no more GC says nationals?
 

Hey y'all --

I saw KappaKittyKat's signature, and it said something about you girls' nationals making a rule on Nov. 8 that you couldn't post on GC anymore.

What's the deal with that?

waaaak??!?
 

I hope that you guys get this worked out and can come back and join us soon! You all are such a credit to Kappa - GC loves you!!

WHHHHHAAAAATTTT??!?!?!

We love ya, KKC! :)

Please come back to GC!!

(If I knew how to make those big crying faces, I would):( :( :(

Please come back!!!!! I haven't seen any questionable/derogatory behaviors from any Kappas on this board. If the Kappa Council is reading this, PLEASE LET THEM COME BACK!!!! KappaKittyCat has helped me with ideas on rebuilding my chapter, and I want more of her help!!!!

We love you guys!!!

huh
 

I'm so confused.... who said this?? Has this been confirmed by anyone?

Before we got all worked up, how do we find out if this is true??

Re: no more GC says nationals?
 

Could you possibly post a copy of it on this thread, or send us a link.....

This is herr sig...

8 November, 2002.
Kappa Kappa Gamma's Fraternity Council has placed a moratorium on its members' posting on GreekChat.com and any other such online forums until further notice. This is due to the public nature of the forums and the fact that they are unauthorized and unmoderated by Kappa.
I'm still reading here on GC, but I cannot post until I hear otherwise. I'll miss you all. Please email me with questions.
Love, KappaKittyCat

That's hard to believe. You think they'd trust you to represent your organization. I wonder why this came about?

When I first saw this thread, I became concerned, mainly because there is a large population of AGDs on this board and every day we contribute to threads in the General Forums and in our own forum. I've been on GreekChat since December 2000 and there have been a few threads/posts that could've sparked the attention of their council, but nothing really stands out in my mind.

I know for a fact that members of the AGD International Council and Volunteer Service Team monitor these boards as I have been asked to edit and exercise caution on certain threads in the AGD Forum. I have great faith in my sisters that they represent Alpha Gamma Delta to the best of their ability, and they've been doing that well!

I too am curious as to what exactly brought about this moratorium...and if other GLOs will find themselves in a similar situation with their respective governing bodies.

If anyone can shed light on this situation, inquiring minds want to know! ;)

:eek: :confused: :(

I don't get it... It's not like the Kappas here are posting their ritual for all the world to see - and nothing is stopping members of their national council from reading the boards and asking people to edit/delete posts if necessary (as OTW says AGD's council does).

I do hope this isn't true... GC wouldn't be the same without you :(

I agree with OTW -- if you trust your girls to represent your org. well, then trust your girls to represent your org. well.

As 33girl PMed me, "when I think of groups whose nationals need to shut them up, the Kappas do not spring to mind."

My bet is the following. Most of our intl/natl board of directors are a bit older, and not so in touch with technology. I would be willijng to bet most of my orgs. BOD think Instant Messenger is some type of instant coffee.

They prolly just started hearing about GC and such, and as a natural rection, reacted by closing shop, so to speak. Thay need to be informed of the positive things GC is and maybe spend a minute or 2 here and figure out whats up before they speak and pass moratoriums.

As for my org trying soemthing like that...
I too would consider disaffiliating

I highly prize my free speech.

I am a fraternity alum, I have done my time and paid lots of cashola. I get to say what I want, as long as I do it as a gentleman

If confirmed, BOO HISS to KKG Council for being reactionary, archaic and afraid of new technology. I know many KKG. Censorship is not an ideal of what I would expect from you fine ladies.

I am obviously dissapointed . I hold KKG in higher regards than this.

Okay, so here's me being a nerd, but what if some of us contacted Kappa nationals about this? Do you think it'd make a difference if they were getting letters from Jane of ABC and John of XYZ about how well Kappa represents themselves and what an addition they are to the board?

