I've never heard it put like that before, but it's brilliant!

Agreed, regarding the seniors thing.

You never know -- those guys might come back in 20 years and donate money, so they still have a purpose.

Contact your national. NOW. Ask for help.

One good way to start to to focus more on developing and energizing your pledge class. Get them as involved as possible, and make them psyched about improving the organization. When they are new initiates, brainstorm with them on how to improve things.

If you get new guys energized enough, they will step up and take the reins, especially if the older guys are apathetic. If alot of the worst guys are seniors, then the problem might quickly go away when the apathetic people graduate while a new generation of motivated guys step in.

You aren't very likely to change the mindset of the lazy people. You're best bet is to motivate the next generation while making sure the lazy actives don't get in the way of change. That might mean removing brothers if they are dragging the chapter down, or it might mean encouraging newer guys to take control of things and see if the lazy people fall into the background and not interfere.

Just a side note: not all "Seniors" are approaching graduation...
Personal experience - I've seen 2 and 3 year Super Seniors before. In those cases, sometimes you have to cut your losses.

Is that anything like a "special purpose"?

My advice is concise;

If you're national, it's time to bring in the head honchos. Your chapter is flailing and full of people who can't be bothered to try. Pruning hurts a lot less from a national officer or leadership consultant.

Yes, but then it gets around campus that your national came in and kicked people out and even if there's a good reason, this can backfire in that 1) the rest of the campus thinks you're so lame you can't do anything on your own 2) your chapter is going to be closed soon or completely recolonized 3) the national officers can be misled - we all know people who can sell snow to an Eskimo, and some of the slacker asses could just as likely do something similar and you'd end up REALLY stuck with them

and most importantly:

4) they need to be young MEN, not boys and take this situation in hand on their own. GLOs are supposed to be partly about teaching you to run an organization, not running to nationals every time something's wrong.

Plus, and I don't think this is telling tales out of school, the national fraternities vary MUCH more widely in management style, etc than the sororities. What I'm trying to say is, some fraternities wouldn't give a crap about this predicament as long as they're getting dues money. Even if it's for 2 guys. They could conceivably call their nationals, tell them this tale and get a resounding "so what?"

well the thing is nationals came in last semester and we got rid of the guys who don't care. Every guy we have cares about the house and we get things done internally. Its the external things we don't do and haven't done even since the older guys have been around. So its more trying to get these guys to do things that we haven't been doing for a long period of time. I just don't think they realize that we need to do these things and when I bring it up its like they don't want to take on the added weight. And we really can't kick anyone out because we have about 40 guys in the house and thats barely enough to scratch through with paying for the house. If we lose any more guys we will lose our house which has been ours for close to 100 years.

well, hopefully you will find some of the other suggestions helpful. goodluck.

If this is the case, then the current members are going to have to really buckle down and recruit to build membership.

If all others ahve houses, it is a must to keep the current house to be competitive.

Will your National give you any help with recrutment? I doubt it with 40 men so, the next best thing is to contact as many Alumni as you can and see if you have some hard core ones who will help.

This has always been the bane of actives about not keeping Alums in the loop unless there is a problem, and with out them, you can become dead in the water.

I too wish you very good luck and if you would like, please PM me.