Fraternities won't accept your sorority rules like this. We don't care about being panhellenic.

-Rudey

I've seen national groups on my campus just boot/grant early alum status to all their current members, initiate the pledge class and then start from scratch. Kappa Sigma at Central Oklahoma had that issue a frew years back, and now they're easily one of the top groups on campus.

As Rudy said, with fraternities, you can't come up with a rule like that. For one thing, how would you really know that they cleaned up their acts?

Wouldn't this be violating freedom of association laws unless they derecognize or close the chapters? I know the 60's have long passed but I wouldn't want to mess w/ that kind of stuff at Michigan :).

I doubt that any national HQ would support something like this, even if it is presented as "self policing" and a positive thing for the Greek community. Unless someone drives trucks of $$$ up to their door to make up for what they'll lose in new member fees - which at a large school like that isn't chicken feed.

While We as Greeks and I/Our Organizations Great Belefs are in place, They do not seem to be carried out.:(

There always seem to be a small minoritity of people who do not beleive in this Dicotomy.:mad:

Well, then it makes sense to either deal with the few or those that do not follow the dictums of a National HQ.

Do or die, is that the case? Yes it is!:(

What part do they not understand?:mad:

What Part Do We Not Understand?:rolleyes:

Good point, but I also see the flip side of the money issue - sooner or later, unfortunately this will probably happen in our lifetime - a national organization will be sued to such a degree that the entire organization folds. It almost happened to ATO just a couple of years ago. Several other national organizations are involved right now in multi-million dollar lawsuits. Either we make the changes internally, or a court may be the external influence to a "death sentence" on a national organization.

The moratorium idea isn't something resembling a panhellenic notion. If you have such absolutely rampant hazing on a campus that they cannot get ahold of it, a university could certainly request this sort of thing. Yes, of course national orgs would say, oh, but our $$, BUT, the point would be would they rather lose one term worth of new member fees or an entire chapter if a university decides to just bag a greek system all together? We can all say we know that universities have chucked greek life out more than once.

Just food for thought...not really anything more!

No it is a panhellenic notion. I don't understand total, quotas, and why you would pay thousands of dollars to create slide shows and skits. I don't understand why you would want to carpet bomb an entire system to try and fix it either. But then again I'm not in a sorority and don't care if you all want to do that to each other; it's when you propose to carry it onto the whole system including fraternities that I care.

The fact is that not everybody is hazing. The fact is that those that are hazing or have risk problems probably have it to different degrees and you can't just use the same solution for all. When you go to the doctor and say you have a pain in your leg, a cut, an infection does he provide you with the same medicine??

-Rudey

You're right, Rudey, not everyone is doing it. But, even though it is a small minority, greeks as a whole are paying a price in reputation, membership declines, and increased risk management insurance policy premiums.

It's quite obvious the status quo - workshops, closing problem chapters, and lawsuits, isn't fixing the problem, so something new needs to be done.

What would you propose we do differently to get rid of this cancer before it consumes an entire system?

My firm belief is that if greeks don't come up with something themselves, quick, then in five years or so max, we WILL see the loss of an entire national organization as the result of a lawsuit.

Our Michigan chapter was not only was taken apart and recolonized after a severe hazing incident, but there were changes to how we recruited on the campus and whom we recruited. I even heard rumors about how rushes from certain hometowns were looked at entirely in a different light to make sure we didn't take on the added risk.

Can AEPi's Michigan chapter boast? In 2003 (their webpage has that listed), they had the highest GPA on campus (3.4) and the highest new member GPA (3.688). Their chapter, since being refounded in the last few years, has also had athletes and football players as brothers.

A fraternity is very capable of monitoring its own chapters and forming its own solutions to the problem (solutions that fit). What it needs to do is really consider whether it wants to take on the risk of expanding at certain schools. If an entire campus drinks constantly, there is little reason to believe your chapter at that school will attract the "non-alcoholics". And if you do set up shop at a high risk school, then you have to really, really make sure that your brothers there are on track and educated on hazing and the collective shame we all bear when you take part in it.

But I'm sorry - I will never, ever accept another fraternity's solution to our problems. And unless sororities really come up with brilliant non-conventional thoughts to fraternity problems, I will laugh and scoff at their recommendations to be pan-hellenic and just outright punish everyone.

