I thought of that too, but I think NPC would be somewhat afraid of doing that in that women might misinterpret during the craziness of rush and think that they weren't allowed to depledge.

[hijack]No it was this years super bowl. But for me the thing is, your in college now. You aren't entitled to anything except getting an education. You know when tests, projects, homework is due, stop making excuses on why "it can't" be done and why you can't study. I'm sorry, even if the Cardinals had made it to the super bowl this year, I still would have studied. Hello, all frickin weekend. Unless you plan on being wasted all weekend. [end hijack]

I just think today's generation is full of excuses.

Yes. Quite pitiful ones I might add! I can write VOLUMES on the excuses I have received over the past two years as a recruitment advisor regarding recruitment excuses and why people cant/think they cant show up to recruitment, workshops, practices, etc.

EXACTLY.

When I was active, I went to everything, and so did the rest of my chapter... without question. Unless you had a wedding, sporting event, or work that you just couldn't get out of, excuses were unheard of.

NOW... I have never heard so many excuses from girls. People make up excuses so that they don't have to go to MIXERS! Why would you want to miss out on the fun stuff? And sometimes, it's because they're "studying"... on a Saturday night. Ironically, the chapter's GPA was a whole lot higher when I was active than it is now, and we had twice as many mixers as they do now.

And not too long ago, I had put on a recruitment workshop. Only half of the chapter attended. A few girls had legitimate excuses, but when 15 girls in a chapter of 27 show up, what's the point?

A girl I know from another school who is active in her chapter right now told me that they have started making certain events optional to attend, which, as she put it, kind of sucks. It's good in that she finds that the only girls who show up to things are the ones who truly want to be there. However... it also showed her who doesn't really care, and who's taking up space in the chapter, and not leaving room for potential members who want to contribute something. But now, there's nothing they can do about it because these girls aren't required to go to anything.

The thing that confuses me most about this... why would you want to pay hundreds (and in some cases, thousands) of dollars for.. well.. nothing?

I have a GREAT mp3 that I received in email that would play perfectly here. If somebody wants to tell me how to post it, I'd be happy to try.

33, I just emailed it to you, if you know how to post them.

Oh, we had people who used the "I have to study" excuse to get out of mixers too (or who just stayed for the at-the-time required half hour and went home). Usually they were older sisters who were a little scared of the new and different fraternities we were mixing with that weren't the old reliables. We all have some lame sisters. It's the truth.

But let's face facts: these policies - super easy pledgeship, getting rid of/restricting mandatory events, and making it hard (if not impossible) to get rid of lame pledges or sisters - aren't being made by current students. They're being made by the national councils and HQs who on one hand are terrified of getting sued for hazing, emotional distress, what have you, and on the other hand are scared to death of being perceived as politically incorrect or elitist. It's nice of them to believe that just getting a bid to a wonderful group will turn your attitude around and make you a responsible person who gives your all to your sorority but life just isn't a bowl of cherries like that.

Like als463 said, the NPHC groups don't seem to have this problem...at least to this extent...and they're taking members that are the same age. So I think to just say "this generation sucks" is a little bit too pat.

hc: I don't know how mp3s work at all. :p

I think some of them are overhauling them back to what they were to begin with before they got all touchy-feely. Apparently (as seen by the OP) it isn't working fast enough.

I completely disapprove of NMs having all the same privileges as initiated sisters (voting, attending all chapter meetings, holding regular chapter offices) - IMO it takes away the rite of passage-ness of initiation. But that's been hashed out a zillion times on here.

I agree!

Regarding studying on a Saturday night. This may depend on the specific person/major. The reason I say that is because I was in business management with my first degree with an HR emphasis. Every one of those classes is group work and are built on 4 phase projects that are roughly 100 pages of work each. Well if you get to phase 3 and realized you goofed on something in phase 1, then that also puts off phase 2 and you have to redo everything, otherwise phase 3 is off and phase 4 is impossible to complete. Such a scenario happened to me with two of my groups. It wasnt unusual at all when a Monday deadline was approaching to have the school library tables completely taken up by groups of business students from open to close--even on Friday & Saturday nights. With how the classes were structured you kinda had to meet when everyone in your group could meet which meant sorority life gets put on the backburner. Especially if the class is required to graduate and is offered only once a year. My last semester I had three group oriented classes that were this intense (about killed me). My instructors had to write letters for me to the chapter, and turn in a course syllabus for each class because the chapter "excuse collector" and her advisor were giving me problems. I'm not saying this was your student's case. My situation was probably much different from most majors, but such an excuse COULD be possible.

