trouble ahead?
 

With some of the sororities, even outside the south, reaching the
numbers over 150....what happened to traditional exhanges?
I was in our TKE colony meeting Sat. with our group of 50+ and
one mentioned it took SAE & TKE colonies, both, just to function
with one sorority pledge class at U of CO--Boulder
Beta at KU has won virtually everything forever with 80 + men,
and could take 200, I suppose, if they wanted.
But they are a top-flite outfit and very selective, virtually no
attrition. Alums raise millions for any whim...in two days.
What can be said of the 150 and upwards outfits?
I had a Pi Phi cousin at CU in a chapter of nearly 175 girls; most
went inactive their junior year and the chapter continued to get
pledge classes with the ridiculous quota of 70 or 80.
Compare the (ridiculous) quotas for the girls in NY vs dixie....
Wow! Not even close to sisterhood....
This, at least to me, is insane.
This defies fraternity, at least as I knew it.
And my word, talk to an old Zete or Chi Psi or Delta Phi and they
thought 25 was huge!
The composite article was humorous--imagine one with 250 girls
on it. Need a magnifying glass to identify "sisters."
Naw, the southern belles can have their superficial chapters of
200 plus...but something has been lost in the translation.

Erik, you fail to understand that the concept of fraternity doesn't solely lie in numbers, race, houses or other things. It lies in brother or sisterhood. Ask our Ole Miss or Alabama ladies, size doesn't matter when it comes to quality of sisterhood.:)

Re: trouble ahead?
 

I have to say that you can have true brotherhood/sisterhood with large number groups, but you have to build slowly in my opinion. Several years ago our chapter decided to go big. We went real big. My pledge class was 35 when we had 25 actives. We rushed 25+ for the next 3 semesters. The result? In my opinion we moved to fast and moved away from our core values. Many of the members who were initiated never formed many personal relationships and never really got what Teke is all about and as a result dropped. Out of the 100 members that have been initiated in my chapter since I came through, 30 of them are truly active. Fortunately we've realized our mistake and are coming back to our values and trying to reidentify ourselves with the greek community here at UCF. My advice to anyone who wants to go big...is build a strong pledge program first and establish an identity for yourselves. The time to decide the direction of the chapter is before you go big, not after. Make sure that the people who decide the direction of the chapter are going to be there for a significant amount of time and are going to follow through and take leadership positions. If you wait until you're big then you have all these people with their own opinions about what the chapter needs to be. I'm not saying that those opinions aren't valid, but the most important thing to have is direction. What that direction is doesn't matter, as long as everyone works together towards a common goal. That to me is what true brotherhood/sisterhood is about.

I dont see anything wrong with big numbers if they are dedicated members that work to get to know their brothers or sisters. Thats what it comes down to. As mentioned above, sisterhood or brotherhood.

QUALITY NOT QUANTITY!

agree to disagree
 

yep, we must agree to disagree.
but I think some of your reasoning is flat-ass dumb;
you will never prove to me that a "sorority" of 250
sisters has the closeness that 60 has, and while I
have not surveyed every campus, I can damned well
tell you that most chapters over 150 have no clue...
A seven million dollar palace does not make it, but
within the value systems of some, perhaps it does...

thats a stereotype


it may be true of some but not all

Re: agree to disagree
 

BTW- there's a lot of us who think your posts are "flat-ass dumb" and rude.

UCF boasts some of those larger sorority chapters, and I feel our Greek System and chapters share a kinship and closeness that other more "typical sized" chapters or Greek Systems do not.

Erik, I can understand where you are coming from, because you haven't experienced collegiate membership in a large chapter, or in a sorority, for that matter... but while I appreciate your perspective on general Greek history and current events, I don't appreciate an uninformed opinion on chapter size and its effect on perceived "brotherhood" and "sisterhood." I don't expect an apology, but I regard you as an intelligent person. I encourage you to consider the life of today's college student at a large university with a high emphasis on Greek Life and to look at all the current sorority programming that emphasizes leadership, delegation and acclimation to chapter life-- these accomodate chapters large and small.

Having come from a large chapter of nearly 200, and working with chapters whose numbers range in the 50's, I can tell you that the spirit of teamwork, morale and friendship ran very high in my large chapter, and was a huge motivating force in my collegiate life to do good and be my best.

ETA: This is not to say that smaller chapters do not share special bonds, and closeness, but I find no merit to the arguement that larger chapters don't have strong "sisterhood" and "brotherhood."

