Lehigh U. Ranks Greeks
 

Lehigh (in Pennsylvania) has issued its first set of rankings of the fraternities and sororities on campus. The rankings, from "gold" (high) to "silver," "bronze,' and "poor" (low), are based on criteria for campus accreditation of chapters by Lehigh.

The rankings are on Lehigh's web site, and you can click on each chapter's name to view a report on how the chapter meets each of the criteria. Recommendations for improvement are included as appropriate.

http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Eindost/gree...editation.html

One fraternity -- Phi Kappa Theta -- and two sororities -- Alpha Chi Omega and Alpha Gamma Delta -- were ranked "gold."

Eight fraternities and two sororities, unfortunately, were ranked as "poor."

Several Pennsylvania media outlets ran short articles about the rankings on August 2.

For instance, an ABC station in Philadelphia has this on its web site:
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/080...igh_frats.html

Not to detract from the article, but WOW they have a lot of fraternities for only having nine sororities.

I think this kind of stinks. I mean yea, award and recognize the chapters that are doing awesome.........but do you really need someone to tell you your chapter is struggling? Especially the University? Isn't that what international officers do?

That's because they were all male until the early 1970's.

How on earth are you supposed to pull yourself up when there's something right on the school's website calling you a "poor chapter"? What rushee is going to want to join a "poor chapter"?

It also really puzzles me how a sorority whose chapter was closed can rank higher than ones that are still open.

Although, I wonder if this report is really going to be something students take to heart or if it is BS (i.e. the "gold" chapters might be those who are more popular w/ the administration than the students). I have no idea who's where in the social order at Lehigh, so please don't anyone take what I say personally.

Thanks for the clue in.

for curiousity sake, i read the accomplishments of one of the gold chapters and one of the "poor" chapters. while i don't think trying to accomplish the recommendations of the administration would be bad, some of the suggestions did make me wonder if the chapter was operating in compliance with their national office and that landed them on the "poor" list. for instance, one recommendation given to the "poor" chapter was to have a better officer transition and suggested using university guidelines. now what if the sorority in question was in full compliance with the standards set by their own national office?and as far as the national officers were concerned, their chapter was fine in that area. the "poor" chapters gpa was above a 3.0, hardly poor on most campuses. i realize that lehigh is a tough school, but gheesh.

don't know if this means a thing, but the "poor" chapter had more members than the "gold" one.

just to back up what FSUZeta was saying..for one of the poor chapters it was marked down for having a "too low" GPA requirement. if that's the national requirement...how can you mark them down for it. the committee also recommended that this sorority have a annual tea with the faculty to get to know them.

i think this is a good example of why administration sometimes should butt out of greek life.

FSUZeta, I thought the same thing.

Also I looked at some of the older newspaper stories on this and apparently the evaluations are based on is a report presented by actives & alums. I had to wonder - what if one group comes in with some really fancy schmancy Powerpoint and the other just writes it out on paper? I mean, it should be what you actually do, it shouldn't have anything to do with how you present it.

Maybe something new and different will lead to improvement.

Usually the smaller and weaker chapters will be saying "we have a great brotherhood - friends are more important to us than faculty teas and sports trophies." They make up excuses. Maybe an outside opinion - in public - will spur improvements.

Maybe they'll work harder to get more pledges, more programs, and more achievements.

but as I pointed out...

the sorority that was closed partly due to low membership scored higher than some of the still-existing chapters with more members. Some of the "poor" fraternities are bigger than the "silver" groups, and one "poor" group was a co-winner of Greek Week. I think in this case, size really doesn't matter.

Seems similar to "The Delaware Plan".

Just Love TX "ONLY" has a 2.895 0r there abouts and were in the Crapper!:rolleyes:

Damn, screw Lehigh and thier Big Plan.:eek:

Now, they want a 3.0 Min or get green card for deportatin!:confused:

yay Bronze! We're #3! We're #3!

Just kidding...cmon guys, get your shit together.

Do you know if there is some sort of criteria used to award points or what ever they do? In other words, how does a chapter *know* if they are doing well (or not) and or improving. What specific goals - and not just saying "better GPA" - are set? i.e. 3.0 or better = Gold.

