Oh I thought everyone just called that pledging.

-Rudey

Huh?
 

Forgive me for my bluntness, and with all due respect, but I think that's a horrible thing for people to do if it is to be your FIRST STEP...

Those type of actions should be the last on your list after
1) talking to the officers in charge -president first, then the officer in charge of scholarship.
2) talking to the Alumni board

Telling nationals is the LAST resort, because in today's age of political correctness, chapters get busted for EVERYTHING...
There should be more respect for the chapter itself...

When all else fails, then go to nationals - but that should be the Last thing...

As for initiation, the word "initiation" that I know stands for the day and ritual ceremony that enters you into the fraternity (learning the ritual/secrets/etc)...

Perhaps because the guy was a pledge, he didn't know the difference - but all things before initiation is considered "pledging."

Okay, I couldn't find where he said he was from Iowa State, but if he is, then he's dead on. Triangle at Iowa State is not one of the top houses academically. Nor are they known for their social prowess. The chapter house is too far away from Greekland to really have any social pull.

Dude, if other fraternities are interested, pledge another. From what I remember, most of them are not going to care that you had been a pledge at another fraternity as long as you're honest with them and you're not a total tool. (Though, each chapter needs its token tool.) You don't even need to wait until next fall; IIRC, fraternities at Iowa State can give bids throughout the year.

The Greek Life website has the Academics list up from fall 2005. Check there: www.greek.iastate.edu Looking at it, the chapters haven't changed much since I was in school.

Re: Huh?
 

I respectfully disagree for several reasons.

You first talk about discussing this with the officers and the alumni board. As to the officers, he did confront them with it, they told him that this was the way they did things, they didn't see eye to eye, so he quit.

As to the alumni board, my guess is either the alumni board for this particular chapter is inactive, or they are so out of the loop that they're irrelevant. No self-respecting alumni board would let their chapter fall into such a state of disrepair.

That said -- part of the mission of HQ's is to make sure that one chapter of their organization doesn't hurt another. I'm assuming that Triangle probably has pretty low insurance rates compared to other national groups. If they want to keep it that way, their HQ's need to know about chapters that aren't pulling their weight. If the "I-Week" period is 3 weeks long, and if that period is meant to interfere with studies, you can guess that there are also some serious risk management issues that need to be looked into.

Alums are there to help with those things, but they have a duty to inquire and know what is happening in their chapter. If they don't do that, and if they don't know, they need to be replaced.

In this day and age, chapters are busted for "everything" because "everything" can pose a serious threat to the coffers of those individual chapters as well as the entire national organization, and if they're part of one of these nouveaux self-insuring groups, one lapse could sink several organizations.

Putting it that perspective, alerting HQ to some of these issues would be the responsible thing to do.

Plus I really don't think this is something the HQ really needs to know about, I think knowing that the chapter is low as hell on numbers is sufficent enough to say that the chapter is struggling.

Why in the fuck did you want to pledge them in the first place. Did you not realize during rush that they had low numbers, their house smelled, and that they were a bunch of douchebags?

They told me that they had thirty to forty members, when most of them were moving out or leaving otherwise...and they said that they just "needed to clean" to explain the smell.

Even most dirty, smelly, nasty "frat boys" clean up the house for Rush parties.

Yeah, true that.

To the Greek Suporter:

Try again or transfer and pledge a good chapter at a good/better college/Uni. (no offense to your Alma Mater) but seriously try again or if no chapter on your campus match what you think a chapter should be you could always start your own.

From all of these posts, I would imagine this guy is some sort of a gay or something?

I'm sure you've participated in Rush. If you have, you must know that the P.O.S. houses tend to lie in order to get numbers. They then blanket bid, lie, do whatever they must. They are not in the game for dominance or quality, they're in it because they have to have x number of pledges in the house to pay the mortgage.

This is the case on my campus with a couple of houses (or it was when I was active). I can't imagine that any campus wouldn't have its worthless houses from which no one could blame a kid for realizing that they made a mistake by pledging there, and then cutting their losses.

Not necessarily. Fraternities at Iowa State rush just-graduated HS seniors in the summer right after school's out. Some guys may not even get to see the house if they go on a rush trip to Apple River or an ICubs game.

