Alumni Associations limited in ways that chapters can't?
 

I'm curious as to whether any Fraternity or Sorority out there has alumni associations which are limited to specific brothers using criteria that chapters would not be able to use to limit brotherhood.

For example, your fraternity allows all Christians to become brothers, and there is a recognized alumni association for Catholics only.

or, your fraternity is for limited to Engineers, but allows all engineers, and you have a recognized alumni association for only those with Electrical Engineering degrees.

The topic line makes my brain hurt.

SK doesn't limit our alum chapters, although I suppose it's hypothetically possible the chapter could drive people away who don't fit a certain type.

However we do have break out groups that chapter members can set up for book clubs, nights out, etc. Nothing exclusionary though.

No, not in my organizaton. I would think that'd discourage alumni involvement.

Alpha Phi Alpha does not have this. Alumni chapters do not focus on special interests or common interests.

On a national level, we have expanded the various national committees which brothers from certain professions might have an affinity to. For example, the Arts & Humanities Advisory Council actually inspired many brothers to return to active alumni status. But I believe that social fraternities and sororities like mine the responsibility to investigate the role of our brand of social action on the arts and humanities, the sciences, education, etc. An NPC or NIC org might not feel that obligation (and that's okay).

Regardless, an ASA Alumnae Association for Crocheters..... a Lambda Chi Alpha Rowing Club..... nah, people generally have their own outlets for these things and they don't have to have the organization's branding.

I think special interest alumni associations are ill-conceived and are better off as unofficial groups, like facebook groups or yahoo groups.

Or to paraphrase 33girl - two people standing on the corner don't make an alumni association. They can just be friends.

I would say that our alumnae chapters focus on common interests within the context of our Five Point Programmatic Thrust and national and regional frameworks. Our membership demographics reveal the similar careers that Sorors tend to be in. So, generally speaking, alumnae chapters are likeminded and similarly situated women with Delta in our hearts and on our minds.

ETA: I now see what is meant by "common interests" in this thread. No, our alumnae chapters are not based on "common interests" in the sense that "if you are a college professor or like to sculpt, join this chapter." Whether people are eligible to join particular chapters is based on other factors.

On that note, Sorors who have similar interests often join certain committees and participate in certain programs. If you're a medical doctor, for instance, you may be interested in the Physical and Mental Health programmatic thrust and therefore join a committee and work with those programs/create programs. This works toward Delta and also for expanding your social and professional networks. Also, similar to what Drolefile stated, people who have similar interests beyond that can form their own book club, church-going groups, and other social and professional networks outside of the alumnae chapter. Wherever there are people, there will be associations (ETA: even if they aren't the formality of an "alumni association"). :)

Our alumni chapter is open to any alumnus of our chapter who is in good standing with the active chapter and is not still enrolled somewhere pursuing an undergraduate degree.

Alumni associations for Sigma Nu cover a geographical area. The nearest one I'm aware of is in DFW.

Each of our undgergrad chapters have their own alumni association (AVC).

With a school like mine, though, that puts out almost solely architects and engineers, it's very possible for the AVC to be like-minded and interested in the same things. For other schools, though, it's a bunch of different guys. Plus, the AVCs are composed of both alumni from the home school and the surrounding geographical area.

So no, there aren't "specialized" alumni groups for my org.

OP - Are you saying that such sub-groups do exist and are looking for evidence in other Fraternities/Sororities, or are you asking if such sub-groups exist at all?

The only possible example I can think of is if a group of alumnae from a certain CHAPTER of Chi Omega chose to exist with only alumnae from said active chapter. I know of no such example for any "official" alumnae chapter, but I can imagine it is out there.

The same is true for my organization, although two of our collegiate chapters have their own alumni chapters for graduates to transition into.

I wonder if the post that brought this about was the one that asked about creating an alumnae chapter made up of people from geographic location A while living in geographic location B (instead of just joining an alum chapter in B made up mostly of people from B.)

I'm trying to find comparisons to the situation in Alpha Phi Omega where there are geographic Alumni Associations which are restricted to only men, even though most chapters are co-ed.

If you're just talking about geography, and you're in an overlapping area, I guess the personal choice could be based on average age of current members, common interests, etc., but in AXiD and Gamma Sig, I personally know of no "special-interest" alumnae chapters.

I wonder if the example the OP used - a Catholic alumni group - might exist in the case that most alumni in a particular alum chapter graduated from a Catholic university? You don't have to be Catholic to attend a Catholic school at any grade, so I can't imagine there being a limitation for alumni/ae to be of a certain religion. Then again, enough people do move to areas outside of the geographic region from where they went to school and join their closest alum chapter. Neither of my alumnae association/chapter are fully comprised of women from the closest collegiate chapter.

Pardon the double-post, but how do you account for people who move into new geographical area? I would be pretty bummed out if I moved and tried to join a different alumnae chapter only to be forbidden. Then again, given what I have observed with APO (the chapter on my campus was co-ed, but not every male member was happy about it), I can see where there might be some clashes.

It's funny, because ours is exactly the opposite.

Alumni Chapters are geographically based (e.g. Capitol Area Alumni Chapter, Eastern Iowa Alumni Chapter) and they are fully recognized voting bodies.

Alumni Associations are composed of alumni from one or two specific chapters regardless of their geographic location.

To the original question, what Drolefille/Dr. Phil said.

