:eek: Holy God! That's worse than any old school Membership meeting I ever sat through. I'd DIE.

Count us in with the chapters who met weekly. I think that most of our chapters do that. The Fraternity recommends weekly meetings, although the requirement is at least two meetings per month.

When you meet that often, an hour should normally be plenty of time.

Met weekly unless it was dead week (all reports emailed to members) or finals week.

We always tried to keep it under an hour. I remember when I was a new member the President always asked the people giving reports to keep it under two minutes. Few actually could do this, but it as a consistant effort.

We meet weekly. The reason it takes so long is because we have to get through reports from 10 elected offices and 10 chair positions, plus we have "sharing items" (stuffed animals, CD, etc that get passed around). This has also been a really busy year for us, so they've been longer this year than usual.

But really, does every one of those people have a critical update every week?

Our chapters used to run 2+ hours. But after viewing how larger chapters do meetings in under that time, we've adjusted to be less than 1.5 hours. It's still hard, considering our reports can get quite extensive.

It's funny, but when I was an UG, 3 hour meetings were the norm.I never would have imagined only an hour.

We started to limit open forum to 5 minutes max, but then brothers just kept motioning to extend it.

My collegiate chapter meetings typically last 1 hour for informal meetings, and 1.5 hours for formal meetings. My fiance's, on the other hand, are never shorter than 2 hours. I feel for him...

Make sure you are using Roberts' Rules of Order.

Also, don't get hung up on OMG WE WENT OVER THE AVERAGE TIME. There are going to be meetings where there are things that need discussed more than other weeks, and no you can't have it on paper only, and no you can't do it in committee. But keeping the meetings flowing as a standard practice will result in a lot less bitching and a lot less "screw it, who gives a rat's ass, let's go home" when there IS something that truly needs discussion.

What is this paper meeting that people mentioned?

I'd have to say a major problem we have is that most of us don't know Roberts' Rules of Order. My pledgemaster wanted to teach it to us, but he couldn't fit it within the program. I think it is something that should be taught.

If they have nothing, they just say, "No report", and we move on. The past presidents have been really good about making sure that people don't waste the rest of the sisterhood's time, so reports, unless there's something important/serious going on, don't take longer than 10 minutes, and that upper limit is usually used by the 2 VP's or the president.

Most of the time is taken up with people asking questions so that everything is completely clear.

We also have a weekly meeting for the elected officers to take care of some things so that they don't need to be completely rehashed in chapter.

Really, if there isn't something that needs to be DISCUSSED, it should be bypassed, particularly if your group tends to go long. Any straight forward announcements can be done in paper or electronic form, preferably BEFORE the meeting in case it turns out the announcement requires discussion or rebuttal. Our meetings were long, IMO, but nothing like some meetings I've been part of as an adult. Thankfully my collegiate chapter wasn't full of middle aged women who need a hobby (re: a group I belonged to in Dubai) so it was in everyone's interest to get through the business and get on with the fun. And I don't think programming should be considered part of chapter, partly because your speaker would likely not be participating in any closing ceremonies of your chapter and partly because, as stated above, if some girls need to leave, at least they are fully committed to chapter. Even if the programming is a rockin good time, it will come off better if chapter took 1 hour, even if the girls were together for 4 hours that night.

Exec is another can of worms, and if you can keep that to an hour I think you've mastered something MANY organizations haven't.