True
 

35 is not small at all. I know fraternitys on my campus that have about 10-15 guys and they are doing just fine. It's not the # of women/men in a fraternity/sorority it's the quality of them. I would rather have 1 good level headed sister that knows her shit, than have 10 sisters that are just in it to be party animals and goof off. As long as you have the quality and true reasoning in becoming a sorority/fraternity you are going to succeed.

It seems money is in many of these threads! Of course it is with the risk managment that is place today! Even All of the Internationals HDQ are feeling the pinch!

To me a 100 person chapter is way to large! Why, he asked? Do you know all of the members?

We have @ 6500 people on campus and not but @ 6 % are Greeks! We have 5 Fraternitys and 3 Soroitys!

LXA, SX, PKA, STG, PSK, and SPE. AGD, ASA, SSS!

Come and gone, ADP, PR ( LOCAL ), KD. Small National and TKE!

Face it folks, because of the screw ups by some Internatioals that got kicked off and had charters taken it is tough out there!

I admire the TEKEs as they are trying to recolonize lost chapters as is LXA and going to new ones.

Yes I new Eric "CONARD" at PSU and he is the one who aimed me to LXA!

At the present we are the next smallest Fraternity on campus next to PSK. We are pushing for a bigger Associate class than ever before!

As Eric knows from having been at PSU it is a tuff Greek Campus.


But The way things are going, they are all becoming tuff greek schools, (Alfred U. NY) Dennison U Ohio that took all of the houses away!

It is time that the Greeks act like the adults that they are supposed to be!

We do more on and for Campuses than the Independents do and if not for Greeks, There aint no Homecoming or people in the stands of the Football games!

If LXA is not there I would not go back to the damn School!

I paid my dues while I was there and that is the only reason I go back!

It is a tuff call but why have chapters where you do not know all of your Brothers and Sisters!

Of course I do not know all of mine being # 1 and we are up to 599 initiataes. But I now one hell of a lot of them!

I would love to see a Strong Soroity or three to start a Chapter at The Piit!

How about New Fraternitys, Competition is good. S#@T or get off the pot!

I tell my guys, if you have someone who is not doing the job tell them to GTFO!

Get The F*&^ Out! We Need to survive!

LCA tries to help a few
 

This Spring at Shippensburg University the House Corpaoration of LCA made a conscious effort for the first time ever to work with the other groups in our neighborhood. TKE, DU, Pi Lam, DZ, Phi Sig Sig and a local sorority, Sigma Delta.

Working with the mennonite develpoer that built our houses we had a neighborhood greeks meeting to address finances, and safety and heloping out the poorer and more screwed up groups in the neighborhood.

And by god it seems to have helped out, we got lights on all the houses for free, and got some neighborhood policies down, had a neighborhood cleanup and made an email group.

Some of the orgs have started to help the others out with small things that they arent good at (we helped SD get letters for their house)

In fact, some groups that dont live in our private neighborhood are pissed they arent included. So all greeks arent being hlepd, just our neighbors, and Ive never seen the like before, but I think this fall it will help all 7 houses rush.

Lenoxxx

I wanted to say something along those lines too. I went to a small school -- 1200 students at the time, though they're aiming to add a few hundred to that over the next few years -- and GLO participation has been low for, oh, the past few decades. My chapter had 24 people after my class joined, and we crested at 33 in the time I was there. I think all the fraternities (there are five, in school-owned housing, though the rules on that are changing) were in the 25-40 range. There are three sororities (no housing, as a general matter), which had a wider and more variable range of numbers but none over about 40 or 45. One of them is now rebuilding from single digits, and is doing so rather effectively, too. The recruitment and daily living dynamic at that kind of school is very different from large schools with tens of thousands of students and tens of GLOs.

I can say that had the issue come up I would have been skeptical about having more than 40 or 50 members in my chapter. The chapter tends to be very close. Had there been more members, it would have been difficult to develop a house so founded on close personal relationships. I learned a lot more socially because of that.

So, I guess I have two points. 1) There is strength in smaller numbers just as in larger ones; the strengths are just different. Finding the right balance and choosing goals goals that fit your numbers is the trick. Get too small, and financial and organizational survival becomes difficult; but get too large, and people don't know each other as well, and there's a potential to miss out on a particularly rewarding aspect of Greek life. 2) Different schools result in different challenges and potentially different roles for Greek systems. Size is a big factor, but so are the ambient political and social atmosphere at a school and the institution's educational goals and vision. In the smaller private lib-arts schools, it's been crucial for us to identify the roles that we can play and to show that both to the student body and the administration, or we will find existence increasingly difficult. Those roles run the gamut from accomplishing philanthropic feats to helping individuals-- our members and those we encounter, grow as human beings. I'm not so informed about the challenges that face groups at larger schools, though I'm looking forward to learning more about that here.