Well in my case there's not an alum chapter in my city but chapters within about an hour's driving distance in any direction. I could pick any one of those if I liked. But no, there was a post elsewhere that was asking about making an alum chapter purely made up of people from somewhere else (lets say Virginia) while living in another location (lets say Ohio). So there are plenty of alum chapters in Ohio, but the individual wanted to make an Ohio alum chapter of Virginia people, it was weird.

And as a grad of a Catholic school, even if there were a lot of Catholics in the alum chapter it wouldn't make sense to limit it TO Catholics. There's nothing Catholic about recruitment, ritual, our sisterhood, etc. It's possible that one of our breakout groups (SIGs) could be oriented around that but I'm not actually sure that they can have something that's really exclusionary, if that makes sense. That is, it could be a group dedicated to going to Mass, maybe, but they couldn't prohibit another alum from joining. I'm not sure though.


I wonder if any of the other split co-ed/single sex fraternities can weigh in on that too. And though I"m sure it's been answered elsewhere, what's the proportion of male/co-ed chapters in APO at the college level or otherwise? Are only current APO chapters allowed to remain male-only? Is the rule the same with alumni chapters?

I guess I'm curious if this is more of a current issue or something that's more of a grandfathered in situation. (Although obviously still a current issue to the people involved.)

I wouldn't think an alum chapter of any group would be allowed to discriminate based on something that the group itself doesn't discriminate on (religion for example) except in the case where orgs aren't uniform with their rules for all collegiate chapters.

The Men of the Rising Sun Alumni Association which I am familiar with does not have bylaws which restrict women from joining. (I am looking at their bylaws right now) I would also venture to say that none of them have rules on the books which forbid women from joining.

What they have done (which is allowed) is named their association "Men of the Rising Sun." Obviously, this creates a brand identity in which women would not be overtly welcome. On the other hand, there is nothing in the bylaws which forbids it.

For the sake of comparison, the Baltimore Area Alumni Association is also all men (to my knowledge) and really tries their best to open up their events to all types of brothers. But they've been so male and so African American for so long, I think it would take a special type of person to socially integrate that group.

So on one hand, you have a bunch of guys who are clearly doing their best under the rules to give the appearance of being exclusively male, and another group that probably couldn't get women if they tried.

It's interesting. I say leave them both be, for now.


APO does not have a plethora of alumni association, unfortunately, so chances are you wouldn't move to an area with a super duper active association.

I have a lot of opinions about our alumni structure in general, and I hope that we take a hard look at other organizations to learn from their best practices, AS WELL AS using data to drive our decisions.



I kind of love you right now.

Long story short, there are very few all-male chapters left. There is no more grandfathering -- they've all got to be making good faith efforts to become coed.

Awww gee :o

And thanks for the info. :D

Mind if I share my perspective? Social, but the same deal with the some coed some all male. From what I am aware of there is no restriction to what alumni association a female brother can join. However some do require you to be voted in by the current membership, so it is possible that they could be prevented from joining one that way. I do know that part of the alumni association of our new chapter is a female brother and the chapter is all male.

I totally mind :p (Actually I was wondering about your input!)

So can new chapters of your org choose to be either co-ed or all male currently?

This and this. It's nothing you can "prove" on paper, but it certainly does exist. And it will continue to exist until chartering an alum chapter becomes a bit more difficult.

This is one of the reasons I think all national groups should support both chapter associations (where everyone in it is from the same collegiate chapter) and alumnae chapters (which are open to everyone in a certain geographic region). That way if you only want to associate with the Mu Mu chapter XYZ alums, you can, and you won't be ruining an alum chapter for someone who just moved to BFE and is trying to connect with XYZ sisters.

To some extent I think facebook helps a lot with this. (Or pick you social networking site here.) You can keep in touch with your sisters from your chapter but your alumnae chapter is, well, your chapter. I have not been active in my (kind of) local one because it hasn't been convenient and I've been poor (bad alumna) but I actually enjoy being with different people of all ages from different chapters and many times our goal is supporting the local collegiate chapter, which makes it less about "us" so to speak.

Yup. Psi U does not limit. Any new chapter can choose off the bat wiether they want to be coed or all male. Also any chapter can choose at any time to go coed, though they would probably have to deal with the alumni to do so.:D What I am not aware of is if we are given a chose to go all male after becoming coed, though I think we are.

I assume they wouldn't kick out any female brothers if they did O.o

Cool thanks :D

Yeah it would be more like all females graduate, and they decide not to pledge more.

ETA: Actually upon giving it thought, I think I heard one chapter used to be coed decades ago but stopped pledging women for some reason long ago.

I don't particularly like the idea of a special-interest alumni association - I think it is too limiting. I think that's the kind of thing that can and should be addressed via programming.

Sorry I'm late to the party, but I have a related question. Setting aside the question of specially-focused official alumnae organization does your national org provide specialized alumnae programming based on age range? In other words, do they provide special programming aimed at the new alumnae and something else aimed at the alumnae who are 15+ years out of college?

No. :)

Sig Ep has "Sg EP Feds" - http://www.sigepfeds.org/

And is oriented towards those who work in government. However, they group is clearly open to all.

Kappa has the Stars and Stripes alumnae association for members affiliated with the military. That's the extent of our "special interest" associations.

http://associations.kappakappagamma....arsandstripes/

Within associations, we can have Night Owls for younger members and other age-specific programming.