Ginna Allen, News Editor
With the start of the 2025-2026 school year, various changes to the Recognized Student Organization policy went into effect. The Dean of Students Office notified the student body of these new changes with an email in late August. According to the Official EQB guide sent in this email, the changes include:
Event Registration: All events must be registered on Engage by specific deadlines. Substance-free events must be submitted at least one business day in advance. Events with alcohol must be registered by Tuesday of the week they are scheduled. Special events must be registered at least ten days prior. The Police Department is provided with a list of weekend events with alcohol that were registered the week prior.
Event Monitor: Minimum of two event monitors per event, must have at least one event monitor per 50 guests for events over 100. If there is a co-hosted event, it is a mutual responsibility to provide an equal number of monitors for each organization. Originally, the policy required the presence of one monitor per 100 guests.
Identification Check: Attendees who are 21 years of age and older: Students bringing or consuming alcohol must carry a student ID at all times. Guests of Sewanee students must present a valid picture ID with their birth date listed. Sewanee Police Officers may request to see student and guest IDs at any time. Originally, event monitors were required to check for government issued IDs at the entrance of an event.
Timing for Events with Alcohol: Saturday 10 am – 1 am Sunday (RSOs may elect to host a daytime and nighttime event. Each event must be limited to a maximum of 4 hours).
The process of installing these changes began with a feedback form released to the student body at the end of last year. With this data, the Student Involvement Office consulted a select group of student leaders from various organizations who were directly involved in conversations regarding these policies. These groups included the Student Government Association, The Order of the Gown, the Sorority Council, and the Fraternity council.
“I was very grateful to have been included in the group of student leaders that were consulted about the changes in the policy. I shared it with the rest of the Order of the Gown Council, and we were all in agreement that the changes were very positive,” said President of the Order of the Gown Lily Mobley (C ’26). To her, these rules stand as a “ very effective balance between holding students accountable and allowing events to occur more steadily.” As the year continues, Mobley hopes these changes will be “received with gratitude from the student body.”
Carter Brown, Assistant Director of Student Involvement, worked closely with these student leaders. As he says, these changes are “for the students, so [they] should be by the students. We really were intentional in that.”
Although many reactions have been positive, some students have expressed concerns that these changes will increase police scrutiny and monitoring. Brown addressed these concerns about police involvement: “[The police] won’t be coming in any more or any less than they already do…the police spot check occasionally to make sure we’re following the law.”
Brown also spoke to the extensive pressure on event monitors that led to reworking these policies. Greek groups, various student groups, non-Greek groups, Sorority and Fraternity presidents, and student monitors themselves communicated their needs for change in event monitoring. Thus, Brown hopes these revisions will “maintain a safe environment where everyone can follow the law, but take a little bit of the pressure off students actually managing the events.”
After consulting with students, these changes were brought to the Policy Review Committee composed of a variety of staff and administrators across campus. Here, the policies were finalized and compared to similar regulations at other colleges, such as Washington and Lee University.
As a whole, the steps taken throughout these revisions were posed to find a balance between administrative and student perspectives. According to Brown, “we really want to try to make sure everyone on campus has a voice and can participate…and to ensure that we are trying to get every group and every student to feel like they can participate in policy changes.”