Nope, you are not the only one.

The day any university administrator tells a chapter how to run their internal chapter standards or new member program is the day pigs fly. I always thought it was the national/international organization's responsibility to do that. What's next, some university type actually sitting in on standards meetings and reporting back to the awards committee?

here's a part of DG's evaluation that bothered me:

"The committee reccomends that the chapter spend time relearing or learning for the first time their chapter ritual"

How do they know the members knowledge of the chapter's ritual and how do they have any right to comment on it?

It all depends on how you fill out the paperwork. The sorority chapter at my school that won the chapter of the year award definitely didn't deserve it, but they worked really hard on the paperwork. I mean, they're a great chapter, but they definitely aren't the top one on campus.

I wondered that too.

Were members of the accredidation committee interviewing members and interacting with them too? I doubt that they'd be just plain observing the groups. That being said, it may have been possible that a bunch of members said something along the lines of "I don't think they knew what they were doing at Initiation...blah blah blah"

Still, stating that they could improve by relearning the ritual would have been sufficient. "Learning for the first time their chapter ritual" is way out of line and they certainly have no authority to say such a thing.

I wonder what the NPC/NIC thinks about all of this. Heck, I'd like to see the reaction of all the HQ officers of the organizations involved. :eek:

I don't see how AGD's minimum GPA requirement of 2.25 is "great" and earns them a gold chapter rating, where DG's minimum GPA requirement of 2.20 gets them a poor chapter rating.

What really bothered me about this is it seems like some chapters will never attain gold, because it seems like those with the two lowest GPAs will always be penalized - and some sorority has to have the lowest GPA all the time. I could see it being an issue if the chapter average was a 2.2 or something, but I believe even the alleged "poor" chapters were over a 3.0.

I think it is a joke and if I was on that campus I would contact my NPC delegate for that state or the person over my chapter (not my chapter adviser be/c she probably already knows about this) and see what can be done. I was really bothered as well with some of the "suggestions" they said.

For AOII:
Although the chapter has a good standards board, the committee recommends additional formal training (via the Office of Student Conduct) should be implemented. Additionally, the standards board should not just address chapter violations, but individual sister violations.====I can assure you that they are having Chapter Relations meetings once a month and meeting with members who need help with things. The way the Office of Student Conduct handles a situation is probably not how AOII would handle something. There are certain things we can do and cannot do.

I really think someone from Lehigh needs to contact their NPC delegate for that region or their sorority's NPC delegate and get this changed.

I would be red hot over this... how the hell do they know if you need work on your ritual or not and who the hell are they to tell you that? It sounds like they picked a bunch of responses off a list and slapped them into a report. And I agree that there are discrepancies in the GPA area.

slight hijack...

Does anyone know how they divide up the regions for the NPC delegates? I thought it was strictly by geography but judging from PA it looks like they shuffled things around here and there.

/hijack

A&M doesn't seem to like greek life... I don't see them doing anything like this to try to improve it.... I actually think they would get rid of it if they could. (personal opinion)

This is something that I found strange in one report....

· Each member is required to join at least one co-curricular organization in order to
broaden the sisters’ experiences.

Wouldn't alot of schools consider it hazing to tell a member that they HAVE to join another organization??? I think joining an org just because is stupid... You should join something because you WANT to not because you'll get in trouble with your chapter if you don't. Besides, what if someone is in such a demanding major that they just don't have the time to devote to yet another org? Maybe I'm overreacting, but that seems dumb to me.

And as for study hours....

I do remember hearing that some orgs consider that hazing and can't do it... But my ADPi chapter had mandatory study hours when I was in school. It went by your last semester's GPA.. For example if you got a 2.5, you had to do X amount of hours. The higher your GPA, the fewer hours you had to do. And if you got something like over a 3.8, you didn't have to do any at all.

BUT, I will also say that I don't remember ever really getting anything done during study hours... You can't put that many sisters in a room and actually expect them to get studying done- it was social hour. :rolleyes:

Edited for my TERRIBLE grammar mistakes. :p

Any Chi O's or Phi Sigs on here, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that Chi O and Phi Sig nationally required their members to be in other extracurricular activities, not just in the sorority.

Delta Zeta does, too.

So does Alpha Xi Delta.

I don't get it either. If they have such an ideal in mind they should raise the campus requirement, not grade down based on a loose idea of what the 'right' gpa would be.

The reports make it sound like however you fill it out is how you'll be graded. There seems to be room for boasting and playing up what your chapter does, all groups did not do that. I think it is a shame that only two years of a poor rating can cause your recognition to be lost, that is a tad harsh. However, I don't know if this was the first year of this, but the chapters have to realize that this is how the school is gonna play so they need to play the game. Yes it sucks because the report was probably due at finals time, but if they wanna be there they'll have to bend cause I doubt the admin will...(I don't mean that to sound harsh and my best wishes go out to the chapters, but to me, that is the reality of Lehigh right now...)

Ditto. I've always heard great things about our chapter at Lehigh and never was under the impression that it was "struggling" under any of the traditional indicia of a "struggling" chapter!