Student Government loves backstabbing Greek Life

Fraudulent.

That’s the word Student Government chose for a funding request for a charity event benefiting Camp Cole. Was it actually fraudulent? That depends on how much you trust an organization that approved the funding and then changed its mind.

Alpha Phi Omega, a co-ed service fraternity, submitted the funding request. The Interfraternity Council organized and ran Greek Jam, a charity basketball tournament in Five Points benefiting Camp Cole, which gives kids with disabilities, illnesses and life challenges time to be kids rather than patients. APO’s only involvement was putting its name on the funding request. That’s what Student Government called fraudulent.

Student Government was asked to fund the event. It approved it, let the organizers move forward on that promise and then, by all appearances, turned around and branded the request fraudulent. APO was suspended from accessing funding for the very event Student Government approved.

The finance committee approved Greek Jam with written support from Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann already on file. By any reasonable standard, the event had proven its credibility before it ever even began.

That approval came just 22 days before the event. All Greek Jam needed was help covering the core costs of a charity tournament for Camp Cole.

For a moment, it looked like Student Government was going to take the free PR Greek life handed them. Instead, it greenlit the reimbursement, let Greek Jam happen and then pulled the funding. If it was an honest mistake, they had 22 days to catch it. They didn’t. They waited until the event was over and the bill was due, likely leaving the organizers to cover costs they were told would be reimbursed.

Just six days after the event, Student Government flipped. By labeling the Greek Jam funding request as fraudulent and suspending all funding, it cast the event itself under suspicion. What had been approved without objection was suddenly treated as illegitimate. If the first vote was genuine support, the reversal sure didn’t look like it.

Mistake or not, organizers who trusted an official approval got stuck with the bill. The organizers trusted Student Government’s word. By all appearances, that word meant nothing.

But this doesn’t appear to be isolated to funding. It looks like a pattern: friendly until it’s time to enforce power. Greek life represents a massive share of this campus — over 10,000 students. That’s thousands of students who vote, volunteer and pour money into charity events on campus.

If Student Government would undermine a charity event for Camp Cole, what would it do to a campaign that actually threatened its power? Greek life found out in 2025.

In 2025, Student Government repaid that goodwill with what appeared to be a betrayal of a Greek candidate in its elections. Candidates from the Greek community ran against Student Government’s seemingly handpicked Courtney Tkacs and Jordan Richardson. Instead of competing on ideas, the campaign seemed less interested in winning than in destroying the candidate personally.

Tkacs herself is a member of Alpha Delta Pi — a Greek organization. She benefited from the same community she helped undermine. The moment a Greek candidate threatened her ticket, those ties apparently stopped mattering.

The Tkacs-Richardson campaign’s communications director, Morgan Poirier, posted a TikTok that skipped policy entirely and accused the opposing candidate of doing “the same thing that almost killed me to another girl.” No evidence, no process, no chance to respond — just a claim that, intentionally or not, was built to spread before anyone could verify it. The damage would land before any defense could be mounted.

The Greek candidate tried to report fraud through official channels. But by their account, the very bodies meant to police the election discouraged and blocked them.

The Tkacs-Richardson campaign wasn’t just playing defense. It filed formal accusations that the Greek candidate’s team had unfairly reached out to sororities before the official campaign period. The Constitutional Council reviewed the evidence and dismissed the complaints entirely.

Think about that. The side found guilty of fraud accused the other side of cheating. The council dismissed every claim.

The Constitutional Council’s ruling confirmed the damage. It found sufficient evidence of election fraud. It acknowledged that the TikTok had created a “climate of uncertainty and tainted the voting process,” causing lasting harm throughout the voting period. By its own assessment, the process was compromised.

The remedy? A 24-hour social media ban. Tkacs became president. The council found fraud, acknowledged a tainted process and handed down nothing more than a slap on the wrist. It’s hard to read that as accountability.

Four justices signed that opinion. They found fraud under one part of the code but not another — just enough to say the process was tainted, not enough to actually change the result.

Student Government wants you to believe its codes are sacred. From where I’m standing, they are not. The codes appear to exist to be applied when convenient and ignored when costly, and when ignoring them is not an option, they get twisted until they say whatever Student Government needs them to say.

Maybe none of this was personal. But when the same institution approves funding and then yanks it, clears a candidate and then lets fraud go unpunished — both times with Greek organizations on the losing end — that’s a pattern. And the pattern speaks louder than the intent. The problem is not one vote, one event or one ruling. It’s a system where who you are matters more than what’s fair whenever the stakes rise.

Maybe no one in Student Government sat down and said “let’s screw Greek life.” They didn’t have to. Greek Jam was fine when it made Student Government look generous. The Greek candidate was fine when he was just another name on the ballot. The moment either succeeded independently — or threatened to — Student Government moved to destroy them. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just how the system works.

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