aephialum, I think you have it right. There are a few diehards who, aided by a few alums, are resisting nationalization but I think that the college has told them they must nationalize or disband. They're in the minority.

One student told me that the women were really dazzled and surprised by what a national can offer. I figured they would be. I compare what they have had lately to the difference between a manual typewriter and a computer...not that all locals are like that, of course, but these just had no clue as to how to operate. It was so aggravating for me because I knew that the women were of the stellar caliber that nationals would want, yet they were doing this stupid hazing crap that you hear about having been done in the thirties. Our women could do far better than that.

As for the fraternities, I believe that the nationalization process will begin in the fall now that each fraternity has connected with a national.

i am glad to hear that things went so well! it will be so exciting to have all national groups on campus this fall! i, of course, hope phi mu decides to pick up a group, but i am really excited that this opportunity exists for your campus. it sounds like it was a zoo...and now will have a much better chance!

Aww:( Oh well, maybe we've put our sailboat in calmer waters ?? THANKS FOR THE UPDATES!!

Carnation, CONGRATULATIONS on your College getting Nationals in place.

I am sad that LXA was not one of them! I notified HDQ not once but twice! Damn thay can be dumb!:mad:

What better place to look into when the College is backing for Nationals!

Congratulations to all of the impending NEW NATIONALS!:cool:

I found it very interesting when some found out what Nationals were all about and thought it was great!!!!!!!

I am sure all of the Greeks on GC applaud the work that you did to get this done.:)

Oh boy! I just directed one of my students who's a sorority member to GC and this thread--come on in and post your views!

Okay, fuzicrayon, post or I'll dock your Spanish grade!

LOL!!!!!!!!!

carnation, you are the bestest! I would love to have you as my professor!
PPL!

and fuzicrayon, tell us all!! :) :)

Okay okay :) I'm here finally!

Hey there! I'm a student at the college you guys are discussing. I'm VERY excited about going national. I have a lot to tell but I'm not sure where to start.

I'm in the sorority that REALLY liked Phi Mu's presentation and I am on our executive council. We take the representitives to lunch, so I get to actually meet the women that come to present and spend some time with them. We had a great time last week with both sororities.

Got any questions for me?

Welcome FuziCrayon!
We are all very excited to hear things from your perspective.

Before the University gave you guys the ultimatum, how did you feel about national sororities?
How are your alumnae taking it?

welcome fuzicrayon! i am glad that you really liked phi mu (of course i am biased ;) )!

are you finding that people who were on the fence about going national are more excited now that they have seen presentations from 2 of the groups?

I started hearing rumors about nationals coming to our school during the late part of the summer. At first, I was outraged. Why would I want to pay to be part of what looks like a glorified club? Someone said to me just yesterday that they think national sororities are the country clubs of college life... more about expenses and quantity than they are about quality and character. And from the outside, that is how it appeared to me at first. Now that I have educated myself about national sororities, I am very eager to be part of one. There is a lot that a national sorority can offer me that our local sorority cannot. Every time I talk about nationals, I learn about new opportunities that I would never have with the sorority I am in now. We have about 60 members (including our sweethearts) and we are 30 years old this year. That is a lot of history and our girls are afraid we are going to lose it all to a national sorority. Hopefully whoever we choose will let us teach our new members our sorority’s history as well as the national history. We do not want our local sorority to be forgotten. We have too much pride for that!

Our college gave us three options:
1) our sorority disbands and we have the choice to join a national
2) our sorority is absorbed by a national and we all go in together
3) our sorority stays local and we compete with the new national sororities that would colonize next Fall

I have heard mixed opinions from our alumni. Some of them see it as the current sisters betraying Delta (a letter of my sorority - it will make it easier to talk about) and some of them see the good in going national. One alumnus who is against going national suggested we trademark our name, that way if we could be sure that Delta lived on forever. Another alumnus emailed one of my sisters recently... telling her that she is very excited for us and for the alumni because alumni of our local sorority can be initiated and installed into the national sorority we are looking at. We will not betray our sorority or the girls that are in it or who have been in it. We will always be sisters and we will always know and love Delta's history. We will all teach the history of XYZ sorority at my college and Delta will be included in that history. But as our past president said last night in our meeting, "everything evolves" and you cannot expect it to stay the same forever. I see this opportunity as a chance to grow as individuals and as a group. I am not sure how most of our alumni stand. We will have a better idea (about numbers) once we send out our next newsletter explaining about going national and which sororities are interested. I think we will get a good response.

xoxo

pinkyphimu - thanks for the welcome :) After the presentations last week I know of 7 girls who "were on the fence about going national" and now that they have been educated about what going national means, they're pro national and very excited about it. I knew that the majority of concern and disapprovement about going national stemmed from not really knowing what it meant. Some of our girls only knew about the CONS and none of the PROS. Since last week they've learned a lot.

FuziCrayon welcome to GC! Best wishes to your sorority !!! I hope you all find a match with the nationals!

Welcome fuzicrayon!
Question for you or Carnation ......

When are any decisions going to be made? Is there a general timeline of how things are going to go?

This is great! Especially cause KD is involved :D

I think that I heard the Student Life Director say that colonizations would occur next fall. Fuzicrayon, what have you heard?

By the way, y'all, I thought her screen name was pronounced *foozy* crayon today and asked her what on earth that was. She told me you say it "fuzzy" so....

Welcome, "Fuzzy"!!! Maybe you'll be wearing pink next year!

any word yet on which nationals were chosen??
and hey carnation....i think you may be in the same sorority as me?? or are you not allowed to tell b/c you're a moderator?
GO GAMMA PHI!!!:D

No, carnation is a proud PI BETA PHI!!!

