Losing a chapter?
 

Hi there!

I am not a DPhiE, or a member of any sorority actually cause I missed spring rush due to being sick and I am falling rushing. I do have friends in almost all houses at Cornell, and my DPhiE friend said they only got 3 pledges compared to the 37 that was quota this year. Sounds to me this chapter is going down, and I weren't sure you guys were aware. Just wanted to let you know so you could maybe save a house.

As for me, I might rush them if they are around in the Fall for informal rush, but I'm not sure I want to join a house that is destined to die.

Best of luck.

Shari

I assure you that Cornell is doing just fine, and will not be dying any time soon. While they might not have done well with recruitment this semester, I am sure they have regional volunteers and HQ staff working hard to ensure that the chapter has a successful recruitment in the fall. Before you go spouting off about dying chapters, you should really get your facts straight.

Well written Heather!
Shari, I'll paraphrase Mark Twain, "Reports of Cornell's death have been greatly exagerrated!" Thanks for your concern and enjoy rush next semester!

But that's not what everyone at Cornell is saying. . . .

I think that your post is not in the panhellenic spirit. I wonder where you get that information...Especially since your location says Michigan.
Is there any way to close or erase this thread?

In the words of the law, "habeus corpus". Produce the body. Instead of sitting here and saying "we know this chapter is in trouble", tell us what hard proof you have of this chapter's road to closure.

As Cream said, in the Panhellenic spirit, it's important to be positive and help each other, not sit and spout off about how a chapter is in trouble with no regard for their feelings.

Hi,

I've never posted before, but I've been lurking on this message board for a long time.

I am a sister in the Delta Rho chapter at Cornell University, and it is true that we will most likely lose our chapter to the number situation. No one knows what exactly will happen, but will most likely be doing a re-organization in the future, and I know the house will be closed starting next year.

If anyone wants the specifics, PM me.

Just because I live in Michigan and am currently visiting in Nashville does not mean that I don't have friends that are on other campuses - one of which being Cornell. Yes, it is gossip, but generally the campus knows what's going on with chapters on its campus more than other groups of the same organization on other campuses. With regards to panhellenic spirit, do you think I'm sitting here jumping for joy that a chapter of any sorority is closing?! I wish that none of them ever had to close, but let's be realistic here! Do you think that nothing is being done to help out DPhiE and Chi O at Cornell - by the other chapters on campus even?! My comment was stating a fact, a sad fact, but a fact none the less.

Sarah

Other than news reports by the ever-lame hoosier, the only time I've seen "chapter closing" threads begun they are by members of that sorority or that chapter. Usually because they are upset and want support and advice.

If you are curious about XYZ closing, PM a member of that group and address it privately. Don't spew rumours all over a message board that could possibly hurt the chapter even more. IT'S FRIGGIN TACKY!!

Thank you, drive through.

Thanks 33girl :) As always, you've said exactly what I wanted to!

I just wanted to let the girls of the Cornell chapter know that if you are determined to keep your chapter, you will, no matter what!! I'm a sister at the University of Georgia, Psi chapter and we almost lost our house last year. We went through a reorganization and only got 4 new girls, when national's projected number was 50!! They told us numerous amount of times that if we didn't get our numbers up we would be forced to close. However because of our strong sisterhood and dedication, including thousands of hours of pr and COB work, we were able to remain on campus depsite what nationals had said previously. We are now stronger than ever and have just hit 35 members-double our membership at the beginning of this year!!! My point is if you want it bad enough you can do-don't let one bad rush or nationals tell you otherwise. You can save your chapter. Girls at Cornell-Email me if you want to talk privately or would like specifics or advice about saving your chapter Jillybean441@aol.com

YITS, Jill

Let me clarify that I was not in the least bashing our natonial office!!!!! They are wonderful and they have sent us countless numbers of resources and staff to help with our plight. What I wanted to stress with my post is that if you are willing to work hard to keep your chpater open ,you can keep it open. The work and the decision is ultimately on your shoulders, because the decision form nationals is based on your chapter's work. Good Luck!!! Jill

Jill,

I am an advisor to the DZ chapter at UGA, and I just want to say that I'm very happy to hear that y'all won't be closing your house! :) I had heard from my girls that rush didn't go well for you this past year, and it was very disheartening to me -- as it should be for any Greek.

