So, in trying to decipher all of the BS, Whose Fault is it that 2 Greek NIC, make a decision? (Oh Nerd Fraternitys) are making The Decision!

Do not cry on The Shoulders Here, but make a decision on change.

Work with all of the Greeks There.

Sounds like a Dead Tuna!:(

I am all for dry rush-rest assured. Bottom line here is the problem: There is a "rule" that does not allow our fraternity to have alcohol in any common areas the first 2 weeks of school. Thousands of freshmen and a lot of other much less desireable people show up the first two weeks on our front door steps expecting to party. So not only do we have to worry about our own house not drinking, but the rest of the campus. So umm it's a pretty sure bet the houses on our fraternity row will have kids drinking in common areas short of calling the national guard in to defend our lawns. It only takes 1 person to report this through a quick email and were on probation with IFC and a nasty letter is sent to our national chapter. Pretty much every house on the row will be at their mercy. There's no differentiation between wet rush and having alcohol. I consider wet rush giving booze to a guy that has either a) been to a rush event b) expressed interest in rushing c) is a guy we would want to rush. Wet rush to our IFC is having a beer poster in our room in front of anyone not in our house.

As for my langauge, you're all right! the colorful langauge ussually stays out of anything formal.

Asking the greek advisor questions seems like a poor idea to me-lthe email i spoke of had little inflammatory conversation (as far as i am concerned) and like i said, the email was forwarded to his national chapter along with the rest of us on IFC. If anything hte greek advisor was the one being a dick.

As for starting my own IFC, i don't know how i could go about doing this-If my house isn't apart of our colleges IFC, it will lose its charter. It's a pretty brilliant idea, but I think only 3-4 houses would be willing to go for an idea that radical.

As for NIC-we have no formal rush-IFC canceled it at the last minute this summer because it would be unfair to some houses-fromal rush was apparently the reason for making the first two weeks dry.

:) FSUZeta, yes, that was I. The situation was that the KU sororities felt that a vendor / caterer was being *cough* lax *cough* in enforcing safety and legal compliance rules. So the Panhellenic sororities got together to get some changes made -- a Greek tradition, after all, that goes back to Aristophanes' Lysistrata. The posting is in the Risk Management forum, thread title "U. of Kansas Sororities May Boycott Caterer."

Hey, I just owned up to doing something that someone thought I had done. Does that count as part of the "character" element of the principles I vowed to live by?

Question: are you a public school or a private one? All the rules and intrigues (IFC saying you cannot have a beer poster, etc.) sound like a private campus. If you are on a public campus, then let me assure you that you do not have to do any of these things, no matter what the school or even the IFC says. And - write this down - a public school cannot withdraw recognition if you are not in their IFC. You may not want to go to the trouble to take up the fight, but you can bet that you university attorney knows this.
Why not just invite all the freshmen to your house and have a party? You don't have to have alcohol. In fact, you can put up obvious signs in the yard that alerts everyone to the university rule against alcohol on the property. And, you can have onbius security there. Have music and have a party anyway. the freshmen will go wherever the girls are: get girls there and you can have a great party.

thanks exlurker, you clever greek you!!

that thread was very pertinant to me as the chapter i advise held their first official social last fall so i tried to read everything i could get my hands on. there were so many forms and checks and balances that the chapter had to go thru; so different from when i was in school, but definately for their own good in todays litigious society.

Mart,

Now you're gonna have to slow down and clarify a few things for us here.

You didn't tell us how your local IFC "holds your charter in their hands." In your most recent post you said that "1 quick email and we're on probation with IFC..." and that if you withdraw from your campus IFC then you lose your charter. I'm really not trying to sound negative here, but that sounds like something has happened (before the mess you're telling us about) that's got your chapter on the hotseat. If you don't want to give details, fine...but the way you are talking doesn't sound like everything was hunky dory until these new IFC officers started. So what is the deal? Has there been trouble in the past?

