Who pays for your socials?
 

At my school, our chapter pays for 100% of the social, the sororities pay nothing from there budget. I feel like if the sororities added some cash to the pot, the socials would be way more fun. I have been to another school where they do this and its much more fun. Who pays for socials at your school?

For mixers you mean? The social chairs negotiate a split. In theory it's 50/50 but could be out to 70/30 in either direction or one side could pick up certain expenses (like buses).

What the crap? No 8 paragraph essay detailing the definitive answer on how this should be handled on every campus in the country with to-the-penny budget breakdowns? Who the HELL are you, and what have you done with the real dnall?

Ha, leave dnall alone. :)

I was more amused by the pun in "...cash to the pot." Don't do it kiddos, don't do it!!!!

Why would sororities pay for any of it? They're the ladies.

I smiled...at first.

I kinda want to put a cheeto bit in its mouth. So cute!

We always did a 50/50 split on an agreed upon cost for mixers.

It has been a while but ours was always a 50/50 split.

Definitely a 50/50 split.

Any sorority that lets the men pay for everything is just setting themselves up for resentment when the men don't get what they want. This is why the "you can drink in a fraternity house but not a sorority house" concept is wiggity wiggity whack.

ETA: I'm not trying to make this more ominous than it sounds, but I think that any chapter/national that promotes the concept that women shouldn't pay because they're women needs to step firmly into the 1980s. Also, the concept that women drink/eat less than men and therefore shouldn't have to pay is also ridiculous.

Oh Kriss Kross.

Our chapter is strict about not being able to use chapter funds to pay for alcohol, so mixers are the guys' territory. We don't typically cohost formals, date parties, etc, with a specific fraternity, girls' dates are from many different GLOs or are independent. But for those events we pay for the buses, venue, food, and everything but alcohol- they'll either be cash bar from a 3rd party vendor or non-alcoholic.

I know that's an issue...but in that case the sorority should pay for the food, non-alcoholic mixers, and (if applicable) rental of wherever the mixer is held.

I agree that it should be a shared financial responsibility. Our mixers are always on campus in the fraternity houses, and there usually isn't much there in the way of food, maybe just a few bags of chips. Paying for non-alcoholic things is a good idea though.

This why you negotiate a contract in which you pay for the bar rental, and the bar "happens" to throw in some kegs for free.

We paid 50/50, but the members paid out of pocket.

I'm not saying anything against that, but SO illegal!! As in for sure FIPG & nationals, almost certainly the school, and possibly state law. Which again, I'm not saying doesn't happen or an org shouldn't necessarily accept, but you have to make a very conscious decision about the risks.

Because you're dealing with NPC rules on a mixer, it pretty much has to be buses to a rented venue and cash bar. Cost vary by location, but for us that would run 5500-7500. Generally a sorority is expecting to drop 3k by agree to a chapter mixer with a fraternity on my campus. If it runs the high side, we're probably picking up the difference.

Every sister would pitch in $5

Usually it's split 50/50, unless it's a case where we "won" it from a fraternity's philanthropy event or something like that.

:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: That much for a mixer? Good God! That is insane.

If you think it's insane you obviously don't have enough members. Or something. /dnall

I don't actually know how much ours cost, except that I believe we split costs and rented out local bars/pubs/beergardens- places used to bringing in a DJ, setting up wristbands and having a cash bar with drink specials. The one fraternity house was a no-go.

Members didn't have to pay extra to attend it was all included in dues. Event T-shirts cost extra but you could buy them whether you went or not. In all honesty I suspect we didn't pay much for the venue but mostly paid for the dance via the bar.

At my school mixers were dry (cuz it's a formal sorority event) and they were always at our house. If XYZ's nationals heard of drinking going on at a mixer........all hell would've rained down.

See, if they were at a sorority house, they'd be dry, but our "switches" were voted on so they would be allowed to serve alcohol and that was that. Unless we're talking about two different things here?

The chapter I advise pays for all their own socials. Their might be limited costs for the girls and then they purchase their own shirts.

shirts? you mean, they get t shirts made for every mixer?

*smh*

We did. It was maybe once a month + 1 date dash, 1 crush party and 1 semi formal and 1 formal a semester. It gave both the fraternity and the sorority's PR chairs something to do in their spare time ;)

Yeah, that's really common.

I was a little surprised that everyone didn't do it. Didn't know that until I visited a school in Minnesota.

Word. We only buy and decorate the coolers.

Must be nice to have money to throw away on pointless crap. Especially when young alums come on here and say "I have all these t shirts and no idea what to do with them."

We got t shirts for Greek Week and Derby Daze, period - and people paid for them out of pocket (i.e. they didn't have to buy them and they bought them directly from IFC/Panhel or Sigma Chi). I can't imagine if we would have told people their dues were going for t shirts.

The people who have said they had shirts for every event also said that T-shirts were paid for as extra. Unless I misunderstand ASUADPi's post, it reads to me that the shirts are extra, my chapter's were as well. The only shirts that were included were recruitment shirts and maybe 1 or 2 PR Tees a semester pre-recruitment and something in the spring.

For my chapter we split it 50/50 between the Fraternity and Sorority for socials. We don't do T-Shirts, except on rare occasions, and we pay extra for those. All of the members pay a certain amount to the Social Chair of my chapter each semester, and usually a little more for bigger events like Halloween and Greek Week. We haven't had a formal in 3 semesters so I don't know how that works...yet.

You are correct about the costs, I missed where she said that.

It's just...unless you are going to have a mixer where the theme is "wear a t-shirt" - why make a t-shirt? It's not like everyone isn't taking 50 trillion pictures to remember it by anyway.

holy undead thread batman

It's because people on the whole like T-shirts, I think... Just a crazy guess.

(Also that whole PR thing)

LOL. We had t-shirts for EVERY event. We wore the shirts at the socials unless there was a special dress up theme that made wearing the shirt impractical. It was a campus thing. Every one tried to out do everyone else for best t-shirts. We bought the shirts for each party a la carte. They were usually about $9-12. I had some awesome shirts. Yes, we did drink in shirts with our letters printed on them. I didn't keep a single shirt past med school, though.

Ditto everything here, except that our shirts were more of a favor after the party/mixer. We never wore them to events unless it was a Campus/Greek wide thing such as Derby Days, Homecoming or Parents Weekend. Generally, we wore them the Monday after the event to class, maybe to just show off how much fun we had that weekend? Who knows. I guess it was just campus culture. I suspect that I bought 8-10 shirts in fall semester and another 5 in spring semester. Every year. Generally, most members bought most shirts.

I passed on some of my shirts since there were so many, but did keep quite a few. A few years after graduation a friend offered to make them into a quilt for me. Many years later this is still my favorite blanket. The backing that she used is so warm, and the t-shirt side is so soft and warn-in. It also helps me to remember all the different things that we did as a chapter. Every now-and-then I come home to find my non-greek husband curled up with it.

As for the topic of the thread, on our campus the fraternities and sororites split the costs for events that were officially co-hosted.