Good luck with the chapter! You're definitely doing something right if you've already doubled your membership! Congratulations and keep up the great work! :D

Greek Love,
dzrose93 :)

Jill,

Hey! I'm a DPhiE from the Alpha Epsilon chapter at Kennesaw State in Georgia.
Congrats to you and your chapter for your hard word! :)

I wish you the best! If you guys ever need anything, our website is
http://dphieksu.tripod.com

YITS,
Kristen

Its not over til the fat lady sings
 

Hey there -
Your chapter is not going to close. It seems like you guys at Cornell have a horrible attitude. If you didn't get the amount of girls who are worth the effort, you need to examine why and try to fix that part of your chapter. Admiting defeat is sad and pathetic. From what I read on this thread, it sounds like you guys let the other GLOs on your campus decide that you guys were done and you didn't say otherwise.
And Nationals would not yank your chapter like that. (If they were that mean, they wouldn't be our sisters and we would have really lost our charter three or four years ago.) If you let them, they will help you so much that your MRA will become your new best friend. You just have a lot of work ahead of you. I'm VPR of my chapter and we're starting our second year of Warning II Recruitment status (plus a few other Warnings we need to overcome) and yet we're a better chapter now than ever before. If you guys want to save your chapter, then do it. But do not whine that you do not get NMs when you're letting other people admit your defeat.
Okay now I'm done being a b*tch and seriously, if you girls at Cornell want to feel better about the position you're in, e mail me at laurabonetti@hotmail.com and find out the saga of the Eta Chapter. Its a really overuse cliche, but the darkest hour really is before the dawn. Cheesiness done, I swear.

Re: Its not over til the fat lady sings
 

We have been struggling for quite a few years now, and we haven't given up. Actually, our house will be open next year, albeit with 80% of the girls gone. The situation is long and complicated, but we all love our house and we want the best for it. We have tried everything possible, and it is not your judgement to say we have a horrible attitude.

dphies00--

I tend to agree with your statements regarding help from volunteers. Melon, with the help of your MRA and other national officers, your chapter will thrive again. While I am a COA for my region, the MRA is one of my best friends too because she helps out these women!!

Melon, I'd love to help you all, so please, if you have any questions at all, I encourage you to PM me. With a lot of alumnae support, your chapter will grow into a great one.

YITS,
Heather

I'll have to agree with laura (dphies00) on that one (the not giving up thing) not only because she is my sister, but because she is an awesome VPR.....if you need some help brain storming, I will be glad to help you guys (and any other chapter for that matter) I will be taking over the MRA position next year for Western PA and I have been working closely with ETa this year...sometimes my ideas are a little crazy, but I hope dphies00 would agree that sometimes my crazy ideas can lead to something better! lol

Also if you need ideas don't be afraid to use your advisors, that's what they are there for. Particularly Linnette the Director of recruitment, I can guarantee that she would devote as much time as possible to any chapter that **asks, and isn't afraid to try**. I'm not implying that you aren't, however, I just graduated last year and I know how I felt about advisors in general.

I understand that you are frustrated, but I know that dphies00 is only trying to help....often the first hurdlle is attitude. Just use a positive swing to things.

So like I said, I am here to help!!
Good luck

the dphie chapter at my school has done a good job of surviving through troubled times (which arent' exactly unique on the campus, the panhellenic there needs major work).
But one point of advice that would help any chapter, and i feel would help this chapter, is simply to be nicer to people, especially fellow greeks! I have encountered several very nice members of the thischapter, but also have encountered very rude members. For example, the elevator in the building was not working on the first floor lobby, so we had to go up to a different floor to get it. Well, myself and another girl walked up to 3 (the dphie's floor) because we thought they were nicer and friendlier than the girls on 2. Well, we stood in the lobby and waited for the elevator, not touching anything, not looking down the halls or anything. And the sisters sitting in the informal end (it's hard to describe the layout of the sorority hall) said, loud enough for us to hear, "what are they doing here? who said they could come on our floor" and other rude things that we were obviously meant to overhear. This is among several other unfortunate encouters.
Having a good attitude and giving out positive PR helps a chapter immensely. My chapter had been in some problems a few semesters ago, and a PR overhaul totally turned things around.
I'd hate to see another sorority leave our campus. I would love to see all of our sororities succeed. But please remember, that kindness and friendlieness can do a world of good, and the opposite can do a world of negative PR.

I'm sorry that you feel that way about the chapter. However perhaps I can shed some light on why they were being "rude".
My last year at pitt which was fall 200-spring 2001, I lived in the suite. We had the misfortune of having a sorority that decided to take things from our suite a prank. It happened repetitively including leaving marks on our new furniture and stealing things from our foyer. They even went so far as to break into our current presidents room and write things through her planner. The sad thing is that we didin't even provoke this sorority. It happened so frequently that we had to lock the doors to both ends of our suite. When we finally caught them, they blamed it on two of their new members even though we actually caught sisters. Rather than be vindictive and charge them with theft. We agreed to let them pay for the stolen items. We kept it pretty quite, rather than announce it to the entire greek community. Therefore, it is not surprising that they are a little hostile towards random people on their floor. Put yourself into this situation, and maybe you would fell the same way.