Are they able to do this? What will happen if you do post on GC do they take your letters away? I hope this is not going to effect other GLO. :confused:

From what I heard, it was a traveling consultant who informed KKC of their headquarters' intent to restrict members from posting. Apparently they've been following GC, because the TC was able to figure out who KKC was. "Hey, do you post on GreekChat? Are you KappaKittyCat?"

I posted my thoughts here:

http://greekchat.com/gcforums/showth...492#post294230

Hm ...

Our nationals doesn't have some committee whose job it is to police these boards and keep us in line. However, I do know that some people who read GC have enough influence up at HQ that if one of us AXDs was doing something ludicrous (revealing ritual, advocating many criminal activities), they could do something in the way of punishment. I mean, most of my sisters on here, you can figure out what chapter they're in, and with a first name and a pledge year, nationals can find out who you are.

But the larger point is - we talk to lots of people about Greek life, or to people who are aware of our affilifiation. So some people at work know I'm an AXD; am I forbidden to talk to them? So my boyfriend asks me how formal rush works, am I not supposed to answer? If you discuss a sensitive topic in class (abortion, drug legalization), are you supposed to lose participation points because Mu Mus "shouldn't talk about" those things in front of classmates who know your affiliation? Preposterous.

This message board is simply like all the other conversations in life where people know our affiliations. While certain avenues of conversation are forbidden (how you vote on members), for the most part we realize that the person is not speaking in a PR capacity on behalf of the organization. Now clearly if you're going to quote your national policy or ask for help on a chapter issue or something, you should check your facts, but if one Nu Nu says she really likes pink, we're not all therefore going to extrapolate that all Nu Nus are required to like pink! If you can say it to me in real life, you should be able to say it to me online.

And honestly, shouldn't a national assume the best of its members, although not naively? If you presuppose that your sisters are going to come on here and trash your reputation, that reveals a lack of faith in your sisters that is inappropriate, I think.

This situation is really sad and shouldn't affect any organizations :(

This is a can of worms that KKG Directors should not be heading towards.

There is such a thing called the Freedom Of Speech Act.

This would be a dire mistake on their part to try to gag their members from a public forum such as greekchat!

I know that there are members of Int. Hdq. of LXA who have checked this site and nothing was or has been said about telling members not to post here!

If KKG follows through with this, this will give a black eye to the whole Greek Community for stupidity by an International Headquarters.

Dont you think that the media would have a hey day with this? :(

If they do not think that the women who affiliate with them have enough common sense to use good judgement, then why are they even a National Soroity and keep trying to gain membership?:confused:


I hope that someone finds out more about this and reports back to us! Hell the ACLU would love to see something like this!

Lets get more straight talk about this first and then go from there!


Thank your for this unpaid announcement from a fellow Greek!:)

um, wow. i guess that i would no longer affiliate with my glo if this were the case. i would always wonder what else they would try to tell me i can and can't say. if this really is true, i would also think that people wouldn't want to join fraternities or sororities if they had these types of restrictions. yes, i agree that we shouldn't be posting our ritual or whatever. i just can't believe that they would think that talking about greek life, the good points (and the bad points) of being a greek, the misc stuff that goes on.....would be bad for the sorority.

and what prevents someone from getting an account on gc and saying they were from a different glo? what will they do then?

and doesn't this perpetuate the stereotype of sororities and fraternities being "stuffy and elitist" organizations???

i am babbling, bc i am completely and totally in awe, and my day today was wayyyy to stressful to deal with this!

oh, and on a very scary note, what if glos started saying things like, you can't initiate people of different races or (in an example from another post) that if you kiss someone from another race in your living room, then you shouldn't be granted collegiate status in another chapter?????? where will the line stop????

Well, well, well... Just came across this and must say I am totally appalled! No offense to the individual members of said organization, but if someone told ME what I could or could not do in relationship to a community BB-well, it would make me so angry I'd probably do just the opposite! Actually, this borders on the ridiculous!

