Every semester, an academic report is put out by the Office of Greek Affairs summarizing the average GPAs of the different chapters so long as the chapters’ membership is more than five members.

This average GPA is calculated using a mean calculation. This statistic is strongly influenced by outliers, like high GPA, or more likely, a very low one given the way GPA is most likely skewed toward the 4.0 bound. Anyone who has taken Statistics 101 should be able to tell you this fact.

A large chapter with more members is less likely to be affected by a single brother, sister or sibling with an appalling GPA — an occurrence that’s all too common and beyond the control of any one scholarship or academic chair.

I recommend Greek Affairs provide a median statistic in addition to the mean to provide a more holistic statistical picture to students and their parents interested in joining a sorority or fraternity. While chapters should be responsible for their members’ grades, academic privacy laws prevent chapter executives from fully understanding the scholastic situations of their members’ or cutting through academic deceitfulness.

These outliers significantly impact the GPAs of smaller chapters and I feel for them as a member of a chapter with less than 50 members. While my own chapter has recently succeeded academically, I fear other chapters’ recruitment efforts, especially those smaller ones in the Multicultural Greek Council and National Pan-Hellenic Council, may be dashed, all because of a single student impacting the hard-fought collective GPA.

The addition of a median GPA statistic would make an observable world of difference and benefit both chapters and potential new members alike.