I lived in two differerent fraternities over two different summers and neither of them were very clean, even during rush events.

Also the ones that are clean at my Univ. are usually the newer ones or the ones that care about what people think of them, or just don't like the smell of ammonia.

Well here's whats wrong with all of the fraternity houses that don't smell bad.

1. They care what other people think about them. Huge mistake.

2. They're new.

3. They don't clean with ammonia. Ammonia destroys trace blood evidence so when you kill a drifter in your house you can drag it outside without worrying about using a tarp. The smell is just one of the side effects of being a house that kills people, and if your house doesn't kill people, you're clearly second tier.

If this is Iowa State, then I'd agree with ISUKappa's statement about the grade situation, the Resources section of the Greek Affairs page backs that up. The chapter is above the All Fraternity Average, but not in the top 10 chapters. Grade reports for all chapters are available for the past few semesters. If that's something that's truly important to you I'd check it out.

That said, I also agree with her that if you're truly interested in joining another house and other chapters expressed interest, it is possible at ISU to join another fraternity. I knew of guys that went this route and joined chapters of all different sizes. That said, if you're looking at joining some of those other chapters, there may be a much larger time commitment expected of you. With the fall comes Homecoming and that means Yell Like Hell, building lawn displays, community service, etc.

At my old chapter they tried to get me to do YLH, but with my study groups meet at night...seeing as how that's when it's convienent for them, so I skipped YLH most nights because again I had more important things to do.

Supporter: I agree that some of the activities you described may have been overly burdensome, but really, there are 24 hours in the day. As long as your chapter isn't asking anything unreasonable, you should do it. Budget your time accordingly. Your studies do come first, but they don't have to necessarily be the only thing in your life.

It sounds like you may need to learn how to balance things a little better. YLH sounds like it's something that just about everyone does. If everyone's doing it and still making good grades, you would have been okay if you hadn't blown it off.

I don't want to make any judgments, I know you're a smart guy, but do you really think that you have the time for Greek Life? You may seriously want to reconsider going through rush again. It's not for everyone.

I was rushed summer after my senior year and during my senior year. I went to rush events and didnt see the house till formal rush of freshman year and I was well aware of who was good, what houses were bad, etc.

I'm sure a lot of guys that rush have an idea of what some of the chapters are like, especially if they have older brothers or friends in chapters, but there are definitely some who haven't had that exposure who don't know what chapters are like. Bids can be given at any time during the summer, so if you only see one house and are given a bid there, some guys might accept it right away without seeing the other chapters.

greeksupporter...if youre gonna rerush a different fraternity, you should probably talk to people on campus that are in them to find out before rush what theyre all about. you can express your concerns and see what the guys say...this way you wont be disappointed twice and youll know what to expect!

Yeah that's what I've been doing, I look at all the fraternities that the guys in my old house called "douchebags" those guys tend to be cool. However, I learn their campus reputation party with them and see if they let me crash at their place if I'm 'unable' to make it home. So yeah, thanks for the advice.

just a question, but why do you want to join a greek organization? it seems like youre just interested in how their parties are, what girls they hang out with...and thats not what were all about. partying is part of what we do, but there are millions of other reasons that should be more important than that. philanthropy, community service, support system, belonging, brothers/sisters for life...that should all come first. you dont have to be part of an organization to party with them...most groups will let you come to parties if you arent pledging/initiated anyways. so when i said to research the organizations on your campus before, i meant to research their involvement on campus and what they are all about--not what kind of parties they throw and what kind of girls they hang out with!

This post would be a whole lot easier to read with some punctuation and a few capital letters.

Well the thing I've found is the coolest guys tend to do the most partying and they also tend to hang out with the most women, I mean ladies do you honestly like to spend your time with a bunch of assholes?, so that's what I'm worried about for now. Than after I find out which ones have the coolest guys, than I think I'll find out which ones tend to have the most in common with me.

So you're saying you're cool? But what if you're not?

I'll cross that bridge when I come to it...

But cool people don't join a house full of douchebags, right? And you joined a house of people that you describe as douchebags, didn't you?