Here at Ole Miss our 9 NPCs have an average size of about 250. It is hard to have swaps/exchanges with fraternities that are smaller but then again, not every single member is going to be at a social. Now I know at meals it can be difficult, however, I know for a fact that every single chapter here at Ole Miss has some of the best sisterhood in the country. It does not matter how big the chapter is, all that matters is that the chapter lives by their ritual daily! I also agree with some of ya'll, that no matter the size, a sorority can function and can have ritual. I have met AOIIs from all over the country and Canada; our chapter sizes might differ but our common bond is the same. I will say this, I think The Ole Miss Greek System is a wonderful example that having larger chapters can work. Anyway, that's my thoughts.

I understand Erik P. Conrad's point. I liked having forty to fifty something sisters. When I first read about sororities that had pledge/new member classes bigger than my entire chapter, I was really surprised. I couldn't imagine being close to so many women. I don't understand how that would work. I think being in a smaller chapter makes it easier to be close. I think that being in a larger chapter provides benefits that I can't imagine since I didn't experience that.

I'm not criticizing. I respect that what works for some chapters at some schools won't work for other chapters. I think that there are pros and cons in each situation. :)

I personally would not have felt comfy in a chapter of 200...but then again, at the time, I picked the chapter of 30 over the chapter of 60 because I wanted a smaller chapter. That's just me. Some of our sisters HATED being smaller and wanted us to have 60+. To me, that's just personal preference. It's the same with people who choose a college with 1000 students over a college with 25,000 students.

I don't think 200 sisters can ALL know each other up and down the way we did, but you can still form lasting friendships within that chapter.

I do agree with what Erik is saying about retention - I don't see the sense in crowing over making quota every year if half those girls aren't even active by graduation. That applies to the North, South, East OR West...it's kind of hard to promote "sisterhood for a lifetime" if so many people can't even manage four years.

And you can ask several fraternities to mix with you at once. More choice that way. :D

It's true, you're a guy, in a FRATERNITY, you really can't speculate on sorority life and make general statements like you do. You've made several rude generalizations in the past as if you are the "know all" of greek life. (i.e. Chapters without houses are not within your concept of fraternity/sorority, black/multicultural organizations are not real fraternities/sororities). Those have offended many people. :mad: :rolleyes:

Re: agree to disagree
 

Erik, if it means anything, I agree. And yes, I also agree, Beta at KU dominates.

Clearly, each chapter of each sorority or fraternity varies campus to campus. Large numbers or small numbers---who can say if one chapters' sisterhood or brotherhood is strong? I cam from a small chapter that grew larger while I was there, and when I graduated, the chapter was just as strong as it was when I started college. Each group goes through changes in numbers and people. And those people determine the makeup of the chapter, not the numbers!!! So, large or small, the bonds are there.

You truly are PC ;)

I went to a school where all but one of the sororities were between 80 and 126. To some women, that's huge; to others, it's small.

The way I feel is that there is always, always going to be cliques within a sorority. That's true whether the group is 20 or 200. Girls divide up by pledge class, interests, personality type, whatever.

It's true that in a group of 200, you can't be close to everybody in the group, but to me that's not what a sorority's about. There are plenty of chapters of 60 or even 20 where not everybody's friends, either. And that the thing about large chapters is that it forces diversity of personality. Because my chapter was 100ish girls, I was sisters with girls who were nothing like me in terms of personality, interests, major, family background, race, religion, class, talents, etc. -- and I wouldn't trade that for anything in the world. Even though I wasn't close to all of them, there wasn't a single girl in the chapter that I wouldn't be able to go out with on a Friday night. And I admired every single girl in that chapter for different reasons, many of them because of their differences from me, not in spite of them. And I would much rather have that than be in a group where I am best friends with all of 25 girls who are all exactly like me.

Furthermore, I'm sure any travelling consultant will tell you that there are big groups that have more brotherhood/sisterhood than the small groups. I see that on our campus, in fact, among some of the fraternities (although for others, of course, the opposite is also true).

Sisterhood does not mean being best friends with every single girl in your chapter. It means sharing a bond and caring about someone even when you don't necessarily know them that well -- the same way we share a bond and care about our sisters in chapters across the country even when we have never met them.

Conard,
it depends on how successful the chapter is since success motivates brothers and is also the best benchmark of how close they are and how they work together.

If you can get 10 guys to throw the biggest parties, dominate the student government and other organizations, get the prettiest girls, have a great looking house, throw a great philanthropy, etc. etc. you've won and numbers mean nothing.

