Interfraternity Council to launch new Risk Management Assistance Team

The Interfraternity Council (IFC) will be launching a new Risk Management Assistance Team (RMAT) this Saturday in order to help make all IFC-regulated fraternity events safer for members of the Tufts community.

According to IFC President Rob Jacobson, who is heading the initiative, members of the RMAT team will be volunteers from Greek organizations who will act as sober-monitors at fraternity events to assist both fraternities and partygoers if any need arises. Volunteers will go through basic training and will be easily identifiable by the bright green RMAT T-shirts they will wear at all IFC events, he said.

Jacobson, a senior, hopes RMAT volunteers will play a specific and critical role in making a difference in the Greek party culture at Tufts.

“They [will] serve a purpose of changing a culture that surrounds parties in general on campus, where people excessively drink, to a culture of being responsible adults and enjoying ourselves in a safe way," he said.

Sexual misconduct prevention specialist Alexandra Donovan said in a Nov. 10 Daily article that the party monitors will be able to intervene if necessary to prevent sexual assault at social events.

Jacobson said his goal is to have 100 fraternity members registered as RMAT volunteers by the end of the semester.

“There’s an awareness that we want to improve, and people are…willing to give up their Friday or Saturday night to go to someone else’s party and keep an eye on things,” he said.

According to senior Adam Kochman, president of the Pi Delta fraternity, Jacobson has already recruited people from several fraternities to join RMAT.

“I think the idea behind RMAT was if you get enough people, then everyone has to work about one or two weekends a semester, which would be nice,” Kochman said.

According to Jacobson, fraternity presidents and leaders, as well as IFC representatives and university staff, have all contributed to the RMAT project.

Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life Su McGlone explained that she has been advising Jacobson and his fellow members on the IFC board for the planning of the initiative over the course of the current semester.

“They’ve been working with me since the beginning of it, coming up with ideas,” McGlone said. “One of the things we’ve been talking about… for years with [the] IFC is that the thing that’s going to be the most successful when it comes to creating a safe environment in the parties is if the initiatives are coming from within and coming from the students.”

She added that IFC has been collaborating with university staff throughout the project’s development.

“They really came up with this great model,” McGlone said. “They run everything by me in terms of just asking for feedback and advice. I’ve been able to connect them with some other departments on campus to think of other areas that they can get resources for training and that sort of thing.”

Jacobson, who has been working for years to make Greek culture at Tufts safer, said that RMAT will be a supplement to existing risk management efforts in Greek life.

"The reason that this program…will be successful is that the climate, the attitude, the culture of Greek life right now is transforming into a very proactive approach," he said. “The trend is that fraternities are doing more and more to protect their own brothers and sisters, and they’re also doing more to help their guests. These risk management procedures are working...but I think they can be improved, and we can supplement them."

Jacobson said that RMAT will in no way be a policing program, but will instead be a way for the IFC to ensure safety and security at all regulated fraternity events.

“I think the culture and the spirit of the Greek organizations is to hold themselves at a standard that is in line with the Tufts community,” he said. “If I was sending in people that had the power to get them in trouble, then no one would trust the organization, no one would want to use it because it's all about creating a safer space; it's not about punishment.”

According to Jacobson, the RMAT initiative has been met with overwhelmingly positive support from Tufts fraternities and Greek organizations on campus, including from Kochman.

“I think it’s definitely something we’ve discussed…for a while, and it's important to make the Greek community function better and to make people who go into Greek parties feel safer," Kochman said. “I think it’s important just because it’s always nice to have extra bodies and extra people just there helping in terms of all risk management type situations."

Fraternity Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT) President Matthew Felsenfeld and Vice President Joseph Cirone also expressed support for the RMAT initiative.

“Risk management is something we take very seriously here at ZBT," Felsenfeld, a junior, said. "The fact that the entire Greek community is getting together to make this a priority for Tufts Greek life makes me really appreciate…the community as a whole.”

Felsenfeld explained that RMAT creates an inter-Greek collaboration and bond among fraternities and sororities.

“It’s not just going to be brothers from one house protecting their own house," he said. “It's going to be the entire Greek community coming together and volunteering to help out the other houses.”

Jacobson said that the IFC will gather as much data as possible on the effectiveness of the RMAT program and use the findings to refine the program at the end of the semester.

“Once it’s launched and up and running, I’ll be able to get feedback,” he said. “I’m very willing to make changes; I want this to be the best possible program it can be.”

Kochman expressed a similar understanding of how RMAT will adapt over time.

“I think once it starts taking place, we’ll have debriefing sessions about what went well, [and] what didn’t go so well,” he said.

Jacobson has also been holding a public relations campaign to raise awareness about RMAT. The campaign includes photos of Jacobson and fellow IFC members standing outside campus fraternity houses with bright-green RMAT T-shirts to emphasize the importance of the shirts for convenient, easily identifiable means of assistance at social events.

“The whole idea behind the PR campaign… is that this program can’t work if people don’t know about it,” Jacobson said. “If you [don't] know…to look for the person in green, the program can’t function properly. The key…is to get every person at Tufts to know that if you go to a fraternity house, this person’s there, there’s a sober monitor there.”

Jacobson said he is excited about what RMAT could bring to the future of Greek life at Tufts.

“The hope is that in years to come, this will be the culture at Tufts,” Jacobson said. “You’ll see the green shirts at every fraternity and sorority social event. My vision for it is that we’re going to lead the Tufts community as a whole, in taking accountability and responsibility and making Tufts a safer place."