I've rambled for more than long enough. Have a good one, all. I'm looking forward to chances to chat with all of you, but I've a bar exam to tend to for the next few days.

--

Phi Kappa Tau, Mu Chapter
init. '96

Re: True
 

Obviously Natalie, you have not worked with the Greeks on much of a scale. You cannot support a chapter, with a house,
paying risk management fees, with a dinky 35 member chapter.
Go local if you want to be in that "selective" mold.
Even back in the 50s we panicked when we got down to 50 in
the house, forced out-of-house members to move in or help in
the defraying of the losses.
If you know of chapters of 10-15 members "doing well" then you
must not have much of a system, and I will tell you t hat the Pikes, Tekes, Sig Eps, SAE's, Lambda Chis, Betas, et al., will certainly not be knocking on your door to join you...I guarantee it. Your concept of fraternity is about one hundred years behind.
Sorry, but as a board member I would close the house or do something to pull us out of this obsolete mind-set.
Tell me one big school with an average chapter s ize under 40.
Perhaps a street car college with no house, but they have but a
little to offer in contrast. Please furnish rebuttal on this....do.
If you do not feel that way, then go local, get rid of the house, do
something other than be a drag on the other chapters.
In other words, get real or get out.

Eric, I beg to differ...

Your plant size should reflect your chapter size... Generally over time, a successful chapter will maintain itself (or grow) around a certain #.

If your plant size is the right one for the chapter you'll do fine. A 30-35 man chapter can EASILY support a house large enough to support 10 or so men... On some campuses this is acceptable.

At my house, the largest fraternity on campus is only up around 80 members and is currently residing in what looks like a 2 story double wide trailer.

The standard is not the same from campus to campus. You have to look at each individual situation and even further, each individual chapter.

ktsnake--

Couldn't agree more. My chapter is a 45 woman chapter, and we maintain a house that 18 girls live in. We make all of our bills on time, have fundraisers for philanthropy, and have enough money to do all of the things we need to do. AND, we don't pay thousands of dollars in dues....last semester, dues were $145.

Re: Re: True
 

Actually at my school we aren't allowed to have "fraternity and sorority houses." We do however, have houses that have sorority and fraternity members, we just aren't allowed to call it a "house" So you can get rid of that idea

And the fraterntiy that I was talking about that has only about 10-15 members is TKE. They are one of the best organizations on campus, and a lot of other fraternities look up to them, for their succeeding. My organization has 41 members and we are doing just fine as well. It's quality, not quantity.

My chapter is national, why would we want to go back to being local? Please. We are doing just fine with everything we have to offer plus more. We worked our asses off to get to be national and nobody is going to take that away from us.

Thank you

Greatly said! :) Well done!

bump

Re: True
 

Natalie, with all due respect, you are either
1) new at this and/or
2) have not had the leadership experience or demands and/or
3) have not had to pay the bills and/or
4) have been to few if any province or national-level conferences
To maintain a 10-15 member chapter over any period of time is
to drain the organization, money-wise, as NONE can afford to
keep such a chapter on the rolls for very long. If quality has any
thing to do with it, you will not remain a 10-15 member outfit very
long as everyone on campus will want to join your group
You obviously mean well but do not have a clue what it takes to
run a chapter and carry your load. Go local.

Mr. Conard,

Aside from having a noticeable love for the word "obviously" in your rhetoric, you "obviously" have a very narrow view of what greek life and life in a national organization can be.

Now you can probably see why I don't like the rhetorical devices that you've been using, so let's abandon that approach to argument.

Let's step through your list above and see if we can take apart the argument in it, if indeed there be any. I mean you no personal ill, but I disagree strongly with your argument, so I am not going to be particularly gentle with it.

1) New at this. The only plausible purpose of this particular statement -- that I can imagine -- is to demean Natalie's credibility. You discard it far too readily.

2) Have not had the leadership experience or demands. I cannot follow the logic in this remark at all. As I said above, I'm from a campus where the GLOs, all of which are nationally affiliated, range in size from 14 to maybe 40, none more than 50, on a campus of about 1300 total. It is at least as demanding to lead a group of 14 as it is to lead a group of 40. There are more tasks to be accomplished by fewer people; more is demanded of each. A single slacker is more dangerous to the organization than she or he would be among larger numbers. A personal conflict by sheer mathematics involves a greater proportion of the members. Because of the nature of personal relationships and the burdens on the individuals, a personal conflict is likely to be more challenging as well. These challenges can be overcome, but do not have an illusory view of the kind of achievement that takes. The demands are higher, not lower. Those who achieve them accomplish and grow more, not less.

