IFC/Greek Council etc problems
 

Has anyone else had problems with their IFC?

I get so pissed when I think about our IFC. It's basically completley run by 2 mediocre and extremely nerdy houses on campus (out of 22). They have made a bunch of rules that they don't follow themselves, yet were mysteriously enforced on the four strongest houses on our campus. The J-board (which determines punishment etc) is hand picked by the exec board of our IFC, so basically 3 dipshits run our greek system and they are using it to their advantage at the expense of the rest of the greeks.

I have been going to meetings for the last couple months to try and be more involved, but it is impossible! I can't even get them to give me a copy of our IFC's Bylaws. Last meeting i started asking questions, and the president laughed in my face. Well of course i will look like a retard if I can't even get the rules.

I am getting very frustrated and feel like the least of my worries should be about IFC fucking over our chapter.

FYI-our house doesn't haze (like pledges don't even have to clean up stuff). we don't wet rush and i feel like we break a lot of the fratty stereotypes (i am probably biased though).

This really turned into a bitch session, but for real guys, IFC should be there to help not be the frat police. I have pretty much determined I will have to waste 3 years of my life with a bunch of douche bags to make any difference in the greek system. They argued about parlimentary procedure for like an hour once for crying outloud!

Not an IFC person, but...
 

:confused: (Not having reps from each chapter in the council seems so foreign to me!)

Just curious - though you are not on the board, can you propose motions to amend bylaws (assuming you could find the bylaws)?

You really need to talk to the Greek advisor and get a copy of these bylaws; being expected to abide by bylaws you don't even know is ridiculous. If he / she will not listen to you, go in a group. Get your brothers behind you on this.

How are the officers elected? Do you have to be on NIC a certain number of terms? There's no reason that exec board should only be composed of 2 fraternities. Some of the other fraternities need to pick someone to stay on NIC a long time and get elected.

I'm also not sure about this business of the exec board picking the jud board - at any rate, they shouldn't be allowed to just pick their brothers and no one else (which I assume is what is happening).

You really need to go to your Greek advisor (or if he won't help, to whoever is over his head) IMMEDIATELY. There's no reason for things like withholding the bylaws from you - every fraternity should have a copy of them and they should be easily accessible at the Greek life office.

yes, there is a rep for each chapter (thats why i can go to meetings and can atleast vote on some stuff apparently).

Here's an example:

a couple weeks ag, another house's IFC rep questioned an agreement or rule or something about having the first two weeks be dry on our campus to our greek advisor. No one on our IFC voted on the thing (it would probably get voted down). It's not in our bylaws apparently. The IFC execs just kind of made it a rule where the reprecussions of having any alcohol in common areas hte first two weeks an offense that will get you taken to j-board. He claimed there were NIC rules forcing us to do this (turns out there aren't) and forced us to table voting on the "rule/agreement" until a few days before school starts (not nearly enough time to organize a party that will follow our IFC's event rules). The email was about ten pages long and i spent probably an hour trying to decipher it, but it culminated in the advisor accusing the representative of wet rushing and then he forwareded the whole thing to their national chapter and every other IFC rep. I'm sure that makes a lot of sense....but it's fucked up, trust me. If our national chapter got an email like that, we would be in some deep trouble.

Anyways, the rule will be impossible to enforce on our campus, since the 8 biggest fraternities are in a row and it's pretty much the only place to party on campus the first two weeks. kids will undoubtedly be drinking in our common areas unless we we spend like 500$ on security guards and fencing (great first impression-get the fuck away from our house!). Also, it really divides our bros into ones drinking in common areas saying "fuck you fuck IFC" and the other kids saying "we have to follow the rules". ugh it's such a nightmare-i will feel especially bad because i know if the rule gets shot down the week before school starts, there will be houses that throw totally unorganized parties and the chances of some stupid freshmen getting hurt or raped will be much higher. Either way, it's a lose lose situations for anyone in the greek system except the guys running it.

after reading my post, i feel it may come across very 1 sided. Anyways, i don't know how any of the rules work in our IFC-the 1 guy who was involved with IFC in our house graduated and is burned out of the greek system. being dry the first 2 weeks sounds like a good idea to avoid bad PR and wet rush on paper to many people i am sure.


