itself. The goal is to move from implicit expectations to explicit agreements that every member understands and can enforce.

Steps

  1. Convene the executive board and chapter advisor for a standards review session.
  2. Identify the 3-5 behaviors that are currently 'understood' but never stated (e.g., no disrespectful talk about women, intervene at parties, no hazing).
  3. Draft a written standards document that names these explicitly and ties them to your fraternity's founding values.
  4. Present to the full chapter at a mandatory meeting — explain WHY each standard exists, not just what it is.
  5. Vote to adopt the standards as chapter bylaws or a written code.
  6. Assign a standards board or risk manager to enforce them consistently throughout the year.
  7. Review and recommit to standards at the start of each semester.