new member programs preparing you for life as an active
 

This quote in another thread got me thinking- with all of the movement to eliminate hazing in any form and to make sure that new members are never uncomfortable and are never made to do anything that's not voluntary- how well do you think your organization's new member program prepares its new members for what to expect as an active? One thing that bugs me about hazing rules is that with the exception of Phoenix and Sanctuary degrees, you pretty much can't make anything mandatory for new members without it being called hazing. However, after you're initiated, just about anything and everything is mandatory, so I don't think that does a good job of teaching new members what to expect. I would be concerned with girls pledging, getting initiated, and then becoming disgruntled or leaving the sorority once they found out that now they had to go to everything whether they liked it or not, and that they'd be fined if they didn't show up. Any thoughts?

There is a chapter in Advantage on time mangagement. If this is a concern, I think more could be done as far as planning time for the sorority and school...as opposed to just general time management.


I remember when I pledged, we had several mandatory things, but since our pledge class was on the small side, if too many people had conflicts, they would move it.

it's almost like you were listening to a phone call i had last week with a soror of mine...

one of my neos was telling me how she felt like all her time was taken by greek life and that a lot of things that happened in greek life were short notice and how she needed time to plan. i'm like first of all, ALL of our meetings are planned way in advance, so no excuse there, and as for the social, well your social life doesnt have to centered on being greek, you can skip parties and step shows, but its always fun to go when lots of ppl from your chapter and org are going.

besides, did you really think we were joking when we said "lifetime commitment?

and on another note, given short notice for something that's happening within the chapter and feeling pressured to do it does not equal hazing - because it happens in other walks of life (work, school, family) and you dont always get a calendar for the semester or the year. sometimes things are very touch-and-go and either you're down or not.

really its a judgement call - don't bite off more than you can't chew, cause i'd rather have someone who can 100% commit than someone who SAYS they can and then pulls out lst-minute. dont be THAT member who can never "make it" to something because youre "busy."

[/soapbox]

Speaking from the perspective of a neo, I will say that my prophytes STRESSED the fact that our chapter (and the org, of course) is about business prior to initation. Never have I heard "this is a SERIOUS matter" more frequently and said with more emphasis :D.

However, some things were short notice... the first chapter meeting was a few weeks after initiation, and I (along with several of my ls') had made plans (it was Mothers' Day Weekend).

But with that said, I think that members emphasizing the work aspects of the organization to the new members is very important. That way it doesn't come as a surprise.

And as for the social aspect, a lot of my upcoming activities are greek-related... but that's the fun part!

I agree with tld221 Sugar08. Setting an expectation from the beginning is important. I'm not sure how requiring new members/candidates for membership to be at events that are important to their journey is hazing, especially if there are mandatory events for members. It's filling a requirement, just like having a certain number of credit hours, a certain GPA, receiving a bid/invitation to join and/or having the $$ for fees are requirements to becoming greek.

As well as a conversation I've had on more than one occassion, not to mention. Sometimes even when it's stressed, it doesn't quite sink in. I guess they think we're jokin' or something.

Sounds like Tri-Sig has the right idea.

We do have a requirement program to become an initiated member, in a way. It isn't very demanding though...at least not as demanding as being an active member is. I DO think that newly initiated members get burned out because TELLING them about required events isn't the same as them actually DOING them. Their only required events usually end up being fun sisterhood retreats and initiation requirements.

I have said myself I wish I could be in a fraternity before. I love Alpha Gam. But sometimes it does seem like brotherhood is stronger than sisterhood, and I haven't seen many guys in any fraternity on campus drop out like the girls do. I do think the slope is skewed and I do think it affects retention rates.

i agree, but that is the nature of relationships between men anyway vs. women. it does seem like women are more likely to drop membership than men are. for whatever reasons it may be.

I agree with that. I think changing the new member process though might have SOME effect on retention rates.

I'm guess it has to do with how men and women handle conflict. If a guy has a problem with a brother, they duke it out (verbally or physically) and it's over. When a girl has a problem with a sister, they hide it, let it fester, get catty with that sister, try to get other sisters on their side and to turn against the sister they feel wronged them, etc, etc until someone has quit over it.

I totally disagree with this line of thinking. I don't think you have to do chores to "earn" the right to be initiated. Hazing does not make a stronger brotherhood or sisterhood. Women and men are very different and so are the members of the NPC and the IFC. Comparing drop out rates for women and men is like comparing apples to oranges. Men join fraternities for a very different reason than women join sororities. My older sister was in the last "pledge" class at my chapter, and I was in the first "new member" class. She had to wait an entire semester for initiation while I had to wait six weeks. She said the only difference in the equation was time. She went to a lot more meetings than I did, but she felt she was no more "prepared" than I to become an initiated member. Her pledge education included things like memorizing the letters of the greek alphabet (sorry...how important is that really?!) My new member education was pared down to the basics of what sisterhood meant. My sisters and I were smart enough and worthy enough to get "it" within the six week period. Change is hard, but it's not good enough to justify not changing because "Well...I had to do it that way!" or "I had to be hazed to be a real brother (or sister.)" That's a cop out!
By the way, I just saw the Tri Sigma program on the internet. It really is a nice system. That may be what the other NPC groups should model their own member education programs after.