If our house gets in trouble with our IFC, it is is in a LOT of trouble with our nationals, so i'm definitley biased because the IFC kids pretty much hold our charter in their hands and i feel like i can't do anything about it.

ok, this is coming from an IFC advisor (and a woman).

get a hold of the constitution and by-laws. make sure you read it to see how rules are to be passed - who has to vote on them, how many votes are needed to pass. also look to see how to remove an officer from his position. see if you can start procedures to remove the sucky officers from their positions. also look to see who can call meetings and what that procedure is. for my IFC, the exec board is mainly responsible, but delegates can call meetings if they can get support from other delegates. i don't have the rules in front of me, but i think that is it.

as others have said, talk to the IFC advisor and go in there with a good attitude. if you go in there and are pissed off, he/she will not be too open to your comments. if you go in there and say "hi advisor, i would like to talk to you about IFC. i have some concerns and would like to get your feedback on them. one is that the pres does blah blah blah. another is that blah blah. can you help me understand the situation?" this may be hard to do, but it will be to your advantage.

next, keep your org's regional or national rep informed of the situation (depends on how you're group works as to who you will contact....ask your pres if you're not sure). he may have some ideas or may be willing to talk to the IFC advisor if the advisor blows you off.

lastly, make sure you have done your research. know what NIC says on rules. contac them if you are not sure- they will be more than wiliing to help! if you can point out to the advisor and IFC pres that what the council is doing does not go with NIC guidelines, then you are better off.

good luck and keep us updated!

OK. I've seen this before and I'll tell you how to solve your problem and have fun with it too.
But first, let me offer you some advice that will help you in real life (undergraduate fraternity-sorority is not real life). 1) Listen to women like 33girl and gpb1874 who counsel cooperation and diplomacy; that approach will be valuable to you when you deal with adults. And, 2) make a point of expressing your strong feelings without the coarse language. In the real world, when you use the language you've been using here, no one above the age of 19 will take seriously anything you have to say. You have passion and I admire that. Hang onto that, always.

Now, here's how to have fun with this. Sororities and fraternities are very different. Undergraduate men typically don't have the patience or interest to pour over volumes of by-laws and long email essays. Men like a minimum of rules. That's how weasels control your IFC. They befuddle everyone else with "process" and mountains of rules and paperwork. My guess is that your Greek Advisor has discovered an easy path for him: he can control the system by placing his own weasley, hand-picked "home room monitors" in charge and then let them enforce his will using the indecipherable maze of regulations and rules of order you describe.
Realistically, no one on your side is going to plow through all that stuff. You don't have to! Remember: never play by the other guy's rules. The weasels love "the process" and the paperwork and the rules, and they want you to fight them on a field of their own choosing.
Refuse to do it.
If you want to have fun, and see some scrambling and screaming by the other side, then do this:
1. Have a meeting of just the Big Eight (as you describe them) chapters and organize them around the issue of small chapter weasels controling the IFC.
2. Elect officers, and very important: choose an articulate, respected spokesman to state your case to the administration and anyone else who inquires.
3. Announce that the Big Eight is leaving IFC and has formed a new trade association/representative body. This new organization will represent these fraternities to the Administration (you might include wording here praising the university for their openness in recognizing diverse interests - i.e. black fraternities and sororities in one council, multi-culturals in another, PanHellenic in a third and so on.) What you're doing, you say, is simply following that model. Since the IFC no longer represents your interests, you have formed an organization that does represetn your large fraternity culture. And, one of the signal features of your new organization is "One Man, One Vote". If Alpha Beta fraternity has 75 members, then their representative has 75 votes on any issue.
4. Never, under any circumstances, make any reference to the wet-dry issue, because this is what your opponents will use to discredit you. Just say, "We want to obey all the relevant laws and university rules on any alcohol-related issue...however, OUR issue is that the IFC does not represent our interests, it cannot be reformed to represetn us and we will no longer participate."
5. Focus you objection on the dictatorial atmosphere of the IFC, and on the fact that the small houses have seized control, "apparently under the banner of the Greek Advisor".
6. Formally ask the university to assist with the separation process by providing a neutral advisor for all parties, like a vice president.
7. The new organization speaks only through their officers. The FIRST THING our opponents will try to do is peel off the members of your group: divide and conquer. Speak through one voice.