How can something like this be enforced? What power does KKG have over their alums? If AXO EVER set foot into the realm of dictating my personal communications (albeit on a public forum) I would laugh and quite honestly ask, "Who died and made YOU God?" Secretes and rituals aside, the free exchange of ideas and information is one of the CORNERSTONES of a Democracy! This isn't an example of "womanhood" it's more attune to a Mafia/Big Sister is watching you mentality that has no place in today's world. Get some spine and stand up for your rights as INDIVIDUALS!

How can people respect an organization that treats their members like brainless children who need their choices and actions dictated?
Yes, there have been posts by many people with their GLO attached that make ME uncomfortable, but good grief, no one in their right mind would take those statements as a blanket opinion of an entire group. Besides, it isn't my job to play censor to ANY individual, we do have Mods and even THEY have been accused of being over zealous.

Your HQs needs a reality check! I'm sure when they consider the possible ramifications from such an unwarranted decision, they will realize that their stance is unjustified as well an unenforceable. "Never win a battle, only to lose the war!" There are far more issues of concern to address than posting on a BB!!!!

Tom wrote-If KKG follows through with this, this will give a black eye to the whole Greek Community for stupidity by an International Headquarters. If they do not think that the women who affiliate with them have enough common sense to use good judgement, then why are they even a National Soroity and keep trying to gain membership?

thanks!
 

very well said!! Thanks for your support!

Being that I have the "journalism-free-speech-first-amendment" state of mind, I haven't stopped posting or reading anything on GC! :)

(kdonline taught me well!) ;)

Amen!

I wish all of our KKG member good luck with this disagreement. As stated above what about free speech? I'm sure you all took an oath not to divulge any secrets that only active members know, and also not to discuss ritual. Other than that it all lays in using common sese about what to discuss on these boards.

From what I have seen on GC and read on various boards, the KKG's here are wonderful ladies who represent their organization well. Best of luck with this situation and I hope to see some KKG posts! :)

~Allie

No, there isn't -- at least, not that I know of. Private organizations are legally free to restrict the speech of their members. In fact, sometimes the organization has its own free speech right to do just that.

Sigh. I've been over this so often I have canned comments just waiting for it now.

Constitutional rights limit the sorts of things the government can do. The most salient example here, the First Amendment's free speech clause, limits the ways the government can restrict speech.

Constitutional rights do not limit private persons or organizations unless they act as government agents. This is why private educational institutions (especially those who accept no federal money) can limit speech and other things we consider to be constitutional rights in all sorts of ways that government-run educational institutions cannot. Sometimes, other laws (like the tax code, federal financial aid laws, or the Civil Rights Acts) try to help people enforce constitutional rights against private organizations, but standing alone, the Constitution is powerless against private organizations.

I don't know of any laws that apply to this situation, though if anyone can provide a citation to a law, I'd be curious to have a look.

It's still a terrible decision. There's no law against it that I know of, though.

Eupolis,
You are right... there is NO freedom of speech in a private organization. The only people who can't limit our freedom of speech is the government. That is why songs are "bleeped" on the radio... because the RADIO station decides what to bleep. As long as the regulation on speech doesn't come from the government in anyway... it is completely legal. It is sad that KKG decided they needed to do this to their members seeing as how they weren't divulging ritual or saying ANYTHING that should make their Nationals upset or make anyone think anything bad about Kappa, in fact quite the opposite. I agree with the other people who have said the kappas on BC are outstanding ladies who reflect well on Kappa, as does almost everyone on this board.
I mean if you think about it, GC is a place where, most likely only the people who really CARE about their org., and greek life in general are going to take time to post. So it stands to reason that everyone here takes their orgs. values and the vows they made to the org. seriously and isn't going to act stupid.

I'll turn this around to put the on-topic stuff first. :)


This is generally true around here. I guess that this particular case came up because someone in the Kappa organizational hierarchy (RDC? PDC? someone in there) did in fact see a Kappa post that she didn't like and that she thought represented the organization poorly. It was probably a knee-jerk reaction to an out-of-the-ordinary post, and the sort of thing that KDonline would at most simply have dealt with by a quick, "hey, you probably shouldn't do that" email.

