Contact: John Michael VanHorn
STARKVILLE, Miss.—A Mississippi State senior from Madison is in Washington, D.C., this week to represent the university and its Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity chapter as a lobbyist with the 2017 Fraternal Government Relations Coalition.
Through Friday [April 28], Conner G. Whitten and other national participants are emphasizing to congressional leaders the importance and positive impact of fraternity and sorority organizations.
Whitten is a business administration major and President’s List Scholar.
FGRC is a collaborative effort among the National Panhellenic and North American Interfraternity conferences, along with the Fraternity/Sorority Political Action Committee. Its members advocate for federal policies that enable Greek-letter social organizations to continue developing the leadership, community engagement and academic skills needed to help today’s students become tomorrow’s leaders.
Formed in 2005, FGRC is the largest political action committee focused solely on higher education issues. Representing more than 100 North American fraternities and sororities, its membership includes 650,000 undergraduate students at 12,000 chapters on more than 800 campuses.
Whitten said a major focus of this year’s lobbying is the Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act that would allow chapters to use tax-deductible charitable contributions to construct, modify or improve their chapter houses.
Coalition members also are working to maintain the historic ability of fraternities and sororities to operate as single-sex organizations on campus, protect students’ right to freedom of association by ensuring they can join any campus organization they wish to join and to ensure that due process protections within the campus disciplinary system extend to organizations in the same way they apply to students.
For more about FGRC’s mission and purpose, visit www.fspac.org.
Information on MSU fraternity and sorority life is found at www.greeks.msstate.edu or by contacting the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life at 662-325-3917.