What you will do effectively is to take control of the game and play it on your own terms. Trust me, if this IFC Advisor is the type I think he is, the university is completely unaware of any of the issues or of any of your complaints. If there's anything administrations hate worse than public trouble, it's surprises. This will hit like a shock wave, and all the eyes will turn to the IFC Advisor who will be treated as someone who "has let matters get out of hand." He will immediately be on the defensive.

When they come to you and ask why didn't you voice these concerns earlier, your man says, "We did, and no one listened."
When they ask you why you don't stay in IFC and "work to reform the system from within." you say, "The system is unfair, and reform will take longer than we have to spend - we're only here a few years - so we've created an organization that is fair and represents our interests."

I saw something like this happen at the University of Georgia a long time ago. Small house weasels got control of the IFC and changed the rush rules to the disadvantage of the major fraternities. Remember: don't let the other guy set the rules. The major fraternities simply got together and announced that there would be two rushes that fall at Georgia, the IFC Rush for anyone who desired to join one of those fraternities, and the "President's Preferred Rush" for anyone who wanted to join one of the big dogs. I think the administration got involved and order was restored back to Nature.

Have fun.

Wow, this is an EXCELLENT idea.

BTW Firehouse, clean your pm box. :p

Done

Alright...I'm over in another thread advising Amanda at SPSU (not a bad thing!!!), so I'm glad Firehouse got this one under control. :D (really, I'm saying that in jest...this is what I like about GC...people coming together to help others out)

Couple of comments from me though....

That is an interesting statement to make. What happened with your chapter in the past to get to the point where your LOCAL IFC holds your charter "in their hands". That makes it sound like "3 Strikes, your out" and you guys have 2 strikes.

The 10 page email you referred to earlier...that sounds like it turned into a big old miscommunication. If an email gets that long, it should have become a face to face discussion a long time ago. There's almost always a "question behind the question" and it could be that someone, somewhere wasn't asking their question right and got the whole thing off on a tangent. Best to forget about that email and start over again with the topic. In person.

However, I have known people (we all have) who state things in a certain way because they have an ulterior motive. I am a Greek advisor, and I have some students who are like that. I know that I have to rephrase what they say to me to get to the real point, and also to uncover the "hidden agenda". So, put that email into that context as well...someone could have been trying to figure out how to get around the dry rush rules by backing authority into the corner (I've seen that happen 10,000 times!). Don't automatically assume that the advisor is the one at fault.

Now, Firehouse has an interesting plan there. Don't know if that's the approach I would have taken, but then again I "grew up" under NPC guidelines, which is a whole different ball of wax. You guys know the NIC system the best, so use that knowledge.

I will say this, though. Calm down, figure out what you need clarified by your Greek advisor, and calmly try another face to face discussion. Don't accuse, don't try to box them into a corner, just talk. Honestly, if the advisor doesn't attend the delegate meetings (I don't...I just go to the exec meetings unless something gets stirred up), then he/she may have no clue how messy everything is. The exec may not be giving them the whole picture. You want to have an attitude of collaboration and cooperation when you have this chat. Doesn't mean you have to agree with everything they say...just go gather information. Buy them a Coke or something. Chat. Don't look for evidence that the advisor is against you...just go get information. Once you get that info, then you'll be better prepared to do something. The advisor may not be all that great, and that's reality sometimes. But then again, the advisor just may not really know how this is affecting everyone.

