A “paperwork” issue has thrown Loyola’s Greek organizations into turmoil — with some questioning what the future will hold.

Eight Greek organizations on Loyola’s campus are on temporary social probation due to their failure to meet the Standards of Excellence set up by the university, according to Patricia Murret, associate director of public affairs at Loyola.

While on probation, these organizations will no longer be able to hold alcohol-related events, formals or socials.

Despite the loss of these important events, Greek Life organizations will still be able to do other events like community service and philanthropic events.

The announcement was made to the Greek Life presidents during their meeting on the second Thursday of the month. However, McQueen stressed that this was only a temporary move.

“But even in the meeting, I told them that all the scores are not finalized because some of our members hold dual membership in a social organization and a professional organization” he said. “As I told them in that meeting, numbers aren’t finalized, and that’s why nothing has been put out from our office on it yet.”

The standards of excellence grade the organizations based on five different categories including academics, chapter management, membership development, community involvement and learning outcomes review. From there, the organizations can fall into different levels of recognition on a scale of “gold” being the best and “needs improvement” being the worst.

According to McQueen, these standards were set up to be used as an accessory for tracking the activities of these organizations.

“It’s a tool that I use and have used, and a lot of universities do use, to just kind of keep track of what everybody is doing on campus because this is a heightened state for fraternity and sorority life across the nation,” McQueen said. “So a lot of things between the #MeToo movement, It’s On Us, the Harvard situation, there are a lot of universities that are redeveloping and revamping how their Greek community will interact with the rest of the community, making it a more inclusive environment.”

Every university’s standards are different due to different circumstances, according to McQueen who said that Loyola’s standards focus on Jesuit values.

“We are a Catholic institution, so there are Jesuit programs that the chapter should attend and go to,” he said.

McQueen said that many organizations were put on temporary probation due to changes in the standards process.

“This is actually the first year that it counts so that’s why a lot of organizations of previous administrations kind of transferred either not correct information when reporting it or didn’t necessarily have the full support from executive members or chapter members to submit what was necessary from our office,” he said.

Most of the organizations involved have decided to appeal this decision. For the appealing process, the organizations meet with Director of Student Involvement Dale O’Neill. From there, they must come up with a plan for how to improve from there.

“So she will handle that appeal process and then, hopefully by the end of the month, everything will be finalized and up to date and official postings will be put out there for that,” McQueen said.

The university will be posting an official message at the end of the week discussing the situation.