*resisting urge to break into chant*

chants: Pi, Pi, Beta Phi!
P-I, P-H-I, Pi Phi!
Me for Pi, for Beta Phi, for I just love Pi Beta Phi!


But AAgammagirl--you might have sisters at our college soon since Gamma Phi is presenting in about a week!

FuziCrayon~ I'm so glad to hear that ya'll like Phi Mu (i am a little biased, but it's my personal favorite)! I hope everything goes well for all of you. You better keep us informed! I'm glad you all are looking at alumnae initiation for alums and I hope you enjoy the experience of going national.

Because both sororities are possibly being absorbed by whatever national they choose (nothings official yet), the man in charge wants to bring in one or two other sororities. They will colonize in the Fall. When we talked to Phi Mu about when we'd start doing things with them, if we both want each other, they said we'd try to have our 6-8 week new member education period before next fall, so that we could already know about the sorority and recruit girls, and then in the Spring of 2004 we would be installed at the same time as the girls we recruit would. I didn't word that very well. Did it make sense?

Oh yea, and the screen name thing is a long, yet funny, story. But yes, when you see my name you can picture a little fuzzy crayon in your head. You can even make it pink if you want *wink wink* I always drew it purple cause that was my favorite color... ;)

Purple is a great color, especially with gold! :D

Fuzicrayon, good luck with everything! Welcome to GC! Keep us updated on your progress please.:) It's so exciting to read this thread.!

Big drama with the locals' choice of sororities! I hope that Fuzicrayon will get on here soon to explain it. PLUS..she just went to a meeting of her sorority exec board plus the college president, dean, and student life advisor....I can't wait to hear what happened!

Oh my gosh, carnation! You should write for a network...what a good teaser! :)

*checking her watch* Fuzi: Get here soon! I only have 2 hours left of GC time...errr..... work!

OoOOOo I wanna know what happened!!

Oh, sorry! Well, I just found out that she registered for my class next year (thanks!;)) and I could tell her that if she doesn't get on here quickly, I'll change the section to 8 AM. How's that?:D

i love that idea carnation, because i want to know what's going on! Fuzi, please post!

carnation: Hehehehe...good idea! ;)

8 AM class. I so don't miss college. :p

You guys are silly :) Sorry it took me so long to reply again. Yes, I did meet yesterday with the President, Dean, and Student Life Director. We had a very fancy, very formal luncheon. Basically this was to inform our President of where we stand. He wanted to know what each sorority thought of the groups who have come and seen us already. He also wanted to know how our girls are handling the idea of change and if we're thinking of staying local vs. thinking of going national. This was his chance to talk to us personally. It was nice, but he didn't really tell us anything we didn't already know. We have not heard back from either of the sororities that came (except for some nice thank you letters I think). We will meet with Gamma Phi Beta in about a week. They're coming to present sooner than I thought.
There isn't much new to tell right now, we're just having to patiently wait.

I did find out, however, that the other local sorority here hasn't even held their meetings to talk about the nationals that have already come to visit. So Delta (because we're smaller) is kinda ahead of where they are right now. They're such a large group, that their meeting to discuss, debate, and voice opinions on going national will take much longer than ours (and ours took over two hours, during two meetings because one wasn't enough). I heard that they're kinda split down the middle about whether or not to go national. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. I'll keep you posted :)

AND PLEASE Carnation!!! For going nationals sake! Don't put me in the 8:00 class ;)

Yeah!! Thanks for the update, fuzi! :)

Okay, I guess we can't discuss the drama until later next week!:p The other sorority here still hasn't met to discuss options and they're going to wait until after Gamma Phi Nationals come next Monday. They'd better hurry, we only have about 2 more weeks of classes!

Can't wait...
 

...till next Monday! Though I have no scripted role in the presentation, I am really looking forward to being there for support! Go Gamma Phi!

* bump * :)

It's tomorrow! carnation and FuziCrayon, let us know how it goes!

ok...I will be at the presentation tomorrow...
 

...it's gonna be great! :D :D :D

http://e4u.consoleradar.com/happy/604.gif

Go Gamma Phi Beta!
http://e4u.consoleradar.com/happy/604.gifhttp://e4u.consoleradar.com/happy/604.gifhttp://e4u.consoleradar.com/happy/604.gifhttp://e4u.consoleradar.com/happy/604.gifhttp://e4u.consoleradar.com/happy/604.gifhttp://e4u.consoleradar.com/happy/604.gif

Yay!!! We will have THREE different perspectives on this!! awesome!

I hate this, but I won't be able to go to the lunch or the presentation tomorrow :( I have a job interview at 1:00.

Our sorority meeting is tomorrow night though, so I'll talk to the girls that went and get the scoop. And then I can report back to you guys!

I'm really nervous about my interview because this will be my first real job. No more baby-sitting or working for my parents company. It pays good and it's doing things that I like to do!

Wish me luck!

GOOD LUCK!!!!:D :) :cool:

The Gamma Phi presentation is going on as I speak! I stopped by and met a few women but had to leave since I had a cranky toddler with me. Rats! I wanted to meet you, GPhiBLtColonel!:(

There are blue and gold balloons all over the room...the exec said they hadn't changed their colors but that brown isn't the easiest color to work with, LOL!!! I can't wait to hear what happens! Surely the nationals and the locals will come to decisions soon since finals start in a little over a week.

oh i can't wait to hear how it went!! fuzi- i hope your job interview went well!!!