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A couple weeks ago, we talked about Greek life on campus and the habitually poor behavior of a few in regards to parties and scandals. President Barron mentioned he is pulled in many directions. He receives letters regularly from residents of The Highlands, the neighborhood part of “Frat Row,” asking him to “do something” about the Frats near their homes.

As I mentioned in my blog last week, many problems can appear easily solvable . However, Barron demonstrated how multifaceted the Greek problem really was. There was the option to shut down Greek life on campus altogether. But, this wouldn’t work because a large number of sponsors, alum, and board members are alumni of these fraternities. However, he also had people from those same groups who hated the bad PR Fraternities continued to bring to the university.

After about two hours in class, we all spoke about different solutions that could lead to a better and more well-behaved future. Barron mentioned he put together a committee with members of the community, alumni, students, and faculty. Ultimately, a report card turned out to be the best way to hold fraternities accountable without doing irreversible damage. I found the solution to be pretty fool-proof because it’s win-win. Pledges are able to see what fraternities really stand for and prioritize. Additionally, report cards will incentivize fraternities with poor gpa numbers and conduct marks to improve. No one wants to be affiliated with the “idiotic” or “delinquent” fraternity.

The past two weeks of class, I’ve been impressed and interested by President Barron’s input. He’s calm and approaches decisions rationally while keeping everyone in mind. He doesn’t seem to make rash decisions based off of the minority or majority but off intuition and advice from everyone that will be affected. I think that’s one of the best qualities a leader can have because it requires other great characteristics to precede it such as humility, pragmatism, open-mindedness, good decision making, impartiality, and morale. I look forward to knowing the inside of many issues at Penn State and how Barron has taken it upon himself to fix them in the best way he knows how.