Where are these options to be kept? Who is going to grade the groups on how they handle these things? Who will decide what is acceptable? What would work for one group, will not work for others. Human and financial resources are different--priorities and values are different among orgs. I appreciate where you're coming from, but its not anyone's place to tell another org how to do things.

Weird: I really thought I had responded, but the post didn't appear.

I think that people in the general public, press, university administration will all grade and judge and that all groups would be better off if they agreed to follow generally agreed upon protocols. I think they could be enforceable however all other NPC guidelines are or aren't.

Even though every situation is different, we do have rules and guidelines for rush, and we end up having similar policies in a lot of other areas too.

The problem with just letting each doing it's own thing is that big blow-ups like the DePauw situation reflect on everyone. Since we all know that our groups have also reorganized chapters or closed and immediate re-opened them, it's not as if we can honestly say, "well, we would never do that." And I think that whatever autonomy each group would give up would be more than rewarded by the peace of mind (and better PR and image) that would come with having a well defined process.

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I've been getting that a LOT on GC lately!

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What I would suggest is that if you want your organization to handle things a certain way that you approach your leadership and let them know that. I hope most of our organizations would know how to deal with reorganizations and that they should treat their members in these situations with dignity and respect without rules telling them to do so.

Again, I believe most organizations are looking at the De Pauw situation and carefully considering how to handle similiar situations in the future, realizing that every situation is going to be different and needs to be handled that way. I don't think another set of unanimous agreements from NPC are going to help.

I hope that GLO members do act as you suggest and I hope that the national officers respond likewise. I think that internal policies might be the ones most likely to acted upon. I still think, though, that since the PR from other organizations carries over, that NPC guidelines would help. (I think clear cut rules would have helped in the DePauw situation.)

Nothing my organization did would have prevented the DePauw situation, and yet, it may influence PNM attitudes about pledging any GLO. We'd like to think that groups didn't need rules to make them treat people right, but experience may teach us something else.