If you can't get the Bylaws from the advisor, ask any of the other IFC delegates...surely someone has a copy or is friendly enough with the IFC exec to get their hands on one.

And Firehouse is right...you will seem more credible if you use better adjectives....

Good Luck and let us know how it goes!!!
PsychTau

great advice firehouse, psychtau and gphib!!

one question: is it mandated that your rush parties have to be held at your houses? if you want alcohol at the parties, could you have those interested meet at the house, take buses to an off site venue, hire a third party vendor and bouncers and hold your recruitment there, (as long as you are complying with your nationals risk management plan)?then have the guys you are interested in over for lunch or dinner at the house or to other events where alcohol would not be expected to be served.

FSUZeta, I think that if mart1240's fraternity is a member of NIC, there could be a problem. Alcohol-free rush and new member activities are part of the NIC standards for its member fraternities. Also, a third party vendor that served any underage guys would risk being fined or having their alcoholic beverage license suspended or yanked. Unfortunately, a lot of fraternities rushees are probably going to be under 21. I can't see having a wet party for rushees but not letting them drink.

I agree that there's been a lot of great advice about how to deal with the IFC and advisor.

Get a copy of the bylaws determine what is not working and amend it and if there so complicated you cant decipher them, then draft entirely new bylaws. It shouldn’t be this difficult. I’ve held two executive positions (president and vice president) on IFC and one rule that we have in our current bylaws is that rush rules must be voted on 30 days before the end of the semester. If yall had something similar, then you would know where this ambiguous two-week dry period would be coming from. At this point I feel like I’m rambling but it really bugs me that a campus with over twenty-two houses could allow two houses to monopolize IFC. Organize a voting slate and kick the shit out of them in elections.

i am a sorority advisor, so believe me, i am all for dry events anyway!!it just sounded to me like mart knew that some people would not comply with the dry rush rule and wondered if he had looked into alternatives. last year i believe that someone linked a story (could it have been you, exlurker?) that highlighted one campus(was it kansas?) where fraternities and sororities were having anything alcohol related off site, contracting thru a third party vendor,color coded bracelets were used for those of drinking age and there were bouncers to check id's and make sure everyone stayed safe. if there is no time to change their rush party plans and he is afraid some of his brothers will not comply, then one solution might be to seek out alternatives-to bend the rules so to speak, but not to break them.

**and i did say that the event should comply with their nationals risk management plan

agreed! when i started here, the recruitment rules were borderline longer than the women's! :eek: yes, i know, that's crazy! when we wrote new ones, i didn't even give the reps a copy of last year's b/c guy's rules shouldn't be too long. it was much easier than debating what was already there. it was more of a discussion about "what rules are we thinking about? can we agree upon them?" so much easier!

FYI - our basic rules:
1 no alcohol at recruitment events - as stated already, must guys who will attend will be under 21 and it is hard to say that fraternities are not all about the parties and drinking when you are at the event drinking and probably at least one brother will do something stupid.

2 no girls

3 no bids from when classes start to when recruitment time is over (aka our official bid day). summer bids are ok as long as HQ allows it.

4 all men must complete a fraternity recruitment application BEFORE being offered a bid so we can check GPA and enrollment status (just in case someone gets the crazy idea to lie about GPA or whether or he was an *actual* enrolled student.

5 all men who are offered an official bid (orally or in writing b/c our NALFO fraternity does not have written bids) must also sign a university bid agreement - it gives me permission to check grades as long as he is a member, states he must complete the NM ed process and is not guaranteed initiation.

yup, that's about it. Oh, and they have to turn in their recruitment events at least one week prior to recruitment and i can stop by if i feel like it. :) so they shouldn't do anything stoopid. hard to communicate that, but my guys know what i will allow and not.

I like the idea of forming a separate council....it's inventive! it may piss off the IFC advisor, but maybe that is what needs to happen at this point so that you can get his attention. i would be upset about that, but i also have a much better relationship with my chapters than your advisor - they actually come and talk to me! :eek:

So, in trying to decipher all of the BS, Whose Fault is it that 2 Greek NIC, make a decision? (Oh Nerd Fraternitys) are making The Decision!

