If you could design an AI program.........
 

(since this topic comes up all the time, I'm just going to open up the can of worms all the way)

How would you do it?
Would you do it?

And no, I'm not asking for official policies. I'm just looking for some idea sharing of how you would do it if you were in charge, anything and everything you would like to share.

I'll start.....

I'd like to see it structured much more like collegiate recruitment.

I don't have allot of experience with the AI however if I would design a program, I would say:
-the potential AI should have some sort of manditory period of service to the sorority. Serving as an advisor, on a corp board, etc. before initiation or maybe before an invitation to AI is even extended.
- have some sort of pledge class or new member class, where there are more than one AI. Maybe all the AIs from a geographic region get together for a one day retreat

I guess if AI is the wave of the future, I would want to see an AI program similar to the Junior League's Probationary Period. That would require more AIs rather than less however. And if you want the Junior league type experience, you can just join that instead of AI.

I would like to see alumni/alumnae initiation for NIC/IFC/NPC to be more like the alumni/alumnae intake of the NPHC organizations.

That wouldn't be a bad thing. I would add a few steps that some NPHCs may have that others may not:

• Convening a "recruitment period" at the alumnae chapter's discretion only
• Having the informational session be by invitation-only, yet having the invites fairly distributed (meaning an interested woman would have to at minimum fill out an information form through the website)
• Having a strict vetting process which eliminates weirdoes, freaks, and known sorority hoppers
• Letters of recommendation from more alumnae than what is required for collegians
• Letters from others in the community who can vouch for the woman's service (if she has not been volunteering with the sorority directly)

These are just thoughts.... I love thinking about systems and best practices and crap like that.

Are there many NIC/IFC or similar fraternities that have Alumni Initiation, at least as it is found in NPC sororities? I know many fraternities have honorary initiations (HI?), but to me that's not really the same thing. (Although I know some NPCers would like to see AI function more like HI.)

HI is different from AI, at least in practice, because (in my experience, at least) HI always begins with a chapter or national office that desires to honor someone who has assisted the chapter/fraternity in significant ways or who otherwise is perceived to exemplify the best that the fraternity stands for. (There can, of course, also be the factor that the honoree is a person of some celebrity who could bring distinction to the fraternity's "Famous Member" list.) There just doesn't seem to be any "pursuing" HI. Again, though, I'm basing this on my own experience and on what I've seen.

If a woman is going to bear a collegiate chapter's designation, she should have to be approved by a majority vote of that collegiate chapter and/or have a connection to that chapter that is more than one person, BEFORE she is initiated.

If a group doesn't want to do that or feels it would be putting too many hurdles up in the process, they should create a separate chapter designation that is for AIs only.

Chapter designations are not just something cute to use as a dangle on your pin. They have meaning and merit. They point up the fact that GLOs cannot survive without their host institutions.

I think that AI should be reserved for those women who work closely with the chapter (house mom, member mom, aunt, etc), alumnae of absorbed locals, and those who have shown exceptional character and service in community/society.


These PNAM's should always be approached by initiated members, and PNAM's should never approach the sorority for membership information. Those that contact us out of the blue seeking AI info in this manner should automatically not be extended a bid to membership.

^^^Why?

It's hard to weed out the crazies if you don't really know them already.

My chapter's initiated well over 50+ AIs over the years, with the majority of them being initiated with the charter class. These women are exemplary women from the community and campus and have been very involved in supporting the collegiate chapter. These women are also women who had some kind of strong connection to a current member of the Alumnae Chapter prior to their AI process. We've been very lucky.

Okay.....with that said, let's use the Alpha intake process as an example (the selection component, which is public information).

We require two letters of sponsorship from within the alumni chapter and one letter of sponsorship from any other active Alpha.

We do not have information sessions -- our first was last December and I would not recommend a repeat.

For your specific AIs, how do you know whether or not the women who were helpful to the collegiate chapter were doing so because they wanted to get noticed for AI? (Not saying that they are bad people, but what if they just happened to know that's how the game is played?)

I agree!

Really? Do you really think it's the wave of the future?

I hope not.

She was referring to a GC inside joke. :)

A then-GC member proclaimed that AI was the "wave of the future" -- and this prompted the Hair Transplant thread.

Agreed. Think about your own recruitment and new member programs. You can do all of the research that you want about a chapter, and you can be informed going in, but if that chapter doesn't extend you an invitation, you won't be a part of that group. Essentially, chapters have a couple months to truly get to know those girls wanting to be a member of their organization. During the new member process, a new member can still be voted out. This is a "trial period" to get to know these new girls, and to see how they will be as sisters.