Or how well "liked" the chapter is by the administration.

Seems odd be/c I would consider the AOII chapter at Lehigh as one of the top chapters in AOII Land....but who knew they were only silver material this past year!!! I think these "ratings" are only good if the person who filled the form out knew what they were doing. I know at Ole Miss we have Greek Standards, which is a bunch of questions and stuff the chapter fills out. If that person does not know how to fill that stuff out then there is your problem. I don't know, I could be totally wrong. I know at Ole Miss that some fraternities hardly fill out the paperwork and they are in no way, shape, or form bad chapters of their national fraternity.

While I'm proud to see Alpha Gamma Delta being ranked as a Gold Chapter, I have been pretty open about not liking when the administration takes on these types of rating systems. I am even more shocked that it was published for all to see. If they MUST do this type of rating, I could see rewarding the chapters who did well, and even publishing that report so that other chapters could read it and see what the differences are and to get ideas, but publishing the poor ones? That kind of information should be confidential. I also agree that some of their recommendations may very well go against the policy of the organization. In fact, some things a chapter may be praised for may even be against the policy of the organization.

Moravian, on the other side of Bethlehem, has a points system like this with Gold, Silver & Bronze Star designations. You earn points by your chapter GPA, member involvement chapter programming, attending certain "Gold Star" events with a certain % of chapter attendance and holding joint programs with other GLOs on campus. Chapter Pres's fill a binder with documentation of meeting the various criteria...our Greek Life advisor reviews them & awards are given out afterwards. Things may have changed since I filled the binder in '02 but I wouldn't be surprised if Lehigh had a similar points system.

And yes Lehigh use to be all male and Moravian was once the all women's college on the other side of the River! Glad those days are over!!!

One of my good friends is in Delta Tau Delta at Lehigh, so good for them for achieving the silver listing. :) My computer won't let me access any of the chapters' links, so I'm clueless as to what criteria was used or what's been published, but I feel bad for the chapters (such as my GLO :( ) that didn't do so well in the rankings. However, just from what I've heard my friend say, this doesn't seem to really match up in all cases with what he thinks to be strong chapters on his campus. I'm surprised Lehigh published something like this.

It's all about the paper work.

It doesn't matter if you actually do something or not, long as you have the documentation to back it up.

I agree. I think this has good intentions, but I don't see a need to post it on the internet for everyone to see. If a chapter is struggling, it should be between the chapter and the greek life office/university and shouldn't be anyone else's business. For all we know, these "poor" chapters could be chapters in good standing or better within their respective National offices.

Everyone that said it is correct, it's all about the paper work and who fills it out. The Greek Life office of the chapter I worked with had a similar packet they had to do every year. Which was fine b/c it was pretty much what we were doing for our national process anyway. The Greek Life office used their packet to give out the "Greek Awards".

That's what makes me sad. I'm sad, of course, to see DG ranked as poor, but that does not alter my feelings on publishing something like this. It just seems like it would target chapters that are not as strong - almost as a catalyst to get them off campus. Who would want to pledge a "poor" chapter?!

I agree though, it'd be great to recognize the top chapters, but don't punish other chapters!

I don't give a rat's ass if we were ranked as poor by some buffoons in university administration. Who the hell cares?

The report recommends increasing study hour requirements because a minimum of two study hours per week is not enough. I think the whole concept of study hours is bogus, and adult women should be free to study on their own. The report is critical of the fact that the chapter had few speakers discussing leadership with members. Um, if I were a college aged woman, I think I'd try to poke myself in the eye with a letter opener if forced to sit through a speech about leadership. WTF kind of bogus thing is that?

Also, am I the only one who thinks that it's none of the university adminstraton's damn business how we conduct new member education or officer transitions?

Honestly, after reading why we suck, I can't help but think that this is probably a pretty fun chapter whose members don't engage in excessive asskissery on campus. I really hope that most of us are independent thinkers who can take crap like this with a grain of salt.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm getting at. I mean honestly, and again this is not picking on anyone, it just seems like the top chapters are the ones that have the most cute names for their programs. The other chapters might be doing the same thing, in fact it looks like they are, but they haven't named it and quantified it. I don't think they should be punished just because their marketing skills are not as up to par as other groups'.