That proves the point. People are going to make mistakes, they're going to have judgment errors. It's a lot better to have a way to limit and address those judgment errors than it is to entirely isolate the group from the forum.

A lot of people are saying that common sense is all that's needed. I'm not sure that's the best way of looking at it. What I like to think is that though people will sometimes make mistakes, we can learn and teach each other how not to make those mistakes. We can catch them quickly and deal with them in a way that leads to the growth of the individual rather than closing everyone off and preventing social growth.

I'd go into examples so as to make what I'm saying look less like I'm just picking pretty words out of the air, but I've got a meeting to go to. I've already written what's below, so I'll leave it in...

It's a little off topic, though!

The choice isn't so much theirs... The government requires radio to censor certain content at certain times of day. The First Amendment's free speech provisions aren't absolute, even against the government. There are lots of exceptions, and one of them is that the government can limit certain kinds of content in broadcast communication. A big case about this particular one is F.C.C v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978), and you can find a PDF of it at http://1stam.umn.edu/archive/classic...h/438us726.pdf -- it censored a daytime broadcast of a version of George Carlin's "Seven Words" routine. Transcript at http://1stam.umn.edu/archive/primary/pacifica.pdf.

Re: thanks!
 

LOLOL!

Too bad you weren't my student when we had that big anti-censorship protest at the Miami-Dade School Board building... THAT was fun! One of the highlights of my teaching career.. !

But the point of that protest is similar to what's going on now: what are they so afraid of?

I'm back from my appointment, so I'm going to expand a bit on this idea:

Here's what I'm thinking. People are going to make some posts that are in bad judgment. Either they will just do something we'd all recognize as the result of a bad judgment call, or they'll do something that we'd consider to be a bad idea if we were in the same organization. Either way, the proper socially positive response is for a sister or brother (or other GC'er) to say, "Hey, you probably shouldn't have posted that; consider deleting it." Reasonable people may differ as to just when it's time to step in and say something like that. It's still an effective and socially positive method of policing ourselves. It's a completely natural way, too -- the same way we go about it when we're in person.

There may be a gut reaction among some GLOs that they'd really prefer to keep all of the debate about these sorts of things within the organization. One argument against that reaction is that the internet simply isn't going to let them do that. It's true. Another argument, though, is that there have always been public gaffes where people say embarrassing things; the solution has never been to gag them all. The solution is to say, "hey, you probably shouldn't have done that," and (if the situation demands it) to say publicly, "sorry, we want you to know that we don't necessarily agree with that," and to move on from there. The person who made the mistake has the opportunity along with others to learn from it. It's practically never the end of the world.

Kappa Kappa Gamma will hopefully realize that this natural way of handling social gaffes will work just fine here. They will probably want a policy that encourages it and that makes clear certain lines that should not be crossed. In the end, though, they have (1) to trust that the majority of their sisters' judgment calls will be just fine, and (2) to accept that when someone makes a mistake, it can usually be handled easily.

Someone PMed me about this the other day... curlygirl and I are form the same chapter and have not heard anything about this... so until I hear something official I will continue posting also

:D :cool:
Good! If there no official word from Headquarters, keep on posting!

Eupolis, are you a lawyer? If not, you really should consider law school. :)

Oh, and one last thought to tack on to the end of what I wrote above:

Sometimes, yes, people make mistakes that can not be cleaned up as easily. But I think the sustained benefits that members and the organization receive if they can participate in forums like GreekChat outweigh the risks of irretrievable damage.

There.

And as an aside--
Cream, yes I am. :) I'm a brand-new (not counting the three cases I handled as a student), not-yet-employed lawyer. The state of unemployment is why I can write this much here. I should have spent a little bit more time today on job-hunting stuff. Oh well. At least I got more leads today.

Edited because I can't count.