Humility is a good thing.

Others may disagree, but I don't know too many guys who would put "philanthropy" at the top of the list of what they're looking for in a fraternity. Not saying guys aren't interested in philanthropy, but aside from a general "it's good to do community service," I don't think it's something most guys choose a fraternity for. Things like brotherhood are going to be much higher on the list.

My $0.02.

Hm, most of the new Frosh do not know Brother Hood from Squat.

They dont look at Philanthropy either.

The look at the House that a Group is in. First impressions are not always the best.

They look at guys who act cool and party and who they party with.

But, once they find out the real deal, it is as You mentioned. What does this Organization really do. What is life after Graduation?

Can I be and do more with Life and My Organization.

Well Tom, Lambda Chi Alpha was one of the houses that I was looking at. At my school they're big into baseball, which I am aswell. They have a really nice house and they seemed cool when I hung out with them. Also every year they turn their chapter home into a haunted house...which seems like it would be fun. My favorite part is that they were third in GPAs on campus and first of all wet houses. I also like the AM program aswell.

Thanks for the nice words about My Fellow Brothers!:cool:

Yeah it's a nice place, just need to do some more stuff with them to make sure I fit in.

They used to do the haunted house thing at my campus way back in the early 80's, as their big philanthropy for MDA. They also did a gangster party where they would "jail" someone from each GLO and get donations for MDA to release them. Then they had a big 20's style gangster/mafia type party (dates and those who had been "incarcerated". It was great fun. All the women in their flapper dresses and the guys in suits. I'd forgotten all about those. Sorry for the hijack :)

Do you honestly expect a freshman male to think like this when choosing a house? No. They look at reputation, type of guys, parties, women, reputation with women, what sororities do they hang out with....and if those are the tops on campus. Philanthropy and the brotherhood aspect are learned later.

AlphaFrog--didnt know that this was an english assignment and that i needed to spell check and do a grammar check on my posts before i posted them...

and the things i wrote about being important in an greek organization werent in any specific order. they are all important. and i guess freshman boys dont think about philanthropy and stuff like that, but i know when i was going through rush, every house i went to told me about that right away. and told me about how important sisterhood is. so macallan25, saying that the brotherhood aspect is learned later shouldnt happen. why else are you going to join a fraternity or sorority if you dont know anything about what sisterhood or brotherhood is about??? i know you dont realize what its really all about until youre a part of it, but you should be able to tell potential members about your sisterhood or brotherhood and how important it is to you. thats how my rush was.

i would never choose a sisterhood based on who the group hangs out with and parties with...thats kinda sad to me. if you just wanna party all the time, hang out with your friends and dont waste anyones time.

What do you mean it shouldn't happen. Brotherhood is learned when you join the group and go through your pledge period. How do you expect a rushee to automatically know what brotherhood is all about. You can't just tell someone what it is in a few sentences and expect them to fully grasp it.

To a point, I'd agree and would concede the point about brotherhood being "learned" later. But there may be some difference between those who come to college with no knowledge of the Greek system other than what they've seen in movies and TV, and those who have grown up with Greek parents, siblings or other close relatives or friends. The latter, I would guess, have a more developed idea of what Greek life is about and a better grasp of the brotherhood/sisterhood concept, even if they haven't experienced it firsthand.

Of course, for those people, being a legacy might be one of the first factors in choosing a GLO.

It's not an English assignment. But we assume you posted because you want others to know what you think on the subject. It defeats the purpose if others have to re-read your post 3 times just to figure out what the sentences are.

As AlphaFrog said, a little punctuation and some capital letters go a long way toward keeping a post from looking like a long string of letters and words and making a post easier to follow.

I didn't say ANYTHING about spelling and grammar, that apparently would be asking way too much of you. I said punctuation and capital letters. I'm assuming since you're a Chi Omega, that means you are in some sort of higher learning facility, and therefore should be able to locate the SHIFT key on your keyboard, and maybe the apostrophe.

A Tree is Just a tree.

Wasnt there a Poet who used no CAPITALS and PUCTUATION?

If one can read the post, dont worry about it!:rolleyes:

If You cant, then ask a question!:p