Length of Pledging for different groups?
 

How long is the pledge process for your fraternity/sorority? I know that different groups use different terms, but for this purpose the beginning is when they go through the first ceremony that private to your group (where you have to tell Nationals/the school that they are now part of your chapter) and the end is the point at which they could be elected president of the chapter (which presumably has a ceremony as well.

This of course assume that the school doesn't force a different time on you.

For Alpha Phi Omega, the pledging period is expected to be 6-10 weeks (no guidance as to whether spring break counts or not).

Delta Gamma's Pledging period is about 8 weeks from the formal pledging ceremony to Initiation.

Our process is modular. As long as the chapters are performing the mandatory steps, they can take as much time as local rules allow. However, the "pledging" calendar must be submitted, justified, and approved by the organization.

4-6 weeks.

I believe 8 or 12 weeks is the max.

Back in my day, pledging lasted an entire semester or quarter. Initiation took place the next semester/quarter after it was verified the member had made grades and was academically eligible.

I know that many sororities and fraternities have shortened the pledge period. How do they determine academic eligibility -- by mid-term grades or is it based on the members GPA at the time of pledging?

We still take the whole semester and don't initiate until we know our candidates' grades.

We aim for 6 weeks unless that lands you on Thanksgiving weekend or something and it has to be adjusted. It should be within 8 weeks. We go by grades at time of recruitment. If they don't make grades that term, they participate in the same program as other initiated members who don't make grades.

Honestly, not initiating due to grades was a rare thing when we had a longer program and waited for grades. It is still a rare thing for members to not make grades. For most chapters, it is less than 2% of the chapter and, in the chapters for which I have access to such statistics, it isn't usually the newest initiates who haven't made grades.

Since making that change, Alpha Gam's overall average GPA has increased significantly. It may have made the chapters more careful about not recruiting grade risks.

6-8 weeks. Mainly it is a struggle to fit requirements into the schedule with holidays, Greek Week, Homecoming, etc.

Our rules require a minimum of 4 weeks and a maximum of 12 weeks (not including academic breaks), but I think the norm is typically around 6-8 weeks.

Sigma Chi is supposed to be 8 weeks. From what I've seen, most Fall pledges are initiated in January. The Spring group tends to be initiated just before school ends that semester or when Fall semester begins.

My new member period was 8 weeks long (actually 9 weeks, but one of those weeks was spring break). AEPhi was just switching over to a 6-8 week NM program (this was in the mid-1990s - prior to that, I believe the pledge period was a full semester long, and chapters waited for grades). We were initiated at the end of the NM period even though we were still a colony.

I can't imagine cramming all we do into 8 weeks. Especially with Greek Week and Spring Sing and whatnot intervening. Have your HQs elected to do this to receive preferable insurance rates? Have you seen a benefit in terms of retention? How do you deal with kids who don't make grades?

That last question, I think in the next 5 years or so will be one we won't have to really worry about as at least our campus is slowly moving towards making professors keep grades up to date and available online if students care to check them, but 6 weeks? That kind of blows my mind.

It's been going in for almost 20 years now and hasn't been a major problem in the grades department, IMHO. Please see AGDee's post about real statistics from Alpha Gamma Delta regarding grades post pledging change. I think we have pretty good statistics across the country, and XO is the only org that still waits an entire semester to initiate. They do not consistently have the highest grades. Waiting to initiate doesn't ensure high grades. I think from the perspective of fraternities, it's hard to imagine because academics is not the biggest aspect of pledging, and chapter GPAs rarely rival the levels produced by the sororities on most campuses. Our pool of candidates likely have higher GPAs and are more driven to keep higher GPAs from the start.

When I pledged in the 90s, Theta had just changed their new member program. We were initiated at 12 weeks. At that time, we had anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks. I believe that now, new members are supposed to be initiated within a shorter amount of time. Personally, I enjoyed that new member period. It gave me time to get to know my pledge sisters and to form bonds. I can't imagine learning all we needed to learn within four weeks, but it seems to the trend for many groups.

Some organizations have made the change to deeper learning about the organization (history, deeper understanding of mission) happening as an initiated member, as well, which helps with the shorter timelines, as long as new members get a good foundation. I find that even with a (only slightly, I am not that old) longer new member period, I only remember the frivolous stuff (like we were founded on a Monday) and the more important stuff came from being a collegian then alumna member.

I know our pledge period was decreased to hopefully decrease the amount of hazing that can be squeezed in and force chapters to really focus on the essentials of what makes the organization.

Sig Ep doesn't really even have pledging though, right? Balanced Man is a direction I thought all groups would go. Has it really had a huge impact as far as hazing and forcing chapters [can national programming really do that?] to focus on anything?

As of this academic year, we now have a standardized, mandatory 8 week program. Special exceptions can be made for universities where official campus policy about pledging periods make this problematic. Our new member program used to have several pacing options...8 weeks, 10 weeks, and 12 weeks.

Well, we still have pledge model chapters. Balanced Man chapters definitely have a lower hazing rate, but they're not perfect. The thing with the BM Program is that it's extremely flexible. So, there are BM chapters that basically function like pledge model chapters.

Nonetheless, HQ doesn't force any chapter to become a BM chapter. As long you're following the rules and taking care of your members right, pledge model or BMP, they're happy.

Plus, the BMP doesn't exactly force any new ideals onto a chapter since it's principles are tied to our Ritual.

Well thanks for that explanation. I've heard from other Sig Eps (mainly from the South) that BM was pretty much forced on them. It's an interesting model and I'm always looking for ideas to bring to my undergrad brothers. BM is probably the most well known membership training model out there, so it's worth knowing about.

My SAI chapter's membership recruitment/pledging process goes all year...we start during marching band in the fall (most of our members are in band, easiest to do it at the same time as TBS/KKPsi/PMA), and then by the end of the semester we get our bids, then spring semester is the membership process, and we just had initiation yesterday. (I'm a newbie!) From the pledging ceremony to initiation, it's a total of 8 weeks.

I know a lot of nearby chapters do a recruitment/initiation each semester; our chapter is only two years old, so we're still getting the hang of things in general.