I feel the same way. My parents did, too...would've let me live in sorority housing, which I did at first until they saw how much my grades improved when I lived by myself. Some people just aren't good at distractions and some aren't good at time management, so the occasional chaos of sorority housing can really have an impact on studies.

Honestly, if I were on a House Corp that had a mandatory live-in rule and the chapter facility was not at capacity, this excuse would simply not be valid. The member could buy out her contract, and we've had women do that, but there are plenty of alternatives for quiet study places outside of the chapter facility.

There are a lot of other factors that could be contributing to the HCB's deficit in addition to empty beds...has your chapter considered how costs can be cut? Your house manager and at least one or two other exec officers should be attending HCB meetings and be knowledgeable about about what it costs to operate your house: mortgage or rent payments due monthly, staff (cooks, housekeepers, gardeners, HD) and utilities usually take the most financial resources. If you have a mortgage or rent to pay you can't do anything about that, but you might be able to cut your expenses by reducing staff hours (maybe only having a cook 4 days a week instead of 5) etc. or....I hate to say it, but members might have to do more housekeeping themselves. (That's when you learn to appreciate your mom!) Also you would be amazed at what happens to the utility bill when people simply turn things off when they leave the room!
Good luck to you and let us know how your chapter works through this!

Does your chapter have a current out-of-house fee? Above and beyond dues, you should have this fee, which acts as a deterrent to anyone who thinks they will save money by moving out. You can let them eat at the house twice per week if it makes them feel better about paying it, because it should cost less to provide meals than you take in from the fee.

(As an aside, it was $250/semester in my chapter, but I always thought it should be $250/semester your freshman year, and then $400 - $50 * number of semesters you lived in the house. So if you lived in sophomore and junior year, you would then pay $100 less per semester than girls who only lived in for one year)

Also, you should lay out the guidelines for living out as clearly as possible, so as not to put too much power in the hands of your house corp. I suggest the following as valid reasons:

1) Medical (with specific doctor's note)
2) Off-campus co-op/study abroad/student teaching/field study
3) RA
4) Marriage
5) Accessibility (almost like medical, but if you had a sister in a wheel chair and no ground-level rooms, you wouldn't make her go to the trouble of getting a doctor's note)
6) Living at home with parents

Once you take women excused for one of these reasons out of the pool, you should rank them in some manner (attendance points? GPA? number of semesters already lived in?), count from the bottom, draw a line, and make the women below the line live in no matter what.

There is a chapter on our campus that follows a rule similar to this. Any girls who had lived in the house were allowed to leave, while all other girls remained in the room. A hat is passed around, and it is up to the person with the hat to choose either a) live in the house or b) pay $50. If after any round the house is not filled, then the hat is passed around again. Very rarely will it ever get above the $200.

The main thing is that it is in your bylaws to live in the house, so it is up to your to make sure it is enforced. It also sounds like the new members did not have a clear idea of the housing situation, which is something to consider in future rushes.

... we could hijack this thread and just talk about fun PA city names including:

Beaver Falls, Mars, Zelienople lol

But back to the subject:

You definately need bylaws that have live-in requirements. The colleges that I attended required the officers to live-in. You don't live in, you lose your office. And since it's a standard to fill the house, those that aren't living in (or have not filled in the live-in requirement) are put on probation.

We used a point system. Each member recieved a point for holding office, living in, their year in college - some other things that escape me now. So after the officers signed their lease if there were rooms left over, we went to the points. Lower the points, more than likely that you'll live in.

I feel your pain of filling the house. I've been on that fence as a collegian and as an alumnae advisor.

My grades actually went UP when I moved into the sorority house, as the library was less than a block away and it was much easier to go there and study. The dorm I'd been living in was full of fraternity and sorority members and athletes, and across from the student center - way too much temptation.