We had a girl who became a Phi (new member) and at first it was all "oh cool she's a cool girl". She came to I THINK ONE Phi meeting. She came to initiation and during it I was so pissed, as well as some other sisters. We wanted her out because if you're not going to do as little work as come to a meeting once a week, what are you going to bring to the sorority? She brought nothing. Didn't come to regular weekly meetings, no mandatory things, no business meetings, no rituals. I was very bothered that she got in. She used some kind of family problem excuse but funny that she was going clubbing almost every night and vacationing in Cali and a bunch of other stuff.

And that's the thing.... we baby our Phis. We DO shower them with gifts and if they screw up, we can't kick them out. I believe to release them there is this big process to go through and people are too lazy to do it. I don't want to haze. I don't think we should be doing bad things to them, but 80% of the stuff that is considered hazing is ridiculous. You should make them want it, not just give them a cake walk.

I can only speak about my own orgs idea of pledge programs.

To me, pledge programs should be to train the pledges to become members. Everything the pledge does should have a purpose. I usually speak with chapters to take a look at what they expect of their active members, both explicity and inplicity (pay dues, do service work, attend meetings, live our principles, wear insignia, etc.) and from that base their pledge requirements (pay pledge fees, do service work, attend meeting- both pledge and chapter, learn about our history/principles/etc, wear pledge insignia, etc).

I do not approve of hazing, and neither does my organization. We are very clear on this and have stated what we view as hazing (and its not that much different from other GLOs).

However, I do not agree with this attitude I see in many GLO that 'making the pledges do anything is hazing'. That's BS. We're a service fraternity. We expect our Brothers to complete service as one of their requirements to remain active (the specifics are left to each chapter), so requiring our pledges to also complete service as part of completing their pledge program cannot be considered hazing. I prefer to go with the idea that one should never ask a pledge to do something that we wouldn't ask or expect an active to do. We expect actives to do service work, so we can ask the pledge to do the same (but not more then an active). We expect actives to be knowledgable about our history, principles, operations, etc, so we can ask the pledge to learn this and be tested on it. Same for other requirements we expect of pledges.

We've developed a National Pledging Standard that sets down 20 elements that should be followed by all chapters in developing their unique pledge programs. I've always followed that in my training on pledge programs, because following them will lead to a better pledge program.

If any GLO does their job in developing a new member/pledge program that prepares their nm/p for membership, then this should lead to better retention.

1) Well the "chores" we "force" our boys to do are just house duties that EVERYBODY has to do. I'm the Vice President and I'm mopping the kitchen floor while a pledge is cleaning the sink. So I think that's more just having house rules than putting pledges on some kind of lower level.

2) As stated in our LEAD Manual (pledge book) knowing the Greek Alphabet and being familiar with it is out of respect to other organizations. At least that's the Sigma Nu philosophy and I couldn't agree more....I'm embarassed when some guys don't know what a Rho looks like or a Xi! It's basic diplomacy.

3) Men join fraternities for brotherhood do women not join for the same reason? I don't mean to turn all of NPC on me here it just seems that the retention rates are completely out of whack. I know I know, glass houses.....the NIC system is pretty rough as well with hazing and what not...

Wow. I'm surprised that you all don't have some sort of course of action for girls like that.

Our LCs and national staff always say: You do not have to initiate anyone who doesn't meet the requirements for initiation. If a girl doesn't come to meetings (or provide valid excuses and do a make-up when she's absent), maintain her GPA, complete all of the new member activities, and pass the national exam, she does not get initiated at that time. She is given the option to be held over (and complete the new member period with the next class), but she does not get initiated with her group. Alternately, she could get pissed and depledge, and we say "good riddance."

We had two situations last semester with this. There were 2 new members who were both habitually absent. One was partying alot and not studying enough. The other would just always decide "well I live 20 minutes away from campus, that's too far for me to drive to the sorority house for meeting" or that she'd "rather be with her boyfriend." (those were her exact words)

About a week before initiation, it was pretty clear that they weren't going to be initiated. So our VP sat them both down separately to tell them. We all totally thought the Partyer was going to depledge and that Boyfriend Girl was going to go ahead and stay. Partyer cried, and said she felt bad but that she really wanted to be there and that she'd stick it out with the next group and get initiated with the next class. She is now one of the most involved younger members of the chapter with the highest GPA. Boyfriend got really mad and depledged. She actually pledged another sorority in the spring and dropping out of it too before initiation because she was leaving school to plan her wedding.