Anywho, I had a student last summer tell me she couldnt come to summer recruitment retreat because her car broke down and didnt have a ride. Her car broke down two weeks before retreat and she knew about retreat for atleast three months. She also lived in an area that was close to other members that she could have gotten a ride with to retreat. She was not excused and I was not amused. :) Another student actually flat out told me she couldnt come because she didnt have time. Our advisory board chair about busted a vein over that one!

You are not wrong, lady. AST rules say that you MAY NOT vote on ANY new member again for ANY reason unless they are brought up to standards board and standards board decides their punishment is to be voted on. In essence, it completely takes away from our ability to decide. On top of that, since our Greek Life Adviser on campus gets a cash bonus for placing all girls who go through recruitment, we can be (and have been) given mandatory QAs and snap bids. Don't like it? Too bad. You don't get the option to refuse them. At all. So we get stuck with girls who are wet blankets, who can't put together a coherent sentence, who drink like fish or who have slept with every Sigma Pi on the block and think it makes them cool....and we have no way to get them out.

We were recently put in a situation where we found out (three days before initiation) that some of our new girls had been bullying other ones pretty intensely, to the point where several wanted to drop. Because our president had kept it a secret from the chapter, we found out very late and were basically told, "it's too late to do anything. Just suck it up." Each girl that was a problem has CONTINUED to be a problem in our chapter, and we would be significantly better off without. But at some point, you can't revoke real membership without a very real reason...and "being someone that everyone in all GLCs hates, giving us a bad name with your attitude and making us look like bitches" don't really cut it.

If we had been able to drop them in a moment's notice while they were new members, our entire chapter would be better off.

THAT is just effed up.

Wow that's just awful.

One year we had this PNM with a horrible reputation come through, serious coke problem, grade risk and a revolving bedroom door. The girl needed rehab way more than a sorority. All of the sororities cut her on the first night, unheard of at my uncompetitive school. Each head of recruitment got a phone call (at 4am!) from our Greek Life Adviser asking us to change our minds and telling us how horrible we are to all cut this girl. I may have said no, the chapter has made a decision already and hung up in the middle of her lecture.

We can drop new members, but it's a long and complicated process. It needs to be started the 2nd or 3rd week of the new member period to get all the signatures and bring it up to the regional level in time. We had two girls one year that were not showing up without excuses and overall being irresponsible we (on advice of the chapter advisor) waited until 3 weeks until initiation and we couldn't get rid of them. They desistered not even a month after initiation.

Holy isht. Does your HQ know about this? (I forget, are you the only national on your campus?)

More to the point, do parents paying tuition (and whose students may have zip interest in Greek life) know that this may be where their money is going?

I find that to be rather outrageous as well.

:eek: Maybe(certainly),I'm naive, but...that's insane:eek:

Better yet, having the option to refuse new members in the first place! The bonus for the GLA is so messed up. How can you work your way up to become a GLA and truly believe Greek Life is for everyone? It's not.

I'm not surprised.
I volunteered with a chapter where the university's greek life advisor was trying to force the chapter to invite PNMs who had been cut "to give them a second chance" and then when the chapter refused he became a huge jerk about it. Later we found out that he had tried to force other GLOs to do the same thing.

Thanks for the sympathy, everyone. I agree; it's messed. up.

We are NOT the only national on our campus; we have a reasonably large PHC. I have no idea how much the cash bonus is, but even a $50 bonus is too much; this is your job! You should not get a bonus for placing people!

We get HUGE pressure to not cut ANYONE; last year, I think we cut about 5 girls total (not including a girl who had rushed for the FOURTH TIME). And trust me, we got a phone call from the GLA: "How could you do that? You need to pare that list down. You should not be cutting any more than 3 people! This means they might not place!" Keep in mind, we had over 200 girls going through recruitment; not a small number.

I would LOVE for our Nationals to step in...maybe I'll send something off. Who would that go to, though??

Your NPC delegate. Every chapter on campus needs to contact their NPC delegate. That should NOT be happening. Your GLA needs the boot.

I would say your NPC delegate AND your national VP of operations (whatever that's called in AST-land). Ditto all the other groups. Oh, and grab your NPC area advisor while you're at it. This is completely unacceptable.