Do not cry on The Shoulders Here, but make a decision on change.

Work with all of the Greeks There.

Sounds like a Dead Tuna!:(

I am all for dry rush-rest assured. Bottom line here is the problem: There is a "rule" that does not allow our fraternity to have alcohol in any common areas the first 2 weeks of school. Thousands of freshmen and a lot of other much less desireable people show up the first two weeks on our front door steps expecting to party. So not only do we have to worry about our own house not drinking, but the rest of the campus. So umm it's a pretty sure bet the houses on our fraternity row will have kids drinking in common areas short of calling the national guard in to defend our lawns. It only takes 1 person to report this through a quick email and were on probation with IFC and a nasty letter is sent to our national chapter. Pretty much every house on the row will be at their mercy. There's no differentiation between wet rush and having alcohol. I consider wet rush giving booze to a guy that has either a) been to a rush event b) expressed interest in rushing c) is a guy we would want to rush. Wet rush to our IFC is having a beer poster in our room in front of anyone not in our house.

As for my langauge, you're all right! the colorful langauge ussually stays out of anything formal.

Asking the greek advisor questions seems like a poor idea to me-lthe email i spoke of had little inflammatory conversation (as far as i am concerned) and like i said, the email was forwarded to his national chapter along with the rest of us on IFC. If anything hte greek advisor was the one being a dick.

As for starting my own IFC, i don't know how i could go about doing this-If my house isn't apart of our colleges IFC, it will lose its charter. It's a pretty brilliant idea, but I think only 3-4 houses would be willing to go for an idea that radical.

As for NIC-we have no formal rush-IFC canceled it at the last minute this summer because it would be unfair to some houses-fromal rush was apparently the reason for making the first two weeks dry.

:) FSUZeta, yes, that was I. The situation was that the KU sororities felt that a vendor / caterer was being *cough* lax *cough* in enforcing safety and legal compliance rules. So the Panhellenic sororities got together to get some changes made -- a Greek tradition, after all, that goes back to Aristophanes' Lysistrata. The posting is in the Risk Management forum, thread title "U. of Kansas Sororities May Boycott Caterer."

Hey, I just owned up to doing something that someone thought I had done. Does that count as part of the "character" element of the principles I vowed to live by?

Question: are you a public school or a private one? All the rules and intrigues (IFC saying you cannot have a beer poster, etc.) sound like a private campus. If you are on a public campus, then let me assure you that you do not have to do any of these things, no matter what the school or even the IFC says. And - write this down - a public school cannot withdraw recognition if you are not in their IFC. You may not want to go to the trouble to take up the fight, but you can bet that you university attorney knows this.
Why not just invite all the freshmen to your house and have a party? You don't have to have alcohol. In fact, you can put up obvious signs in the yard that alerts everyone to the university rule against alcohol on the property. And, you can have onbius security there. Have music and have a party anyway. the freshmen will go wherever the girls are: get girls there and you can have a great party.

thanks exlurker, you clever greek you!!

that thread was very pertinant to me as the chapter i advise held their first official social last fall so i tried to read everything i could get my hands on. there were so many forms and checks and balances that the chapter had to go thru; so different from when i was in school, but definately for their own good in todays litigious society.

Mart,

Now you're gonna have to slow down and clarify a few things for us here.

You didn't tell us how your local IFC "holds your charter in their hands." In your most recent post you said that "1 quick email and we're on probation with IFC..." and that if you withdraw from your campus IFC then you lose your charter. I'm really not trying to sound negative here, but that sounds like something has happened (before the mess you're telling us about) that's got your chapter on the hotseat. If you don't want to give details, fine...but the way you are talking doesn't sound like everything was hunky dory until these new IFC officers started. So what is the deal? Has there been trouble in the past?