I don't necessarily think that the person HAS to work closely with the chapter, but I think that there should be at least be some general interest in what the sorority is about. It shouldn't be "I want to become a member, where do I sign up?" There should be selfless acts and a genuine interest that eventually amount to an invitation being presented by a member of the sorority.

If a woman is batshit crazy enough to advise for years or donate money to the chapter just so she can AI, I'm inclined to give her an A for effort. If nothing else, she undoubtedly has some efficient (if not legal) fundraising or rush methods up her sleeve.

You have to be vetted to serve in advisory positions if you're a member, and I'm sure for a nonmember they're looked into even more.

Quite frankly, most of the (non-member) advisors I've come in contact with are humbled and surprised when they're offered membership. They are doing this because they want to help young people, not to gain something for themselves. This includes men and women.

How many non-member advisors are out there for NPC groups?

(Honestly just asking...)

There's actually a lot. Campus advisors, for one, are often not members of the organization. My chapter's campus advisor is the dean of the humanities college at Gannon. Every semester for midterms and finals she would send a huge spread to the house so we had food to eat while studying. Plus, she would come to (open) events - we even invited her to feast of roses after initiation.

I know another chapter on my campus had my former boss as their campus advisor, a secretary in the new student services office. She was wonderful and extremely active in the chapter, and the chapter appreciated it. Not sure if she was ever extended membership, but honestly I think that chapter would be crazy if they didn't!

ETA: Our campus advisor was also really really helpful in finding a room big enough to do initiation - and very good at keeping it discrete and making sure that there weren't a lot of groups using those buildings when we were initiating a new member class.

I think it is more common on rural campuses where recruiting alumnae to serve is difficult. I went to grad school in relatively-rural Virginia, and there were quite a few chapters on that campus that had advisors who were not members of the organization. Most of the advisors were employees of the university in some regard.

There was also the poster recently who advised the ZTA chapter that her sister had been a part of. That chapter then voted to offer her membership as an AI. IIRC it was a similar situation- rural campus with no one else to help the chapter.

I was one. The chapter I advise is pretty much geographically isolated - the nearest alumnae chapters are at least an hour away and, this not being a high population area, there just aren't a lot of alumnae nearby. When the chapter's previous advisor moved away, the chapter asked me to be its advisor - my sister was an alumna of the chapter and I also coach one of the current sisters. So I guess I was a little unusual in that I already had a connection to the chapter, but I wasn't a member when I became advisor. I am now, though. :)

ETA - Blondie93 is talking about me! Great minds think alike. :-)

Hey! You were the one that I was thinking of!

And bringing this back to the topic of AI... you are *exactly* the type of situation that AI should be used for. Congrats to you!

And I would never want to automatically exclude any woman just because she approached us. Yes, I understand there are some bad apples who come that way. However, I also know of a handful of women who currently devote a lot of time to Gamma Phi who would not be Gamma Phi's if we had that ultimatum.

Our alumnae chapter has AI'd 3 women; 2 who had prior connections and 1 who contacted us. The 1 who contacted us is the only one who has remained committed.

I still stand by my opinion.

And as alphagamzetagam mentioned, many schools INSIST that the primary chapter advisor be a faculty or staff member. You don't fight with the administration and say "ohh, our nationals says it has to be a sister" if you want to stay a registered student organization.

There is a very remote chapter in the UP of Michigan that was left high and dry by the ONLY advisor we could find. This actually happened two years in a row. We realized that we have to do *something* to get some consistency in advisors with this group. At Convention, myself, along with one of our alumnae development volunteers and the collegiate delegate met to develop a plan for this chapter. Part of this plan includes AI recruitment. We first did a mass mailing to all alumnae within a 75 mile radius of the chapter. By doing that, we found 4 women who are graduate students (read, in the area temporarily) who are willing to serve as advisors for now and assist with an AI recruitment and education effort. We have contacted the advisors at the chapter two hours away and they are willing to assist with the recruitment effort as well. We have asked both collegiate chapters up there to provide us with names of women who have been their bosses, co-workers, have been local business owners or faculty/staff who are in the area and who might be interested in mentoring them as advisors and becoming AIs. We talked with the Greek Advisor for ideas on where to look for women who may be motivated to do something like this. We found a list of community organizations in the city. The organizations include women's business organizations and things like that. The Greek Advisor also suggested 4 or 5 of those groups. We are gathering some materials to use as a "pitch" to these groups and getting some local alumnae and advisors to go to some of these meetings to "present" the idea to these organizations and gather names. We intend to have events which will include some of the local alumnae (some are too far away to advise but are willing to come and help with these) as well as some of the collegiate officers there to meet these women, get to know them, answer questions, etc. Then we will decide who we want to invite to AI. We have worked very hard on this plan and I've never been involved in something of this magnitude, but we're hopeful that we can find some area women who will welcome the opportunity to mentor and be involved as advisors. If we can get enough, we'd like to develop an alumnae club as well so that they can benefit from the sisterhood that a club can bring and not just work with the collegians. After invitations are extended and accepted, there will be an education period followed by initiation with the collegiate chapter's winter class.