3) Have not had to pay the bills. You speak as though every chapter has the same kinds of bills. In fact, different chapters have very different kinds of financial obligations. Some live in school-owned housing. Some have no housing. They do not all attempt the same scale of programs. The insurance and maintenance burdens are likely to differ substantially depending on the organization's housing situation. Do not assume that all schools are alike in this respect, that all organizations are alike, or that only one kind of Greek life is (a) ideal or (b) deserving of participation in national organizations. If this is the point you want to make, you have a lot more to prove.

4) Have been to few if any province-level or national conferences. Mr. Conard, at conferences, does your organization send its small chapters the message that they are a drain on resources and not worth the fraternity's letters? From what I have heard, any organization that would give that kind of message is the exception, not the rule. All of the conference stories that I have heard, from members of numerous organizations, involve a great amount of cheering on and support for the smaller chapters. In the end, I think that this point amounts to another baseless attack on credibility.

The necessities of Greek life are not identical in every situation or on every campus, and it is not the case that only one size of chapter can offer members unique benefits. I can only imagine that at the school you attend or once attended, a chapter is not a worthwhile effort unless it has 50 members to support a mansion-- maybe the greek system and campus there simply don't 'work' that way. Maybe a large house is a sheer necessity for recruitment there. But that is simply not the case everywhere. I attended a small college for undergraduate and a large university for graduate school. My chapter's house is school-owned and has a capacity of twenty-three people. This is a higher capacity than the house it had before it went into school-owned housing around 1940. Historically, the sororities have had no housing whatsoever, though that is starting to change. Do you mean to imply that my chapter is not worth the effort? That the entire Greek system at my college is not worth the effort? That the organization that owns a house worth $1.2 million on the University of Colorado campus near where I now live for some reason should not have a fourteen-member chapter on the campus of my own alma mater? Is their sisterhood somehow weaker on the basis of a priori principles that you have not articulated? My hunch is that the small chapter's sisterhood is in some ways more dynamic and powerful. My chapter does not have the 60 members that it had in the 1950s; it has around 30. I would not say that it is weak.

If you wish to prove that a chapter with fewer than 50 members is worthless and ought not to be nationally affiliated, you have an argument to make that is far more challenging and demands much more cautious and complete an analysis than anything you have heretofore said. I've seen nothing yet that accounts for the variability between campuses and between chapters. I've seen nothing that provides any valid reason that a small chapter should not be nationally affiliated -- or in any event you have not laid every step of your argument out clearly. I have seen no explanation as to the benefits of Greek life that I supposedly missed out on by being a member of a chapter with 36 members at its largest point while I was there. I have not seen an explanation as to why what I did obtain from that experience was economically not worth the investment of time, energy, and money. (The latter investment was really not that bad at all, and I am not at all wealthy.)

What exactly are these resources that are supposedly being drained by the small chapters? How is it that are they so completely drained that they ought to be expelled -- or asked to resign -- from the ranks of those who strive to attain the ideals that their organizations espouse? Ought we really to reject our brothers and sisters who have small groups at a given school because they are small? I can't claim any knowledge about your organization; I believe that such an approach would run counter to the cardinal principles of my own.

My case is probably most difficult on large campuses where some organizations have 50, 100, or more members and large houses while others have fewer than 35 members and smaller houses or no housing. My campus was nothing like that, but I grew up in Madison, WI, and went to law school at the University of Minnesota. From what I've seen, diversity among chapters in terms of size assures that different kinds of Greek-letter chapters are available to those who might prefer different personal dynamics in their organization. I would not have wanted to join an organization with 100 members; 30 to 40 suits me just fine. Yes, on the big campuses, those smaller organizations are usually striving to grow to the size of the others, but they are not worthless in the interim.

A chapter on a large campus that has numerous large chapters might be small for numerous reasons. In some cases, the small size may be a symptom of poor management, shoddy personal relations within the chapter, and general failure to achieve. In that kind of case, yes, there is a problem with the small chapter. But the small size is not the problem, it is a symptom of other problems. On the other hand, small size might reflect a different personality that simply draws fewer people in recruitment, or of the lack of a house or other typical recruitment "draws." In that case, if the chapter is internally well-run, is not struggling to maintain its existence, and can offer its members the brother- and sisterhood that are at the core of fraternal life, then I just can't see what the problem is. If such a chapter is struggling to exist from year to year, then it needs to reexamine its approach to recruitment and perhaps redefine its identity a bit, but we should probably do that to some extent every year anyway.

In short, I argue again that what you are claiming are simple facts of life of fraternity life are not universal facts that apply to every Greek environment. If your argument depends on assumptions that facts about Greek life are universal, then be prepared to make a strong argument that those facts are universal -- an argument that does not merely state, "this fact is universal." There is in small Greek life at least as powerful a potential for the development of strong brother- and sisterhood as there is in large Greek life.