You *have* to take your QA's and snap bids? Are the QA's anywhere on your bid lists? Are you using RFM...i know some of our chapters balk about being told not to cut more than X women (due to RFM statistics, cutting more would make them not meet quota, etc) but they *can* still cut more than what's recommended (though cutting off their nose to spite their face so to speak)...wondering what area you are in? I agree with the other posters about contacting your I/HQ or NPC rep (or even the NPC advisor assigned to your school) to review what's going on.

Yes, we have to take the QAs and snap bids. They are put in alphabetical order with the girls who were NOT snap/QAs, so unless we took out a copy of our list and compared it and found the X # of people above quota that were lowest on our list that we got, we would not know who was what. We actually agreed to, because of being unable to cut, not take any QAs beyond a certain point on our list if we made quota before that. We went well over quota (more than any other chapter) and the GLA refused to allow us to not take those girls.

We do use RFM at our campus. However, when this happened last fall, we were coming INTO recruitment at just BARELY below total, and larger than other chapters. There is a lot of pressure for us to cut no one because of RFM; however, it ends up biting us in the long run because the girls we got that we DID NOT WANT are:

a). Unhappy
b). make us unhappy
c). Hurt us in rush the next year, because they are awkward and do NOT represent the rest of the chapter.

So studying is not a valid reason not to attend a social function? Oh please. My daughter is in sorority and there are social events, including mixers she cannot attend because indeed she is studying, on *gasp* a Saturday night. She is a 3rd year student majoring in Chemical Engineering, so she pretty much studies all the time, including weekends. I cannot believe that I am reading statements like a have read on this thread ragging on girls who choose to study instead of attend a mixer. I thought getting an education was why these girls are in college.

QFP.

Wow.

I don't really feel like going through all of the pages in this thread, but did the conversation really digress THAT much? Are we talking about studying now?

Good ol' GC lol

Would changing the campus's total help?

I think everyone knows which girls are in majors that require them to study all time, which girls have a huge project due that week, and which girls wasted all their time on facebook/at the house/drinking. not to mention which girls think the fraternity they're mixing with is below them (or not their boyfriend's frat, where they want to hang out) and think that claiming they're studying is a way to get off scot free. And then they "study" (facebook) for an hour and then go out.

Plus, the girls that do study all the time often use the mixer as a welcome break. Show up in minimal costume and maybe only for an hour. Have one drink max. But everyone knows that they've worked hard to get this hour off, and appreciate it.

There's a difference between not making it because you need to study, and making time in your studying to get to do the fun things you pay money for. sometimes you have to miss a mixer because you just have to (sometimes, if you're me, you know if you plan to go out only for an hour, you'll be there until 3am. But everyone knew if I missed a mixer, it was serious :) )

What I really hated were the girls who deliberately planned things to coincide with the events they didn't like. We always had to come back from winter break a few days early so for work week and recruitment. But every year, some of the girls would by plane tickets for the day before classes started "because they didn't know the dates and needed to buy tickets early." I always tried to call BS (I lived way farther than them, I had to buy tickets too, and somehow I always managed to get there for work week). It drove me crazy, but my chapter refused to fine them because they had nonrefundable plane tickets. :rolleyes: (These girls eventually became Rho Gams, which took care of the problem to some extent, and the chapter fines more harshly now, I believe).

Someone else said it, but perhaps there DOES need to be more education that being a member IS a commitment, but if you organize your time, you can fit in most of the stuff you want to. Would it help to offer a "Study Skills" class to new members? Yes, it's something ELSE to do, but a few hours' worth of tricks and tips can make a real difference. Or petition the college to start such a class for freshman. Maybe during orientation. I don't know the right answer, but having taken such a class during freshman year of HIGH SCHOOL, I knew way ahead of time how to effectively study, how to organize fun time and work time, and to make sure I had "free time" to just relax.