Generally, it's bigger numbers, that I've seen, that allow you to do that though.

-Rudey

Well, I don't know that that's always necessarily true, but that is another thread :)

A friend of mine was in a chapter with more than 150 actives. Being from a chapter of 45 actives, I asked her, how the hell can you possibly be friends with all of your sisters? How do you learn who they all are during your new member period? And how do you vote on someone during officer elections, when you don't really know someone?

Her answer to me was that often times, on her campus, in the South, there is a core of women, usually 30-40, that run the chapter (holding offices, dealing with the business side). She said in her NM class of 60, she probably only got to know 30 of them well, and that it isn't uncommon to walk across campus, see a girl in your letters, and have a hard time remembering who she is. She told me that the sorority experience there is what you make of it. She made some fabulous, lifelong friends, but wasn't particularly close to more than say 30 or so women, most her new member class.

As for the socials, well, what can you do other than pair up with another fraternity to make up the #s differences? It seems that's the way it works with homecoming/greek week, etc., and it works.

As for diversity, I've seen some of those southern composites, and 250 girls does not diversity make, sorry!

toys, toys, toys, more, more
 

Bigger chapters can have houses and buy toys. Toys are fun.
Everybody likes toys. But how many toys?
Some of you are correct, I have never been in a sorority and it
is now a different world than of the 60 member chapters on a
5,000 student campus. And there are a helleva lot of kids who
do not even belong in college. They cannot read, write, or reason. Very few F's are given; political correctness prevails. Take
a look at the g.p.a. today...considerably higher than in the past,
but the performance certainly not. Why are the greeks often below the all student g.p.a.? I have read very few posts discussing scholarship, but that's not my point here. I have lived a long time and have been out in the 'real' world considerably
longer. I'm likely more educated and of course if this is a threat, considered rude, condescending, what have you--I can live with that, and yet continue to be pro-greek. Some of you need to be
sent to your room, replete with TV and boom boxes.
But I stand my ground...the two hundred member sorority is a
far cry from the fun times we had with the Chi Os and Tri Sigmas
of near equal size. Promoting absenteeism at exchanges is simply a cop-out. Is that hard to grasp? Perhaps we ought to confer the PhD at birth, then we could get on with living.
Yes, some chapters are on campuses hardly recognizable today
from those of yore. And not all have 250 girls or 150 boys....
You have not lived long enough nor have learned enough to be
the all-knowing you seem, and if I offend you, take heed, maybe
do a little introspection. You have hardly made a good name
for yourselves with todays behaviour....get real. The apologies
we make for you are many, and we would dearly like you to get
on the road to something more laudable. And while I may isolate
some of you, some I do not. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in
between.

Of course most of what your latest post, Mr. Conard, says is total unsubstantiated. Please, give us some examples of "Why are the greeks often below the all student g.p.a.?"- I don't know if i've ever seen stats that show that greeks are below the all student GPA, especially sororities. So offer up some proof for your wild accusations.

If you're more educated, why can't you write a coherent post? Why can't you offer proof to substantiate your accusations? I can pretty much guarantee that many of us here are more educated and more intelligent than you. And those GCers that aren't at least have been bred with better manners than you.

Where are your statistics that we receive less education? There are more people getting an education and going further. Back in your day, not many women were afforded the opportunity to get an education. Now, we outnumber the men.

How can you accuse anyone of not making a good name for themselves after you post such rubbish and nonsense?

Offer up some proof for your accusations. But oh, you never do.

Sounds like someone has the case of the "back in my day"isms.

That's a very bigoted statement.

Oh give me a break! Bigoted? What is bigoted about saying I saw a composite at say, University of Georgia, and it was filled with all white women? That's not bigotry, it's fact. Get a grip.

If you believe that diversity is primarily defined by race, you are a full blown bigot.

I agree, get a grip. We ALL have "clone" chapters - not that there's anything wrong with that - and if you don't believe that you are living in happy fairy land. Shadokat's point is that simply because you have a large chapter it doesn't mean it includes all races, creeds, or economic classes.

So you can judge a person's character by her composite picture? I'm not the one who needs to get a grip.

THANK YOU! That's exactly what I mean. But apparently, close-minded jerks like you Russ can't understand that.

You prejudge hundreds of women by their composite pictures, and you call me close minded? Pot meet kettle.

We could all probably make our points easier wihtout direct personal attacks . . . or if/then personal attacks.

Russ, if you feel the need to call me a bigot, feel free. I am not, and have never been such. I'm not going to be baited into another of your petty, childish spats on GC. We've all seen far too many to want to take that route.

