It's funny you brought this up because one of the chapters at my school is in this same position. They've been struggling for a few years and the past couple they've had other chapters from nearby schools come in to help with recruitment. Granted we only have five chapters on campus and we average about 90 girls each, this one only has about 40 or 50. They also don't have a house to fill. But as I was saying, granted out houses and overall greek system isn't as big as Mizzou's none of our chapters here had a problem with other chapters helping out the one that's hurting. The other houses on your campus who are opposed to letting XYZ sorority have multiple chapters help them at recruitment aren't showing very much greek unity. The also are obviously not thinking about the good of the greek system at your school as a whole. Those houses need to remember that you are only as strong as your weakest house.

Court

I am not sure if this is an appropriate course of action, but can you get the local or regional chapter of NPC involved? Would that be appropriate? It sound like some of those groups need a lesson in panhellenic spirit.

The thing is, no one's really doing anything....I mean I know doing nothing is as bad as doing something....but there is not one chapter on our campus who has a favorable opinion of XYZ.....mostly because, IMO, they needed serious help or removal years ago and at this point it's like, it's too late. I mean I seriously think my house and FAB's are like the only two who would be willing to help them out......and FAB I don't know about you but don't you just get that feeling like "Hey we're willing to help but it's not gonna do any good" ?


And sorry if I was misleading about the campus paper. They're not getting involved and accusing them of cheating, but they've reported that they're going to close unless they reach 55 and quoted some girls of the more "elite" sororities who didn't think it was fair. Since Greektown is off campus but on campus (did that make sense???) of course they're going to cover it.....one of those things where you wish they could have a heart but in all fairness, they have a right to report it. I just wish they didn't take the angle they did.

I went through rush in 2002 and later found out the chapter I chose would be closing because of numbers and finances. We had around 50 sisters, the next smallest sorority was 70, the largest was around 120, and our internationals felt we werent having an "alpha phi experience" During rush, a lot of the other groups that were competeing with Alpha Phi were talking down our sorority ( I experienced this) Our panhellenic wrote a letter to the internationals asking them to allow us to remain and all but one chapter signed the letter.

Honestly, I think our house had a large part to do with rush because only 6 people could live there compared to 30 something people in other homes. Two chapters have massive off campus places and the rest were University owned homes on Frat court.

In the end, we beat the other groups in Lip Sync (which is huge at NCSU) and basically went out with a bang and having the most mixers with any fraternity. i still feel a lot of resentment to some of the other people in sororities that I first handedly had bad experiencings with. (one girl asked how much dues were going to be for my group and then went OH yeah you guys don't exist anymore"

I lvoe the girls i run into now that tell me they admired my groups sisterhood though. Its really just a mixture from chapters some are supportive and some are super nasty.

Originally posted by AXJules

Quote:

The thing is, no one's really doing anything....I mean I know doing nothing is as bad as doing something....but there is not one chapter on our campus who has a favorable opinion of XYZ.....mostly because, IMO, they needed serious help or removal years ago and at this point it's like, it's too late. I mean I seriously think my house and FAB's are like the only two who would be willing to help them out......and FAB I don't know about you but don't you just get that feeling like "Hey we're willing to help but it's not gonna do any good" ? And sorry if I was misleading about the campus paper. They're not getting involved and accusing them of cheating, but they've reported that they're going to close unless they reach 55 and quoted some girls of the more "elite" sororities who didn't think it was fair. Since Greektown is off campus but on campus (did that make sense???) of course they're going to cover it.....one of those things where you wish they could have a heart but in all fairness, they have a right to report it. I just wish they didn't take the angle they did.