It's your choice if you don't want to talk with your Greek advisor...but you may be shooting yourself in the foot. What about your chapter advisor (please tell me he's not a brother that graduated last year....)? What about your faculty advisor? Tell your faculty advisor the situation, and have him either talk to the other chapter advisors, or have him talk to the Greek advisor directly and get the info that you need. Have him get a copy of the bylaws. I also think the email is not relevant. Who forwarded it to you, and how do you know it wasn't edited somehow to skew the meaning? If you weren't part of the email communication, then you really don't know the context of everything. There's lots of things that aren't communicated effectively in a typed message. My advice: forget the email...pretend it doesn't exist...if it wasn't your IFC rep and your chapter involved don't bring it up. It's not going to help you at this stage in the game.

Other males can correct me if I'm wrong, but from my understanding of FIPG rules, you shouldn't be having open, uncontrolled parties (meaning that the alcohol isn't contained in a certain area, entry to the event isn't controlled, no guest lists, etc.) anyway...so I'm not sure what the problem with the rule is. But then again I don't understand exactly what the rule says...no offense, but your paraphrasing isn't clear.

Give us some documentation...what EXACTLY does the rule say? Where is it located? Is this a school rule that's over your IFC's head? Are you on a public or private campus? School owned or chapter owned housing?

PsychTau

I am only speculating here, mart1240 will need to clarify.

Many GLOs (fraternities and sororities) may not recognize a chapter as 'in-good-standing' if it is not recognized by the university. In this particular case, it *may be* that chapters have to be IFC members for university recognition. Perhaps to be a 'student organization'. Again, knowing if your campus is a public or a private campus would help.

If the IFC shoots off an email to the chapter's HQ - regardless if there is any merit to the email - it does raise concerns with HQ. While it may be just crap, it is still crap that has to be dealt with. And it may be that if the chapter is put on IFC probation - for whatever reason - then it may be put on probation by HQ as well. Many times, it's guilty until proved innocent by the university and as such, HQ.

I'm not really clear on it either but my understanding of FIPG rules is that there shouldn't be any "uncontrolled" parties as well.

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mart1240:

I am a tad confused with this as well. It sounds like the 'no alcohol' rule is in place for two weeks *regardless* if there is a rush event or not? So any possible violation might result in IFC probation/email etc?

In any case, you have been given some great advice. Frankly, it does seem like you may need to get some additional help and or intervention going. Either from your HQ, the other 'Big Eight' chapters, your Alumni, and or advisor(s), etc.

After a lot of thought and talk with 1 of my bros, I've decided to just chillax. There's not much i can do-and after learning some more details, our IFC looks the other way on a lot of stuff considering the rules it has. I honestly regret speaking up at the last meeting-it could be a lot worse.

And yes, our house has been in a lot of trouble (most of which i just know about from stories passed on by older guys). I caught the tail end of it as a pledge so i saw (somewhat) what it was like and what we have grown to now 2 years later. It was a sad sight-i'm just gonna email the IFC president and greek advisor and ask him what to do and kiss some serious ass.

Also~

Thank you for the great ideas and support!

good luck to you mart.

Came across this thread in a search and it seemed interesting...

I am a former IFC Treasurer and I can't tell you how good our Greek Advisor is. With a good Greek Advisor, everything positive will trickle down into your executive board. In fact, our Greek Council won multiple awards at the 2006 Northeast Greek Leadership Association Conference (NGLA).

There is no question that it is the Greek Advisor that sucks big time. Our current IFC is actually controlled by one, yes, ONE fraternity! The thing is, they haven't been doing anything to bias any positives towards them, so its not like anyone has a real problem with them (another credit to our GA).





So is there an update? What happened to the corrupt IFC?

I'm the IFC delegate for my chapter at UCF... Corrupt doesn't even begin to describe the situation here.

I like UCF and I am interested in the system. Tell us more about IFC and what's going on. Aren't you a new chapter at UCF? Congratulations.

Yup, we got our charter November 12th of 2005, and thanks! I'd rather not get into details in this thread, but will send you a PM if you're interested.

Sure!