I see faculty/campus advisors as different from Chapter Advisor. A Chapter Advisor must be a member to be able to attend our Executive Council and Initiation, etc. There are things that a faculty/campus advisor can be helpful with, but you have to have *someone* there who knows ritual, membership selection, etc.

My other UP chapter has a few advisors who are AIs. The past CA is a VP for the University but was initiated. Her daughter became a member of that chapter eventually and is now the CA. It's worked out great.

For these extremely remote chapters, I think it's a great and needed option. We are clearly targeting a select group (first women who have some connection to current members and then women who have demonstrated leadership/business sense in the community) I think in the long run, it will have the benefit of demonstrating the positive side of the Greek system to the community as well. I don't think we'll end up getting sorority shoppers because, quite honestly, the "I really need to be in a sorority" attitude just isn't that prevalent. I think, instead, we'll be battling the "Why in the world would I want to join a sorority at my age?" mentality. I'll let y'all know how it goes!

Honestly, not trying to be stupid here, but one thing I've been confused by --- I keep reading all these critiques about "sorority shopping" if a woman looks at more than one NPC for AI, but then undergrads are bashed if they don't give consideration to every NPC group available on their campus? :confused:

Comparing collegiate recruitment to Alumnae Initiation is like comparing apples and oranges.

They are on completely opposite ends of the spectrum and one should not even compare the two.

AI is much different than NPC recruitment in college. Completely different concept.

Undergraduate recruitment is based on the concept of mutual selection. Anyone who meets the requirements may go through recruitment.

Alumnae Initiation is, as far as I know, considered by all NPCs as an honour bestowed on select women. It is NOT based on mutual selection. At least, not in the same sense.

I totally agree with ThetaPrincess24. A very special honor reserved for a select few and under very special consideration. Less is more.

There are a lot of great ideas here! I find myself agreeing in part with almost everyone, even though I know how we do AI. One difference is that all Alumnae Initiates are in a chapter designated for them exclusively, not as a member of the Wassamatta U chapter or such.

And yes, there is a big difference between Honorary Initiates and Alumnae Initiates. My chapter's housemother was initiated upon retirement, and the members of the original local which became my chapter were also offered initiation - but those were two separate "catagories".

Structured, but not necessarily with parties and the like. I think it takes a lot of research to decide which group is right for both the initiate and the alums and someone shouldn't jump in just because of geographical location. However you shouldn't be shopping around either. A general meeting with a few groups is different than pursuing 3 groups and seeing who offers you a bid first.

I like the retreat thing but logically, how many AIs are there going to be in one location at anyone time. I know I couldn't commit to travel to far for a mandatory retreat. I can however meet with the new member class at the collegiate level on a semi regular basis.
As for serving as an advisor etc... wouldn't it be better to have an initiated member who can actually attend ritual etc?

Yes and no. I was initiated with Gamma Epsilon BUT my alum chapter is filled with a melting pot of chapters. This is who I have the majority of my interactions with. Yes I am on HCB for the GE Chapter but I serve on the alum side also. I doubt that many of the collegiates even know who I initiated with or a lot of the other alums who help out

This I agree with, not every week but for the BIG stuff.

Overall I think different things work for different groups and different geographical locations. What works for your area should be what goes but an AI should not initiate and disappear, they should be doing something for the Sorority at the alum level or collegiate level while they are able. Obviously things come up in life and it makes it harder but I know I can find time to do some stuff for my chapter. Maybe in 2012 when I deploy again it will be different but I'll be back after my year overseas and active with the alum chapter and collegiates as time allows.

Agreed...although some GLOs and alumnae chapters do publicize AI online, which seems to encourage initial contact from PNAMs. If a GLO does that, that's their business, and they're doing what works for them and what they're comfortable with. If a GLO doesn't publicize AI to "outsiders" and someone makes a cold call, that's a different story.