-Rudey

I think that's part of the problem - there needs to be more of a spirit of cooperation between chapters, as in Benjamin Franklin's "we must all hang together, for we shall surely hang separately" famous quote. Like I've said, we either come up with our own collective solution, or, we will certainly be given a solution by the campus or legislation, that will see the end of greek organizations. I'm not pointing a finger directly at you, Rudey, btw, but your perspective is one I hear all to often - yes, we need to have pride in our own GLO, but, at least on our respective campuses, especially on our campuses where several IFC or Panhel orgs reside, we have to work together to survive and thrive. There is a fine line between a good rivalry and intransigence.

So again, my question remains - it looks as though AEPi (keep in mind this is just ONE chapter on a large campus) turned it around, but, what could the whole greek (or narrow it to IFC if you prefer) system do together to fix this problem?

Let's look at 2 problems: Hazing and Drinking.

1) If you expand into a party school, know that these 2 problems are going to be there more throughout the student population and not just in Greek organizations. Many, many organizations just expand for the sake of expanding or want the prestige of numbers or chapters at big schools. I think this needs to be rethought since as a simple numbers game, no matter what these party school chapters will have more problems.

2) Different chapters have different policies. Some folks don't care if you drink. Some turn their heads and pretend nobody underage drinks. Some care only if you use kegs. Some are totally dry. Some are dry but drink at parties they hold at bars. I don't feel comfortable telling someone in another fraternity with a different policy how to address their problems. I don't think another chapter would just knock on my chapter's door one day and also ask for advice on how to stop their members from abusing alcohol to begin with. The same goes for hazing. Certain fraternities consider study hours hazing. Some consider scavenger hunts to be hazing. I, myself, consider anything you'd be ashamed to tell someone's mother to be hazing.

3) In a perfect world, we would all have large chapters with no problems. But it's not a perfect world. We have enough issues dealing with how to get brothers to be more active as seniors, to make sure rush goes well, that our alumni stay involved, etc. How could we possibly exert even more energy, time, and money to help? Many of us have been strong-armed into holding these workshops and you yourself think they don't work. What more can we even possibly do?

4) My solution is to concentrate more on the me and not on the we. It's not to say that fraternities shouldn't help each other out and work together, but it just says that we need to recognize that our problems are different and we can only come up with the solutions ourselves.

But again these are my thoughts. Am I right or wrong? I would think I'm right given the fact that fraternities still have not moved to the "we" approach.

-Rudey

I would hope that you eventually are wrong - I think you have the right perspective that it's the "me" approach right now - if greeks can't get to "we" to fix problems, then the external forces trying to shut us down may yet be victorious, to our own detriment.

Good dialogue so far! Anyone else feel like contributing? This is how problems get solved, folks.

By the way, is anyone else having problems posting? I get error messages, and have to submit twice to get anything on threads today....

"There seems to have been a slight problem with the GreekChat.com Forums database.
Please try again by pressing the refresh button in your browser.

An E-Mail has been dispatched to our Technical Staff, who you can also contact if the problem persists.

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John?

In your opinion, what else could we possibly do to work together?

I think schools really do need to take care of "party" problems among their own students as opposed to just targeting Greeks - maybe one day, enough Greeks will have influence to take the spotlight off us and put it on the school itself.

I think Pike alum, Firehouse, would have serious issues with fraternities policing each other too.

Yeah, I'm getting the same error when I post as well.

-Rudey

Wasn't this what greeks were known for in decades past? The leaders on campus? Now, by and large, we're seen as the irresponsible drunks or immature kids on campus - that needs to change.

I think the IFC or other groups should get together (a summit meeting for lack of a better term) and come up with their solutions (this would of course be a campus-by-campus solution - I doubt each solution could be exported to other campuses without revisions) - but that would be a start.

Basically, the Heads of National GLOs work together for the Betterment of Greek Organizations.

The problem always stems from the local level for "who is big dog".

This has happened on My Campus and I am sure you can see around the Country upon a lot of Campi.

So, the problem seems to be, How Do We as Greeks finally decide to work together not only on a National level or go to dust on a local level. Say if this was done, maybe the Insurance rates would go down for Risk Management.

Couldnt that Money be spent better at the Local and National level?


Just remember, for The Good That Greeks do for Charity, it is out weighed by the Things that happen in the negative.