Jules-
I totally agree with you! I know our chapter really wants to help them but we get the same kind of feeling "Will it really do any good?" It's such a sad thing, but it just doesn't seem like anything is happening with them. I really hope recruitment goes ok for them, though I also think it's a little bit too late for them as well, which is really sad. :(

A big house speaks out
 

I know this is an old thread but we are members of one of Mizzou's largest houses on campus and one that had many problems with xyz's proposal. We thought everyone might want to know why we think the things we do, and it's not what you think. We feel no threat by these extra girls we are actually trying to protect the PM's going through recruitment. There are 55 xyz's returning not counting the straw pole our house did with our xyz friends (and yes we have them we have always reached out to help other houses in any way we can) finding as many as 10 planned to not return as members this fall. Yes these women obviously need help with only 45 of them, it would be one girl to every PM (which means there is acutally no way they could hot box, whoever said that is confused it has to be 3 or more sorority members on one PM not vice versa). Anyway it would take a huge new member pledge class for them to not get their charter pulled. When our president talked to them they said they planned to immediatly innitiate these girls regardless of if they were close to target number or not. This would mean that all those PM's would be innitiated and then the charter would be pulled and they would have been greek for all of 10 minutes and not be able to rush again. Our president tried to persuade them to hold off on initiation or talk to nationals and lower their target number, they refused both. Last year when they had help they just had filler girls, who didn't speak to NM's. This year they will have the non mizzou girls speak to the girls, and will not announce to the girls until the last or second to last day of recruitment that all of them are not from Mizzou. It was our idea to have them have other name tags but they declined. As far as telling girls during rush about xyz, that will not happen at our house. We never speak of other sororitys unless refering to anual social events with them. Even though we are a larger so called "elite" house we too have to combat the nasty rumors other houses spread about us. We just wanted you all to know we did not apose it to be hatefull, and we do want to be helpfull. In fact the last two years we have gone to XYZ on pan hel mock rush and offered them many suggestions, we invite them to our house to see our style as well. We also offered to do this with Phi Mu last year but it never happend. We would love if XYZ would remain on campus, but we don't believe being decietful to new members and possibly robbing them of a greek experience all together is the way to do it. We hope we didn't offend any one, we just want people to see where we are coming from, we have spent hours and hours working through this in our house (thats a lot for people who suposidly don't care!)

Wow ! this all boggles my mind coming from a school where the largest GLO in campus has only about 45 members, having that be considered a failing chapter is amazing. NE WAY... I understand that this sorority shouldn't be deceiving this PNMs by letting them think all these XYZs are sisters from that chapter... BUT... the whole initiation thing doesn't make much sense... I mean they have to have a new member period... they can't just initiate the next day... and if they don't bid enough girls... the nationals will know and pull the charter... which means that they will not be around to initiate anyway, right ? so it seems to me the only way for the new women to be initiated is if there is enough of them to sastify the requirement put on them by their national org. I mean I *personally* feel that having chapters with over 200 people is kinda ridicllous... I mean sure you *can* have sisterhood... but I'd have to argue that it makes it harder with that many women, plus it makes being able to take on an leadership role that much more competetive and part of being in a sorority is having the opportunity to be a leader of some sort and being involved...those are two of the things that keep women around for a lifetime, not just be there for four years to wear the letters. If this chapter survives it seems to me that the whole greek system would be stronger because all the chapters would have more to offer their sisters in terms of opportunuties and experience because hopefully the numbers would be more evenly spread out.

Re: A big house speaks out
 

Mizzougal-

Thank you for saying something about the other side. It is not your house that bothers me b/c knowing what I do about your chapter I would never have expected you guys to be anything less than supportive. You guys are in my opinion anyway, the top house on our campus mainly b/c you're so well rounded and yall are great at everything you do and I think that's awesome. :) It's just some of those....other houses, I'm sure you probably know which ones I might be talking about that bother me. :)

The only thing is, sometimes calling for backup doesn't help. One chapter on my campus has been having some serious number problems for a few years now (literally...they only got 1 new girl from formal rush this past year, and not many more from informal), and I know when I went through recruitment (Jan 2002), other members were brought in from another state school to assist this chapter with recruitment. It was a good idea, in theory, it would make them look like they had more people and avoid some of the double/triple rushing problems. But I spoke to some of the other girls going through recruitment, and some of the girls who rushed them were girls from the other school. To the PNMs, this was a big red flag, plus it made the whole thing seem pretty disorganized since the girls from the other school didn't seem to know a lot about the local chapter's operations/activities/etc...Not their fault though, it's not their school. This year, the chapter will not be participating in formal recruitment, and I believe they are reorganizing or recolonizing (yes, I do realize there's a difference, but I'm not sure which they are doing) and are expected to return in a couple of years. It's sad, but personally I think they should have done this a couple of years ago, before it got to this point. :(

