The Interfraternal Council brought lawyer and Binghamton mayoral candidate Douglas Walter Drazen to campus Tuesday to discuss legal rights in terms of off-campus housing and Greek life.
The event started in Old University Union at 7:15 p.m. and lasted until 8:45 p.m. According to Paul Liggieri, an IFC representative and Philanthropy Chairman from Theta Delta Chi fraternity, 50 to 60 people attended the event, and most were fraternity members.
The IFC brought Drazen to campus because council members kept questioning their legal rights and wanted to know how to deal with landlords, Liggieri said.
“I thought it was best to bring in a professional legal voice to come and shed light on the questions that some of the IFC members were having,” Liggieri said.
According to Liggieri, most fraternities rent their houses and were interested in knowing legal information regarding having parties, and how to keep it legitimate and safe.
Liggieri said that the IFC wanted to know their rights not only as members of Greek life, but as tenants as well.
The event was set up like a forum. Drazen began the lecture by explaining what a fraternity’s rights are and went through a detailed description of the process of eviction. This included information regarding the proper filing procedure a landlord must undergo in order to evict his tenants, and how tenants should always consult a lawyer if an eviction notice is received.
Throughout the event, about 20 people were able to ask questions, according to Liggieri.
Lee Kaplan, junior accounting major and president of Pi Lambda Phi, attended the event with a few members of his fraternity members because of a decade’s worth of issues his fraternity has had regarding their off-campus housing.
According to Kaplan, he wanted advice from a legal perspective so he would know his rights if another problem were to arise.
Liggieri echoed Kaplan’s concerns about Binghamton housing.
“The landlords — a lot of them — perform their business haphazardly and in a shady manner,” he said.
Kaplan and his fraternity members found Drazen’s advice extremely helpful.
“He was very down-to-earth and for the students’ rights. I don’t see much of that in Binghamton,” Kaplan said.
After the event, Drazen spoke with Liggieri about how he thought the event went.
According to Liggieri, Drazen said that he loves speaking at campus events because he grew up in Binghamton, and his wife is a student in the Decker School of Nursing.
He believes that students have the right to know what they are entitled to and what their rights are.
Drazen is also running for mayor of Binghamton on the independent ticket and told Liggieri that no matter what the verdict of the mayoral race is, he would still hold forums for the IFC whenever needed.
While this forum was not affiliated with Drazen’s mayoral race, his informative discussion interested some fraternity members in his campaign.
“I think it would be great to have someone like him in the mayor’s office to represent fraternities,” Kaplan said.