Just curious, when something like this happens, does the girl have to go through the pinning ritual again with the following new member class?

No she does not.

I've said this to other people, but I do think the no-hazing rule is getting out of hand. The one example I have from my own NM period is that during I-week, it used to be traditional for the NM class to spend each night, sundown to sunup, at the house.
My class was the first not to be required to do that because it was considered hazing. We all wanted to do it, every single woman in my NM class wanted to spend each night at the house, but we weren't allowed. I think it was one of those things where we just wanted to follow in the chapter tradition-to us it wasn't hazing in any way, it was just more time to bond as a class.

EXTREMELY!!!

Are you effing kidding me????

Not to mention knowing the other chapters in your own organization!

Are you kidding me? Its EXTREMELY important!! I am a firm believer that if your greek, you should know the greek alphabet. If you were to look at someone's letters, do you really just want to stare and say "what are those letters?" I know I wouldn't.

it really is embarassing. its not something you will get quizzed on formally, but you need to know that when you meet other greeks! i have 2 stories (and this is probably more the idiocy of the people involved, but still the moral being: learn your effing greek alphabet):

1. a neo of another sorority asked me what my letters read. she said something like "i know what the Sigma is, but what are you, Sigma Something Pi?":eek: without thinking, i blurted, "what the hell kinda process did you have, you dont know your greek alphabet?" and her response was "yeah... alpha, ______, _______, _______, omega" (i dont wanna call out the org)

2. two girls (dont know which org) approached a Kappa and asked him if his "Psi" was an "upsilon" or an "epsilon." he kinda gave them a "WTF" look and then they said, "so which letter stands for Nupe?"



of course, many points i can make from this tomfoolery... greek alphabet is something you need to know from the jump. its just so embarassing when you can't identify other chapters, let alone other organizations. i was embarassed to answer them (cause that answer that girl in #1 gave me, while cutesy, was BS and her chapter members should be ashamed, and in #2, well them girls just made an @ss of themselves - those arent questions you should be asking if you are greek).

If you can't learn the greek alphabet, then you shouldn't even be in college to begin with. You learn half of it in high school math and science classes.

Its VERY important to learn the Greek Alphabet....enough said....

Long time ago, before we became members, we were required to do all kinds of community service work.

Aside from that we had to know information about our organization before we walked into the Rush door. If we did not have basic "website" information, we were not admitted and that is B.C. (Before Computers).

So EXCUSES are lax.

How can we make different members these days other than ignorance is no excuse for not following the law... If this is your organization and the work is required, how will you best represent it? I understand there is difficulty and young people have classes, but, most of our organizations were founded by undergraduates that devoted to changes that needed to be made on their respective university/colleges.

What do we want to become? What does lifelong membership look like?

Agreed. It's just important for them to be able to recognize other greek groups on campus without sounding like idiots.

Y'all are so funny! I don't think you have to know the entire greek alphabet to be a good greek member! We all could easily read the names of other organizations on campus even though the alphabet was not included in our new member education manual. Most greek letters used in GLOs are recognizable to educated people. Do I think that NMs should wait an extra week for initiation so they can learn the greek alphabet? No...I think that's absurd! Does it have anything to do with sisterhood? Absolutely not! Can you give me any other reason that new members should learn the greek alphabet? Is there some test of greekness that involves reciting the alphabet by heart? I guess I just have a different opinion as to the purpose of new member education.

I have nothing against doing work for the chapter. If all members have to do chores to make sure the house stays in good condition, there is nothing wrong with that, and I agree that NMs should not be excluded. BUT, to say that brotherhood/sisterhood is lessened by not being expected to do chores (even if initiated members have to but not NMs) is stupid. I've already addressed your second point in my above posting. As to your third point, I agree that men join fraternities for brotherhood, but I think I can argue successfully that what a man expects from brotherhood is very different from what a woman expects from sisterhood. It's the same with children. Boys are rough when they play...usually girls are not as rough. As a woman, I would not have put up with being hazed, and I certainly don't believe that it would help improve retention! Of course I do agree that what is considered hazing these days is ridiculous. As for why our NMs are treated well as NMs, it is to show them the love and support that is at the heart of membership in our organizations. If a woman is looking for a place to degrade, humiliate or injure her sisters, she needs to look somewhere other than an NPC group. If the price of excluding people looking for this type of "sisterhood" is low retention numbers, I say keep retention low...I'm happier with the women who are there for the right reasons!

Not to harp on the greek alphabet thing, but WHAT?? Are you SERIOUS??