I wonder if the KKG HQ has considered the fallout (if there would be any) from the exclusion of their forum and their members posting. Many young women have no idea WHAT a KKG, AXO, DG etc. is. GC could be the first introduction to their org. Now this is the double edged sword-if they, newbies, come across a post that is "offensive", are they likely to be turned off to the entire group? Doubtful, because we ALL know how difficult it can be to keep those darn Greek letters straight.;) It could take weeks or months for a young person to assimilate all the posters into their respective GLOs. Those that ARE savvy to the Greek system wouldn't be influenced one way or another by an errant post! HOWEVER, if an entire group loses their visibility
I could see a newbie thinking, "I've never heard of them." or "Gee, aren't there ANY KKG around?" In the mind of a teenage girl, this lack of visibility could be construed as weakness.

When I first started frequenting GC I honestly thought "Damn, sure are a TON of XOs!!! Must be a pretty strong group!":D
I think the greater harm to KKG would be their absence as opposed to a couple of individual posts amongst THOUSANDS!

A positive approach to every problem
 

Fellow GC'ers.

I don't represent Kappa HQs, but I am a KKG alumna. To be devil's advocate here, I think HQ may have a valid point.

While yes, I think 99% of the time you can trust the members of your organization to represent you well on a board, it is much easier to prevent than to "undo."

Kappa (like many GLOs) has been battling bad press for some time now. Hazing incidents, unflattering pictures, and the usual alcohol issues are all making far more news in the media and online than do positive press about the organization. While I think GC is an generally a positive community for greek life, we are all human, and sometimes we post things that reflect poorly on the organizations we are affiliated with.

While I am vigorously pro freedom of speech, there is a reality of greek affiliation. When you join Kappa (or any GLO) you are no longer just "Jane Doe", you are "Jane Doe, Kappa". Kappa wasn't founded so we could all get drunk and party. It was founded on high ideals and the notion that as Kappas we would represent a group of women with high ideals and positive ethical standards.

Is the solution to preserving the image and ideals of the organization to ban members from GC? Maybe not. Perhaps the solution is to provide a Kappa-only chat on the HW's website that can be a safe forum to be uncensored. Maybe it is to educate the HQ web team about GC. There are other solutions, I am certain.

But before anyone thinks of dis-association or other such drastic tactics, remember that HQ isn't trying to be evil or control your thoughts and words, just trying to preserve 132 years of outstanding sisterhood. The solution here is to start a dialog with headquarters that leads to a productive solution we can all live with. Let's be proactive rather than reactive!

Loyally,
Paula

Kappa Kappa Gamma
Delta Xi - Carnegie Mellon

This is interesting, I wonder who is next?

WAIT JUST A MINUTE
 

I've been traveling for work for 2 weeks, and so I haven't been able to keep up with GreekChat, and I come back to CHAOS on my board!

First of all, while I mean NO disrespect to "KappaKittyCat," may I remind you all that:
(1) She is ONE member of an enormous organization, and that
(2) I am the moderator of this board, a long-time advisor

Does it not occur to anyone that if all of this were REALLY "mandated" by KKG HQ that I would not have at least been NOTIFIED by HQ as moderator?

If HQ was truly as "hot and bothered" about GC as everyone seems to think they are, they certainly would have contacted me as moderator to ask me to stop posting, resign as moderator, and/or delete all of the current threads on the board, don't you think?

I am sorry to sound so cross, but please don't jump to conclusions just because ONE member of ONE chapter of an enormous and fair sorority makes a claim that has been TOTALLY UNSUBSTANTIATED by any credible source.

My apologies to KappaKittyCat for sounding so harsh. However, I am well aware of how rumors spread, and as moderator (at least for now), I will NOT allow this forum to let rumors run rampant and put KKG HQ in such a bad light.

Additionally, I will call KKG HQ this morning to find out what the truth is....and I promise to return and post, should I find out anything concrete.

In Greek Love,
imsohappythatiama

Now that's sensible! Leave it to imsohappythatiama to come up with a way to smooth this controversy/quandry! Excellent!

The Real Deal
 

Please view the thread I have pinned to the top of the KKG forum regarding this issue of KKG and Greek Chat.

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...threadid=26278

(edited to add link)