It's your choice if you don't want to talk with your Greek advisor...but you may be shooting yourself in the foot. What about your chapter advisor (please tell me he's not a brother that graduated last year....)? What about your faculty advisor? Tell your faculty advisor the situation, and have him either talk to the other chapter advisors, or have him talk to the Greek advisor directly and get the info that you need. Have him get a copy of the bylaws. I also think the email is not relevant. Who forwarded it to you, and how do you know it wasn't edited somehow to skew the meaning? If you weren't part of the email communication, then you really don't know the context of everything. There's lots of things that aren't communicated effectively in a typed message. My advice: forget the email...pretend it doesn't exist...if it wasn't your IFC rep and your chapter involved don't bring it up. It's not going to help you at this stage in the game.

Other males can correct me if I'm wrong, but from my understanding of FIPG rules, you shouldn't be having open, uncontrolled parties (meaning that the alcohol isn't contained in a certain area, entry to the event isn't controlled, no guest lists, etc.) anyway...so I'm not sure what the problem with the rule is. But then again I don't understand exactly what the rule says...no offense, but your paraphrasing isn't clear.

Give us some documentation...what EXACTLY does the rule say? Where is it located? Is this a school rule that's over your IFC's head? Are you on a public or private campus? School owned or chapter owned housing?

PsychTau

I am only speculating here, mart1240 will need to clarify.

Many GLOs (fraternities and sororities) may not recognize a chapter as 'in-good-standing' if it is not recognized by the university. In this particular case, it *may be* that chapters have to be IFC members for university recognition. Perhaps to be a 'student organization'. Again, knowing if your campus is a public or a private campus would help.

If the IFC shoots off an email to the chapter's HQ - regardless if there is any merit to the email - it does raise concerns with HQ. While it may be just crap, it is still crap that has to be dealt with. And it may be that if the chapter is put on IFC probation - for whatever reason - then it may be put on probation by HQ as well. Many times, it's guilty until proved innocent by the university and as such, HQ.

I'm not really clear on it either but my understanding of FIPG rules is that there shouldn't be any "uncontrolled" parties as well.

-----
mart1240:

I am a tad confused with this as well. It sounds like the 'no alcohol' rule is in place for two weeks *regardless* if there is a rush event or not? So any possible violation might result in IFC probation/email etc?

In any case, you have been given some great advice. Frankly, it does seem like you may need to get some additional help and or intervention going. Either from your HQ, the other 'Big Eight' chapters, your Alumni, and or advisor(s), etc.

After a lot of thought and talk with 1 of my bros, I've decided to just chillax. There's not much i can do-and after learning some more details, our IFC looks the other way on a lot of stuff considering the rules it has. I honestly regret speaking up at the last meeting-it could be a lot worse.

And yes, our house has been in a lot of trouble (most of which i just know about from stories passed on by older guys). I caught the tail end of it as a pledge so i saw (somewhat) what it was like and what we have grown to now 2 years later. It was a sad sight-i'm just gonna email the IFC president and greek advisor and ask him what to do and kiss some serious ass.

Also~

Thank you for the great ideas and support!

good luck to you mart.

Came across this thread in a search and it seemed interesting...

I am a former IFC Treasurer and I can't tell you how good our Greek Advisor is. With a good Greek Advisor, everything positive will trickle down into your executive board. In fact, our Greek Council won multiple awards at the 2006 Northeast Greek Leadership Association Conference (NGLA).

There is no question that it is the Greek Advisor that sucks big time. Our current IFC is actually controlled by one, yes, ONE fraternity! The thing is, they haven't been doing anything to bias any positives towards them, so its not like anyone has a real problem with them (another credit to our GA).





So is there an update? What happened to the corrupt IFC?

I'm the IFC delegate for my chapter at UCF... Corrupt doesn't even begin to describe the situation here.

I like UCF and I am interested in the system. Tell us more about IFC and what's going on. Aren't you a new chapter at UCF? Congratulations.

Yup, we got our charter November 12th of 2005, and thanks! I'd rather not get into details in this thread, but will send you a PM if you're interested.

Sure!