Alternatively, we can let this entire argument go. In my opinion, it should not have been bumped.

Greek life -- national Greek life -- exhibits itself in different ways on different chapters. Small size is not necessarily weakness, and it is definitely not worthlessness.

You put your real name on your posts; it doesn't seem fair for me not to.

** edited for grammar, reduction of rhetoric, and adding two paragraphs.

--
Timothy P. Hadley -- tph-lex.com
Mu Chapter of Phi Kappa Tau, initiated January 1996.
Lawrence University, 1999.
University of Minnesota Law School, 2002.

Mr. Hadley, I can disagree with what you say one iota! With the one exception, I have a tremendous respect for Eric Conard as I have know hime since 1965 when I founded my local!

He knew that I wanted to do something different for many different reasons! He was instrumental in aiding me to get my group on campus against a small National. He was also instrumental in pointing me towards LXA!

Eric has been in all facets of Greek Life With TKE and has run across and against many of the Old Line Greeks from most Nationals!

Is He oppinuated, yes, why , from Knowledge of having been in teh trenches!

Does he want the Total Greek Society to Grow. Yes, as he would be more than willing to work with any new group wanting to come to a new campus.

E C may be brusque but you must try to see the thought of what is behind his posts!

i have nothing but admiration for this Interfraternal Brother as I would and do to many I have met on this Great Site!

I know he wishes I was a Member Of TKE as I Wish He was a Brother of LXA!

I and E C appreciate your response as I find it very inlighting and intellegent as that is what this fine site is for!

While We are all different, we are the same!

Here's My 2 Cents
 

On my campus at Rockhurst Univ. there are only about 1500 students and 3 fraternities and 2 sororities, for about 20% involvement in Greek Life.

From a fraternity standpoint, Pike has 60 guys, TKE has 30, and Alpha Delta Gamma has 2. SAE was kicked off our campus recently for hazing with about 45-50.

Without the SAEs on campus, the Pikes main competition I guess is from TKE. Pike is the only organization with university housing, and basically dominates without competition. However, how hard is it to really dominate if your chapter has no real rival?

As an active, I helped create this success for my chapter. Now, as an alum, alot of my hard work is going down the drain because the chapter is becoming lazy. In my opinion, they are taking on the attitudes and ideas of the lesser chapters because they don't have to worry about losing rush or Homecoming or things like this. Those things that we worked so hard to win now are second thoughts!

I would love to see Sig Ep or Beta come onto our campus although the university will not let them. It would motivate the Pikes and hopefully the other chapters on campus to get their acts together. Even when Pike was not the top chapter on our campus, we at least had a standard to look up to. Now, even at the top, there is no one climbing the mountain!

This is Eric's point and is incredibly insightful and indicative of how ALL GLO's should think. Regardless of anything else, competition is a great way to build leadership skills in an organization, and needs to be embraced by ALL GLO's!!!

Re: Here's My 2 Cents
 

I'm all the way behind the idea that every group should strive to excel. But counting numbers, while easy, is not the only measure of excellence, and I do not think there should be an arbitrary cutoff where a chapter is deemed worthless because it slipped below the magic numbers line.

Erik was talking as though numbers are the sole measure of a chapter's merit, and that a chapter with fewer than, say, somewhere from 35 to 50 members ought to be shut down. I don't think that's an exaggeration of what he's been arguing, if you read back through his posts. That way of looking at the life and the potential in a chapter leaves too much out. Bad years happen. Bad fives of years happen, sometimes even though committed members try to prevent them. Sometimes you have a group that has good people but has trouble marketing itself. Its members can still have a strong fraternal experience. Other times you have a group that has had a few crops with too many bad apples. They have to reform the chapter as well as figure out marketing. Either way, times like that can be followed by years of excellence.

I, too, would ordinarily not expect a chapter that is down to 10-15 members to survive; I agree that a chapter in that kind of situation would probably have to set expansion as its top priority. But when a group that size has shown its determination to survive, then it's not yet time to put the charter in trust. I know of an example where a sorority chapter is rebounding from about five or six members (with some out of town) to 14 now, and I predict quite a few more this year. It's deferred rush, so we have to wait and see. They're a remarkable group, and I believe that they have what it takes to survive in a situation where recruitment is very difficult and to show off Greek excellence while doing it. If someone had arbitrarily shut them down at some point in the last few years, they would never have had the chance.

My chapter was down to 14 in 1995 but rebounded nicely. It would have been an astonishing shame to lose them in 1995. I am pretty certain that I would not have gone Greek (at that time, none of the other chapters on campus fit with my personality, and I hadn't even considered going Greek until I met my future brothers, so it would have passed me by). We certainly wouldn't be here today to have people saying things about us like you see at the very end of this post.

Thanks for your post.