:) I know exactly where you're talking about! They're both great schools...though kind of chilly!

I know the AST chapter up there has also had a little bit of an issue with that, though not nearly to the same extent. They manage, and are doing great :)

I must say that it's not at all typical for a non-member to advise a Chi Omega chapter. There might be a couple of cases, but I can't think of a single one. Perhaps we're just fortunate to have alumnae who are also faculty on those campuses.

Anyway...back to the AI discussion...

^^^ Fortunate, sure. But isn't Chi Omega the largest NPC organization? To me, it's sort of like DST or AKA -- you're pretty much always going to find one of the two, if not both, among female faculty on a given campus.

True...plus, we don't really colonize if we don't have a strong alumnae base in the area.

Also, a campus advisor is different than a chapter advisor. At my campus, all the greeks had campus advisors who might or might not be members of the GLO, and then their board of chapter advisors. A campus advisor often doesn't have to do much more than sign paperwork - at least in my experience. The chapter advisors are the ones who do the day-to-day chapter, um, advising.

Most alum chapters ARE filled w/ a melting pot of collegiate chapters, unless they are a chapter association. That's how they should be.

I just don't think a woman should bear a certain chapter's name if her connection with it is limited to one woman who sponsored her - at a location 1000 miles away from the collegiate chapter in question. To me it's the same as the women in the south who shout "I was a Chi O at UT!" (whisper "El Paso.")* That wasn't your story, from what I recall.

*No offense, UTEP. :)

Although in some groups it's not as clear cut. In my org for example I think the distinction is pretty hard to decipher.

I think it began when Pi Phi had alum initiates as "honorary initiates" at Convention (a process that still continues, although they're now called AIs for the most part from what I can tell).

Pi Phi also does AI for A) housemothers B) siblings/daughters/etc of prominent members C) advisors D) new chapters - every new chapter has several alum initiates to boost the volunteerism for the new chapter.

W&L was one school that did require a faculty advisor... it so happened that Pi Phi always had an alum on the faculty that we could draw from, but I don't believe that was the case for all the sororities on campus... In fact I'm not sure it was true for anyone except us and Kappa. Although I could be totally wrong on that. Oh, and there was a faculty Phi Mu who served as faculty Panhel advisor since her chapter wasn't there.

At W&L, for that matter, very few of the chapters had active alum advisors whatsoever because there were so few people to draw on. The nearest alum clubs, in Roanoke and Charlottesville, were pretty much always focused on VA Tech and UVA respectively. So a lot of chapters were advised on an official sorority level (not campus/faculty level) by women in Northern Virginia - three hours away. So our faculty advisor (who was also chair of our House Corp effectively served as our AAC chair as well for two of my four years at W&L as well). There were alum initiates from the founding of chapter in 1992 who still lived in town, but they were nowhere to be found hrm. I did find that by my senior year it seemed some women from our founding class were moving back to Lexington to settle and were becoming very involved with the chapter - that was good thing.

Anyway the point being that a lot of rural schools have really limited options with advisors.

Also I think a lot of times the collegiate chapter doesn't have much of a choice about initiating alums. At least in my experience. The chapter gets to take a vote, but in most cases refusing to initiate the selected individual (who has already been vetted by the alum club by the time it gets sent to the chapter) would be extremely awkward and uncomfortable and make for hard feelings. Especially, as it often is, if it is a family member of an advisor or something.

All that said, I would have absolutely no problem with widespread AI, I don't think, if we could put into place the same policies and precautions that NPHC currently has. Although I do believe that that change would fundamentally change the character of the NPC and I don't know if it will ever happen. Right now, most sororities and their respective alum clubs don't have time or preparation to do the kind of process that NPHC currently does with their grad membership. For most sororities, the problem of the nascent artificial demand for AI that I believe GC in part or whole created was easier solved by restricting or limiting their AI programs rather than creating a whole new side of membership intake like NPHC has. Which is understandable.

I also think it would be prudent at some point if these programs continue to grow and be as controversial as they are becoming if the NPCs could come together to make some unanimous agreements about how they will work. For the sake of all our organizations.

On a more personal note, I would really prefer if all AIs to my own org were required to have a college degree. Although I realize there are some situations where exceptions can and maybe should be made (housemothers don't necessarily have college degrees, nor do outstanding mother volunteers, etc). I just feel that my org is an org for college-educated women.