ETA: Do members now have "study buddies"? When I pledged, every group had a program like this. They paired a younger and older member (grade year, not initiation year) and studied together at the library a certain # of hours a week. I think 2 "buddy" hours were mandatory (pledges also had other "whenever study hours at the library) and for grade risks, there was more time. It was a built-in time to get busy work or research done (I know you can't do mandatory PLEDGE activities but if EVERYONE participated...). A lot of girls were thankful for the "mandatory" time, though a few chose to chit chat. They finally passed a no-talking rule (outside of talking about school work) for those two hours. For those who felt that they "don't need it", they could be a "buddy" who helped another girl, or find something to work on productively. I am betting that just about any college student could find school work to do for two hours in a library (even if most of their stuff was lab work or done elsewhere). After all, you ARE there for an education, and this is a way to help everyone find time to get work done. These days, you'd have to implement no cells or FB, but that might be hard to monitor. Oh wait, your buddy could do that!

I'd love to hear from GC members who have degrees in Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, etc. Would a "study tips and tricks" class for new members really help those students deal with the workload required in the hard sciences? Doubtful. All I'm saying is that some majors just require more work and time than others.

I have several fraternity brothers who majored in tough disciplines. They were able to manage their time in order to make required events and, in the event that there was a conflict, informed the exec board about what was going on.

If (general) you have absolutely no time for any outside activities, then maybe Greek life isn't meant for you right now.

I went to an engineering school. Plenty of my Brothers found time to dedicate to both the Fraternity and their studies. It's all about time management.

Why wouldn't it? They have other classes as well, ones that DO require memorization or research papers. A three-hour course teaching the basics of how to best retain the info during class, how to take notes, how to "study" and understand concepts. Often it's the classes outside the major that causes a lot of "nuisance" for lack of a better word. I found that listening and taking notes effectively, and figuring concepts and theories in class, made doing homework easier.

As for studying and learning dates and terms, some people are not good at memorizing lists. In many majors, you will have a class or time when you have to learn a lot of definitions, formulas, dates, etc., usually in the 100 and 200 level classes.

Why would you callously dismiss something that gives you tools to learning? Not only did I do better at "passing the test", but I also learned to grasp things better. Saving time can help any person in any major. Why wouldn't it?
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To PL: Did you go to college or join a sorority? Just curious.

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A study tips and tricks class for new members helps every student who wants to learn how to manage a workload. Undergraduate study skills (including the tendency to procrastinate) and average course grade do not vary that much across majors. The average collegiate (across institutions and majors) is a B-/C student--with exceptionally high and exceptionally low averages in between. So, chapters incorporate study programs that will help new members across majors and across learning capacities. It is up to the students themselves to pick up the slack from there.

BTW, the difference between the majors depends on the institution, the courses, and the professors. The majors that require more work and time aren't always the majors that people assume they are.

My point wasn't that studying on a Saturday night is a bad thing. My point is that this is the EXCUSE (remember, we were talking about ridiculous excuses) that people use most often when they simply don't want to go to certain events. And yes, it is very well known that specific people simply don't want to attend those events.

THIS!!

AND THIS!!! There are so many girls who only go to certain fraternity's mixers. It's stupid. When I was in school, I hung out with the Delta Chis ALL THE TIME. But I also attended mixers with the TKEs, Sig Taus, SKNs (a local), the hockey team, the lacrosse team, etc. etc. And I had a great time meeting new people and hanging out WITH MY SISTERS.

Nowadays, girls feel as though they can pick and choose what they want to attend.

And don't even get me started about excuses for philanthropies. We have girls who claim they have "so much studying to do" that they can't do Adopt-a-highway for an hour at 9am on a Sunday. Really?

Trust me... you know who wants to be there and who doesn't.

And again... why pay all that money if all you're going to do is "study" and show up to chapter meetings once a week?

Maybe your "DD" should resign her sorority membership if she needs to study all the time. Chapters do not need ghost members who only wear letters when it is convenient for them. Or maybe she needs to explore other degree options if she's feeling so overwhelmed with the requirements of her current major.

I managed to maintain a high GPA in an extremely difficult degree program without shirking the commitments I made to my sisterhood when I initiated. You find the time for the things you consider worthwhile.

Keep in mind this is coming from the parent, not the daughter. I mean, I know that on many a night I "studied" in my boyfriend's room. I told my parents the first part and left out the second.

But yeah, if you can't manage your time well enough that you never show up to events...freakin' quit. Not only are you wasting your money, but you are letting down the people you profess to care about - your sisters and most particularly your little.

Thought I would bump this up since I keep getting PMs about it.

Just bumping this post as one of the most truly effed up things I have ever read on GC, and I hope the situation at fantASTic's school has been changed and the Greek advisor thrown in the lake.