Secondly it is not very kosher to list a specific chapters missgivings on this site and I'd really appreciate it if you removed your specific mention of the chapter, it's not really in the panhellinc spirit.

Again I am sorry that you felt that way and hope this sheds a little more light on it.

I would like to apologize for upsetting anyone with my post. I did take off the specific chapter name, but i'm not going to rescind my post. What i said was true of what happened to me, I didn't fabricate anything or intentially try to deface the sisters of dphie. And i'm taking a lot of time to write this response, in hoping that i can address everything that i mean to say.
I'm also really sorry that you are having such horrible troubles with other houses. We thankfully haven't had any real problems with other houses.
However, two wrongs do not make a right, nor is it "in the panhellenic spirit". Treating someone badly or rudely just because someone has treated you badly is not the right way to handle things. Especially when the people had nothing to do with what happened to your house. I remember my mother used to say to me when i was younger and happened to have a fight with a friend, she would say "kill them with kindness". Instead of making rude comments, if they were genuinely concerned as to why we were on the floor, someone could have said "can we help you?" or something of the sort. We would have gladly explained that we choose to go to your floor b/c we thought your house was a lot friendlier and nicer than the floor below you. But unfortunately, we were proved wrong.
Also, shouldn't you treat others as you want to be treated? By being rude and nasty to people, aren't you acting no better than those who were hurtful to you? That's not helping you get along with other houses at all. I know that our house isn't a house that you were having problems with. And i believe that both me and the other girl i was with were wearing letters that day.
Intersorority-relations may be more important that you realize. If a member of another house knows someone that's thinking about rushing, if your house has treated them badly, they're going to make sure that that comes across to the person thinking about rushing. This influence happens more than you may think, especially on our campus. People talk, people find out about the reputations different houses have.
For those of you who are familiar with my sorority's chapter at this school, you know how much we have gone through in the past 2 years. We have improved incredibly, and most of it can be contributed to postive PR. And the purpose of my first post was to say that you need to work on PR more. Like the commericial says, "image is everything". Not exactly physical appearance, but how you come across to people. And that is something that my house had worked incredibly hard on, and succeeded. And i know that your chapter could do it as well. I'm now an alumna and i've been through a lot the past few years. If you ever wanted advice or ideas on how we did it, i would love to help you.
Once again, i apologize if i offended you. But i love being Greek with all my heart, and really wish for the system to survive at our school. We lost Kappa Alpha Theta the year i pledged, and it has been rumored that we can lose more. And i apologize if your nationls does read this board and it gets you into some sort of "trouble". But i hope that your nationals office doesn't base it's news on chapters on internet message boards, i'm sure they would take it with a grain of salt. I just really hope that the chapter can work on this.

Okay I have waited a few days to respond to this and while I realy don't want to, I am going to.
First of all by panhellenic spirit I mean helping out other sororities by not speaking about them negatively. It does not help out the other sororities on your campus by posting these kinds of things on their specific site where a PNM could see this. While I gave reasons for why the chapter may have responded that way I understand why they may, and I thought perhaps you would too. I never said that it was appropriate, I just gave a reason as to why they reacted that way. I also did asked you to remove specific references to the chapter and I wanted to thank you for doing so. I didn't ask you to remove your post, you are perfectly entitled to your opinion and of course your experiences both positive and negative. It would have been a better help if rather than post this experience for the world to see you could have done it privately to the active member on this board stating your concern for what kind of image this would bring to the chapter. It doesn't help to speak negatively about another sorority as you know, this one, or any of the others for that matter. By doing this you also reflect negatively on your house as well.
As far as "image is everything", I'll have to disagree. These girls live by our motto, esse quam videri, to be rather than to seem to be. They are real, they are not mean girls by any way. They are the embodiment of our letters and of our founding principles. You state that it is rumored that you can lose more chapters. This chapter is not in danger of losing it's charter. The sororities there go through different phases, it's the chapters that can hold together through this and make it through that are the true sisters.
The last thing I would like to address is the whole "nationals" thing. In all honesty I believe that our headquarters has other things to do than be concerned about this. The only person who should be concerned is me, I work with their PR chair and I am not worried, because I know that they won't do it again. Their pr plan and recruitment plan are already in place and they are already on their way back to prominence on campus.

Thanks for offering to help though!! We appreciate it!!! I did a search of your posts and I notice that you are trying to start an alum association. We are too so if you need any help pm me!!!

Have a great summer!!!

:D