A meeting was held Thursday night to discuss a recent event that happened within Greek Life. All current fraternity and sorority members were asked to meet at the Show Me Center at 10 p.m. to discuss what happened, but none of the members were informed about the topic of the meeting before it began.

Director of Greek Life DeAnte' Smith, dean of students Dr. Debbie Below and assistant dean of students Dr. Randy Carter spoke at the meeting.

Below informed the students that the reason the meeting was called was because a compromising photo of a Southeast Missouri State University sorority member has spread nationwide but did not offer any more details about the location of the photo or how it spread. She repeatedly said that students should delete the photo from their phones to reduce the circulation of the photo.

Dr. Bruce Skinner, assistant vice president for Student Success and director of Residence Life, attended the meeting but did not speak. He later said that Southeast faculty decided to address the issue after it was brought to their attention by students.

After consideration, faculty decided to publicly address the issue to the Greek community rather than leave it unaddressed.

"I think that we felt that it had reached a point where it was probably well known already, and that it was important to help the students try to begin to reduce the discussion about it," Below said.

Skinner said that by holding the meeting he wanted to make it known to the students that this instance was different than issues in the past and it should be addressed as such. Skinner added that the university felt it was important to have this meeting before fraternities and sororities had their first meetings with new members.

Smith, Carter and Below agreed that a unified Greek presence can stop the spreading of the photo, set a good example for incoming members and continue to keep the standards of Southeast Greek members at a higher level.

Below asked for Greek members to be conscious of what they post on the Internet and to not use any compromising photos to ever "threaten, intimidate, harass or coerce" another student. She said a goal for students should be to step up and intervene.

Carter also said all students can learn from the negative situation and that now is the time to move forward and put the incident in the past.