I also just noticed one of the recommendations for AOII - that the standards board is good but they should have formal training through the office of Student Conduct. What if the OSC tells them to do things that are completely counter to what AOII's HQ tells them? Following along with this, should the chapter treasurers be trained by the Bursar's office? I mean, that's the whole point of holding an office - learning to do things on your own, not having someone tell you what to do all the time.

ETA asskissery = best new word of the month.

GPAs at Lehigh

Because some people have commented on GPAs, I thought it might help to mention that Lehigh has the Spring 2005 Greek GPAs for each chapter posted. You can go to

http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Eindost/greek/grkserv.htm

and click on the link for statistics.
Looks like the all women's is 3.275;

all sorority is 3.23;

all undergrad is 3.09;

all Greek is 3.06;

all men is 2.982;

all fraternity is 2.937

In addition, there's another link under statistics that covers recruitment results for 2004. For each GLO it gives the number of bids extended and the number of bids accepted. For the sororities, of course, it also states quota. In that list we can see that, as is often or almost always the case, sorority new member classes are around 2 to 3 times larger than most fraternity NM classes. Fraternity NM classes themselves vary widely in size.

This means that fraternity members are stupid and should be banned.




(kidding)

aren't mandatory study hours hazing? does this mean that the university is now hazing the fraternity and sorority members? (remember hazing isn't only for new members, but anyone with perceived power trying to exert this power on someone else who feels helpless/ pressured into participating in order to gain social acceptance.)

sorry if i make no sense, it is 3 am and i am wayyyyy overtired.


oh, and i love the way they suggest they should find ways to keep seniors active...lol, aren't we all? and the part about getting more members involved, not just having the same few people run everything....i just wonder how the chapter is going to solve a typical problem of group dynamics. what stupid reccommendations!

eta: i should have read more... can someone please explain to me how having a tray of bagels delievered to a faculty member each week helps a chapter to increase its gpa? i don't get how it impacts a scholarship program unless there is something else going on.

Wow-how ridiculous is this? It seems like the more bagels you send to the professors the better ranked you are. They need to just put the recommendations into one sentence: Kiss our ass, give us food and you will be a gold chapter.

I hope A&M will never do this to greek life.

I completely understand what the Greek members at Lehigh are going through. At Millersville University (in PA) we have a very similar system they call "The Five Star Greek Organization Evaluation". It's nothing more than a bunch of shit where the administration is trying to control fraternities and sororities. We get evaluated on criteria such as our new member education, campus involvement (holding events for the student body), community involvement, GPA, educational programming, philanthropy, with the ranking depending on the amount as well as the percent of brother participation.

While the universities themselves DO have an obligation to their students to encourage good grades and shit like that, they all too often fail to recognize Greek Organizations as private organizations. I can understand the universities pushing the organizations to be as active on campus as possible, however in our assesment they award or withold points for pointless stuff like putting down the address of our advisor and alumni contacts, or the number of personal and chapter awards we have earned. Also, they witheld a few points from my chapter for not telling them the contents of our new member education program; which we keep very secret from everybody outside the fraternity.

luckily for my university, unlike lehigh, Millersville does not publish the results as they are kept private between the fraternities/sororities and the greek advisor and proper administration. But even still -- if you fail to obtain 4 or 5 stars in every category and in total, your chapter is placed on probation. You are placed on suspension if you receive a zero in any one category though -- so basically, if your chapter hadn't received any national or campus awards, you would be suspended - even if you just started up.

I think part of the problem, or issue, may be the areas in which these evaluations take place. From what I know, it commonly happens at small universities and colleges. And in respect to lehigh and Millersville, they are both in highly conservative communities -- which seems to always serve as an impressive obstacle for fraternities/sororities.

Millersville University
Lambda Chi Alpha
Delta-Tau Zeta
High Secretary

Lehigh, Moravian, Millersville all in PA, all with similar grading systems...hmmmm

Nope, you are not the only one.