Among the points of new member education is (or should be if it's not) that no one lives in a vacuum. There are more chapters on campus than yours; there are more greek organizations in the world than yours; there are more chapters of the organizations that are on your campus in the world. it would behoove you, if you plan to set foot off that campus OR if that campus decided to expand, to be able to identify organization and chapter nomenclature.

You know you whole regular alphabet even though the names of most of the people you know and most of the words you use don't have all the letters, right? Same thing. I'm pretty sure you used a week as an example, but if it really takes a week to teach "educated people" the entire greek alphabet, there's either something wrong. Thetagirl218 pointed out half of them are already known from math and science. It should only take a day to learn them. Make up a song or borrow a song from another chapter. As tld221 said, it's embarrassing to be greek and not know the greek alphabet. If you're ok with that sort of thing..........

Wow, the wheels are REALLY well oiled on your skates.

So basically, you wouldn't know whether Xi Epsilon chapter came before Rho Beta Chapter -- of your own organization?

I think you are underestimating women. I am perfectly able to identify greek letters without having to check a book. My point has been that people have argued that the 6 week NM period is too short to make NMs ready for initiation. My argument was that the semester pledge period included no more important information than during my 6 week NM period....they just spent a week on the greek alphabet, and we did not! Being able to recognize greek letters is one thing, but I fail to see the importance of being able to recite it like a kindergartener in order to get initiated. Please next time read a statement within it's context! We didn't have to learn the greek alphabet as part of our new member education, but that does not mean we were unable to decipher the names of other groups or other chapters of AOII, so you can get off you little soapbox! The people you mention asking stupid questions about greek letters probably had to memorize the greek alphabet as part of their education but are just morons.

AOII chapters are not named in order. Each chapter chooses its own name with its own special meaning, so to know which one came first in alphabetical order would only be useful for filing!

No one, before you, said anything about reciting the greek alphabet "like a kindergartener". That's your interpretation of what we're saying.

This is GC, folks around here stand on soapboxes hourly. Get over it.

Learning the Greek alphabet takes no time at all - and being able to identify other groups, or even other chapters of your own GLO - is important. If you are going to belong to a GLO, you should at the very least know the Greek alphabet. Who would want to remain willfully ignorant of the meaning of letters used by your own organization? And any one who had to learn Greek letters as part of their new member program would NOT be asking stupid questiions (at least not if they had truly learned it.) If your new member program taught you nothing more important than the Greek alphabet, the problem is the new member program - not learning the Greek alphabet, but failing to have any programming that taught you anything more important. Perhaps you should address the issue with your HQ.
Oh - and the possessive form of "it" is "its", not "it's". One of my personal pet peeves . . .

Before things get any more out of hand, may I mention that AOII's new education program was rolled out last fall? Called "Fulfilling the Promise", it serves as our New Member program education and also is used for total chapter education and programming needs. The New Member information is fully available on our public website, under the Lifelong Learning drop-down menu.

Week three includes NPC education, college PH info including other chapters on campus, and so on.

well, in that case, i REALLY hope that NMs know the greek alphabet... i mean, chartering members wouldnt their chapter ending up as (for example) Tau Omega, only to think they were getting Theta Omicron...

I'm surprised at the vitriol in this post. It seems as though you are truly offended that my NM program did not include memorizing the greek alphabet in order. The alphabet was listed in our NM book, but we were not asked to memorize it. We didn't have time. Unfortunately, when you have six weeks to prepare for initiation, somethings have to be sacrificed. At the time our HQ apparently felt that giving us a source to find the information was good enough. Maybe you should improve your reading comprehension skills. If you look back at my prior posts, I said we had too many important things to learn to bother with trivial information (ie. we'd have time to learn that after initiation.) I don't feel the least bit embarrassed or "willfully ignorant" for not being able to recite the greek alphabet. As I said in multiple posts, we were very capable of correctly recognizing any greek letter that came our way. If we forgot one of the more rarely used letters, we had a source to look it up. Forgive me if I think placing so much emphasis on this small matter is ridiculous since the way we were taught served us just fine. Just because you were taught one way doesn't mean that everyone has to be taught the same way. As for my statement that people who ask others what their letters say probably had been taught the greek alphabet, that was in reference to other posters who mentioned such events. My point is that most sororities have the greek alphabet as part of their NM education so it doesn't always stick with them. In the end, all of this has been taken out of context. The matter at hand was whether or not our NM education programs should be changed to included hazing to make members feel more special about being initiated. I also suggest that you consider that criticizing what my sorority found important about NM education implies that you think your own sorority is the best. I thought at GC we tried to shy away from that kind of mentality...or was I wrong?

Thanks for being the devil's advocate...I'm sure that's a really big problem!