That is one of our major concens is what will they say when asked about mizzou experiences. Plus it is inevitable that they will hear about it somehow and ask not just XYZ but us too. We are trying to figure out what the classiest response to them will be. Do you lie, tell the truth, dismiss the question? Rumors during rush are really bad, we get girls asking if we have a 5.0 gpa requirment ...on a 4.0 scale? or they heard we have a glitter factory in the basement and the nm's have to run it (we glitter everything that stands still long enough), so I bet the rumor mill on this one will be way out of control. I can't speak for all the houses that oppose this but I know mine is just worried about the PNM's.

And yes they are planning to innitiate right away after a short pledgeship....this was our major concern. I think they even talked about multiple innitiations as far as getting girls after formal rush. Alpha Phi had problems on campus a few years ago and they took a break and came back right before my freshman year and now they are really going strong. Mizzou has a strange problem we have too many girls we could use more sororitys but at the same time we have a few really struggling and another handful that are not in the best shape. So we have to figure out how to fix that before we have 5 500 person houses!

And being in a chapter of 200+ girls is really not that bad. You get to know a whole lot of people and you are close with a lot of them...not all of them, but there are so many girls that each bring something different to your relationship and challenge you in so many ways.


Thank you so much FAB*SpiceySpice your words about our chapter were so nice...We hope you were talking about THETA! :) We have a lot of respect for everything your chapter has gone through to become what it has on campus, you and Lambda Chi both did an amazing job!!!

Thank you so much! And yes I was definately talking about Theta, I just think you girls are so awesome!!! By the way, I am so jealous of all your guys' glitter, my girls don't ever want to glitter anything but I insist on it, I think it's so fun. :D

I still don't understand how they can get away with initiation after not a full (at least 4 weeks is the minimum I have heard of for any NPC org...) new member period. I know our national checks up on that and we have to get permission to initiate before and turn in signed bid cards and everything, so they know if we're breaking the rules about length of pledging. Now as for having multiple initiations... there's nothing wrong with that... it's uncommon... but if you are allowed to take on COBs... you can technically do that all semester and initiate them after their pledge period... it takes some work on the dates so that the new member period is long enough.. (ours is around 6 weeks) but my chapter did two initiations this past spring... there's no rules against it that I know of... I def. see a problem if they plan on shortening the new member period past what their national rules say it should be...

wow i'm amazed at how this thread has gone, i have to say though that the reason that that chapter wants to initiate quickly is probably because their nationals is making them. my chapter was put in the situation where we had to recruit 30 women and initiate them in a little over a month to stay on campus. this was what we ere told by our nationals. we chose instead to opt for recolonization in a year, but i'm proud of these women and the way they are fighting to stay on campus. realize that these women want to pnms to have the greek experience and that they probably don't want to rush hte new member process but htey need to in order to meet a deadline set by their nationals. if the pnms are so mad about the deception when it comes to talking with women who aren't a member of mizzou's chapter of the org then they will drop them. i jsut hope everything works out wiht the whole situation.

I would come up with an appropriate, panhellenic answer and have EVERY MEMBER memorize it. It's not good to lie, it's not your business to talk about, so I would find a graceful way to dismiss the question. Maybe steer the conversation towards Panhellenic Unity or belonging to something bigger.....

OMG, that made me laugh so hard!!! What does a glitter factory look like, anyway? Is it noisy?:D

You're right about the rumor mill...Can't you just hear some of the more...blunt PNMs asking them, "So, is it true you guys are gonna get shut down?" or asking other chapters, "So, is XYZ closing or something?"