The day any university administrator tells a chapter how to run their internal chapter standards or new member program is the day pigs fly. I always thought it was the national/international organization's responsibility to do that. What's next, some university type actually sitting in on standards meetings and reporting back to the awards committee?

here's a part of DG's evaluation that bothered me:

"The committee reccomends that the chapter spend time relearing or learning for the first time their chapter ritual"

How do they know the members knowledge of the chapter's ritual and how do they have any right to comment on it?

It all depends on how you fill out the paperwork. The sorority chapter at my school that won the chapter of the year award definitely didn't deserve it, but they worked really hard on the paperwork. I mean, they're a great chapter, but they definitely aren't the top one on campus.

I wondered that too.

Were members of the accredidation committee interviewing members and interacting with them too? I doubt that they'd be just plain observing the groups. That being said, it may have been possible that a bunch of members said something along the lines of "I don't think they knew what they were doing at Initiation...blah blah blah"

Still, stating that they could improve by relearning the ritual would have been sufficient. "Learning for the first time their chapter ritual" is way out of line and they certainly have no authority to say such a thing.

I wonder what the NPC/NIC thinks about all of this. Heck, I'd like to see the reaction of all the HQ officers of the organizations involved. :eek:

I don't see how AGD's minimum GPA requirement of 2.25 is "great" and earns them a gold chapter rating, where DG's minimum GPA requirement of 2.20 gets them a poor chapter rating.

What really bothered me about this is it seems like some chapters will never attain gold, because it seems like those with the two lowest GPAs will always be penalized - and some sorority has to have the lowest GPA all the time. I could see it being an issue if the chapter average was a 2.2 or something, but I believe even the alleged "poor" chapters were over a 3.0.

I think it is a joke and if I was on that campus I would contact my NPC delegate for that state or the person over my chapter (not my chapter adviser be/c she probably already knows about this) and see what can be done. I was really bothered as well with some of the "suggestions" they said.

For AOII:
Although the chapter has a good standards board, the committee recommends additional formal training (via the Office of Student Conduct) should be implemented. Additionally, the standards board should not just address chapter violations, but individual sister violations.====I can assure you that they are having Chapter Relations meetings once a month and meeting with members who need help with things. The way the Office of Student Conduct handles a situation is probably not how AOII would handle something. There are certain things we can do and cannot do.

I really think someone from Lehigh needs to contact their NPC delegate for that region or their sorority's NPC delegate and get this changed.

I would be red hot over this... how the hell do they know if you need work on your ritual or not and who the hell are they to tell you that? It sounds like they picked a bunch of responses off a list and slapped them into a report. And I agree that there are discrepancies in the GPA area.

slight hijack...

Does anyone know how they divide up the regions for the NPC delegates? I thought it was strictly by geography but judging from PA it looks like they shuffled things around here and there.

/hijack

A&M doesn't seem to like greek life... I don't see them doing anything like this to try to improve it.... I actually think they would get rid of it if they could. (personal opinion)

This is something that I found strange in one report....

· Each member is required to join at least one co-curricular organization in order to
broaden the sisters’ experiences.

Wouldn't alot of schools consider it hazing to tell a member that they HAVE to join another organization??? I think joining an org just because is stupid... You should join something because you WANT to not because you'll get in trouble with your chapter if you don't. Besides, what if someone is in such a demanding major that they just don't have the time to devote to yet another org? Maybe I'm overreacting, but that seems dumb to me.

And as for study hours....

I do remember hearing that some orgs consider that hazing and can't do it... But my ADPi chapter had mandatory study hours when I was in school. It went by your last semester's GPA.. For example if you got a 2.5, you had to do X amount of hours. The higher your GPA, the fewer hours you had to do. And if you got something like over a 3.8, you didn't have to do any at all.

BUT, I will also say that I don't remember ever really getting anything done during study hours... You can't put that many sisters in a room and actually expect them to get studying done- it was social hour. :rolleyes:

Edited for my TERRIBLE grammar mistakes. :p