Of the four points made in the resolution, the fourth was most applicable to the fraternity system. This recommendation stated that while the resolution dealt specifically with sex-based discrimination, the Trustees of the College specified other grounds on which discrimination may not be allowed.
Explaining that it would be "a monumental exercise in bureaucratic futility" to set up similar guidelines for all of those conditions, the Trustees advocated that the administration "consider approaches to eliminating the fraternity system at Amherst and the selective membership practices on which that system is based."
President of the College Julian Gibbs remarked in response to the recommendations, "It is not my intention at the present time to eliminate fraternities. However, I would remind the community that in my inaugural address I specified two conditions under which we would welcome the retention of the fraternity system at Amherst."
According to The Amherst Student, Gibbs had referred in his inauguration speech to the "barbaric procedures" of rush and the "de facto discrimination against women" as problems with fraternities. Gibbs had proposed a computerized rush system to reduce the personal degradation often experienced by participants. The second condition was already being addressed by the adoption of a Trustee resolution banning sex-based discrimination in residential housing.
"I prefer it being done once and for all," said TD member Bill Cook '82, a member of the College Council. "I cannot see the College Council and different students fighting over selectivity for the next three years." He added that it would be optimal to act immediately, before the new Assistant to the Dean of Housing was appointed, in order to save the new assistant from having to undergo a major policy change soon after assuming the job.