For those of you whom I may have offended with my comment, my apologies. I'm not the wordsmith that 33girl is :)

Having lived longer doesn't make one wiser. It's how you apply what you learn to life.

I am however irritated that just because someone is older than i am, they think they know more. I dont even understand why this is so importnat for him to argue. It makes for good debate but saying you know more than someone else bc youve been around longer isnt a valid point. Sorry.

First off, Erik Conard is "Not Some Dumb Ass" Got it KD!

Secondly, He is older, but, He has more damn Greek knowledge in His little finger than most of you ever thought about knowing. Got that Russ.

Thirdly, He is still envolved not only with His Fraternity, TKE, but works with others if needed.

Fourthly, He does keep updated on many events that are going on In The Total Greek World.

Remember, TKE was one of the first to try colonizing on 2 year Colleges and it didnt work. It was brought up at LXA General Assembly and was tabled because of track records. Yes, there were a few that made it, but damn few.

If some would get off of your rightous soap boxes and really read what He is Posts then you might become a better Greek as He is and has been for many years.

Some are so easy to go for the throat of someone who you do not care for their beleifs, but some of us dont care for yours but dont attack you everytime you post something.

I for one knowing This Gentleman for many years admire Him, I may not agree with everything He says and I let Him know it, He has the right to post it!:p

Granted you all have the same right as He does, I do and You do. But get civil, get your facts straight first.

As far as LARGE Groups, I for one agree, I feel that I want to know My Brothers, not be the biggest of the big and not know someone.

Yep it is about right, 20 % do the work and 80 % dont do squat, they are just a damn number to build memebership! They know their only Little Qlicks of Sweetys!

Just as expected, the usual Tom up Erik's ass post.

Hey Tom, work on the reading comprehension, Erik called us all "flat ass dumb". I was quoting his words.

I don't give a crap how much you say he knows, his posts here, as well as yours, display great ignorance. Blatantly false claims and total utter rudeness are not the marks of an educated man.

It's a lovely representation of TKE for him to call us all these names and be so rude to everyone.

And, you are more than welcome!:rolleyes:

Wooly Bugger is working for sure!:D

And what knowledge do you profess to?

I dont want to go any further .

So it's okay for Erik to get off with calling everyone else younger than him a "dumb ass" but it's not okay for someone to show him the same treatment? :rolleyes:

Just because he's older and has had more experience does not give him the right to treat his fellow Greeks in a condescending manner.

Just because he's got years of Greek life under his belt does not make him a better person than any of us.

And if he wants us to take him and his views seriously, calling everyone's posting "dumb ass" is NOT going to help.

I don't agree with Erik's post, but you don't need to say stuff like that either. Don't make it out like he's representing all 270,000 of us. You know as well as I do that that's not true. Not only that, but it makes me, as a member, take sides in the argument...something I don't wish to do because I think everyone has valid arguments.

Erik is a greek who is expressing his opinion (maybe not in the most tactful way). The fact that he's a Teke has nothing to do with the argument.

I have found in most organizations that I have been a part of, about 20% do most of the work. Of the 80% some do little to nothing, but many just don't know what to do. Maybe it should be 20% do 80% of the work, 60% do 20%, and 20% do 0%. I think that you just have to tell people what to do. I have found that if you give this group specific jobs, most of them will do those jobs successfully.

We should all stop looking down on each other and ripping on each other. Theres going to be opposite views on this post and thats good for anyone wishing to debate.

Thats 20% thing goes for ANY group. My group is smaller than it normally is (under 20) and its still only about 20% of the people doing the work. It sucks but some people just have different reasons for doing stuff and some people do more work than others. Assuming that a large group isnt as good as a small one is still rude though. Each greek organization is unique in how they do things and how they run. I say that coming from a small, tight knit group of girls. Even when we were bigger we were tight. We have our own special ways of keeping in touch with each other because its impossible to see and talk to everyone all the time. It tends to work really well for us and I imagine the other orgs have their own ways of being sisters.

Plus, I was alwyas under the impression that a true sister in an org. with multiple chapters has a special bond with everyone that wears those letters. Just as I may not know all the alumni from my group really well, but I have a bond with them and would feel comfy talking to any of them. Thats what its all about! Phi Nu is my family and I think it rocks that I have such a big family now and no matter where I am I can call someone for help or a shoulder to lean on.

I just think if you wear your letters proudly and live by them you are going to have an understanding with anyone else that wears them.