Delegate Strength
 

At your national conventions, is each chapter given the same amount of delegates?

Are your number of delegates dependent upon the size of the chapter?

Do alumni chapters/associations have a vote?

Discuss.

yes, each chapter, alumnae and collegiate, is given the same number of votes: one.

at different points, i've heard individuals rumbling about changing the number of votes/delegates to be based on the size of the chapter. it would be interesting to see, particularly if a chapter is split on an issue.

each chapter gets two votes and two delegates: an alumnus and an undergrad

no alumni chapters (i don't think alums should get to vote at all)

ASA
 

Each collegiate chapter gets a vote.
Each alumnae chapter gets a vote.
A chapter advisor from each collegiate chapter (must be an initiated sister) gets a vote.
Each national councillor gets a vote.
National volunteers "in accordance with national procedure" - each gets a vote.

Anyone who's a paid employee (i.e. HQ staff or leadership consultants) cannot vote.

The size of the chapters (alum or collegiate) doesn't matter - each gets one vote.

I'm curious as to why you think that way.

The NPHC and other GLO's as well hold their alum chapters in high esteem. For us, our membership and involvement is for life.

delegates dont matter...chapter size does...that determines the votes...

By "delegates" I of course mean "voting delegates."

from http://www.deltachiconvention.org/Delegate/index.htm :

Each undergraduate chapter shall cast a number of votes based on its membership, defined as the number initiated and dues-paying members including those initiates who are not yet required to pay dues, as follows: if its membership is less than the average chapter membership, three (3) votes; if its membership is equal to or greater than the average chapter membership, four (4) votes; if its membership is equal to or greater than twice the average chapter membership less ten (10), five (5) votes.

There's info in that link on colonies and alumni chapters too: they get votes proportional to size, and all the past International Presidents in attendance form a committee that also gets two votes.

For OPhiA:

Each (collegiate) chapter gets two votes, regardless of size. If your chapter is on any kind of conditional status, etc., that will have an effect, but your size will not.

The alumnae chapters do not have votes (currently, there is not enough structure in place around the alumnae chapters for this to make sense). The alumnae votes are instead done by region. Each region gets one alumnae vote, plus two alumnae-at-large votes.

Each chapter gets two votes. Each alumni chapter gets one vote.

Voting at Grand Conclave:

Each chapter (Undergraduate and Graduate) has a guaranteed baseline for voting strength. Beyond that there is a formula by which voting strength (i.e., additional votes) is calculated proportionally according to how many financial members there are in a chapter beyond a certain level. For instance, __ additional vote(s) for every __members over __ in a chapter. It's sort of like a "unicameral" system in which we merged the U.S. Senate and the Congress in terms of voting.

I think some would argue the other way around. Alums have the time and experience with org as a whole, not just the small collegiate chapter. If anything, the collegiates should be limited. But, the sorority belongs to both so why shouldn't everyone get a vote?

Wellll....not necessarily. Some alums settle down to live where they went to school and join the alum chapter that's almost completely made up of graduates from the same school, and it's pretty much like still going to collegiate meetings only they meet a lot fewer times a year, and they really don't know/care about national issues as a whole. I guess what I'm trying to say is that alum involvement does not always equal seeing the bigger sorority picture.

I'm totally surprised that in some groups the bigger chapters get more votes. That would be very very interesting if we did that - I'd be curious to see the results.

Each chapter's (UG and Grad) delegate strength is determined by the number of members on the chapter's roster. If my chapter, based on it's size can have only 7 delegates, but only 4 members attend the conference, then, my chapter will only have 4 votes for that conference. We vote individually, but usually the delegates are given the directive from the chapter prior to attending the conference. If an issue arises, then the delegates discuss the issue immediately and vote accordingly on behalf of the chapter.

We are also allotted alternate delegates in case something happens. I remember one conference, a soror had to fly out almost as soon as we got there because of a family emergency. One of the alternates was then certified as a voting delegate.

Even our active members not in a chapter have delegates. All actives are part of the decision making process. ;) :D

In APhiA, chapters receive voting delegates based on their numbers by a certain time. Bigger chapters receive more delegates. National Board members also vote, and there are about 20 of them -- five are undergrads.

I personally would rather see all chapters get two delegates, as the current system unfairly advantages alumni chapters, which are greater in number and membership in the first place.

In Alpha Phi Omega, each collegiate chapter gets two votes, each board member gets one vote, and each alumni voting delegate (one from each of the 11 regions) gets one vote. In this case, I feel that each active alumni association should get two votes since at this point it would not unfairly advantage them.

I don't disagree with you 33girl. The difference is that most older adults are able to make more rational decisions than youger adults whose brains have not fully matured or been fully educated. It's the same reason we have alumnae serve as National/International officers not collegiate members. Alumnae who are active enough to attend conventions usually do have the whole group rather than only their alumnae group in mind when they vote. Let me be clear, though, I think collegiates definitely should have a say in ALL decisions. I said SOME think the alumnae should make all of the decisions. The sorority represents both alumnae and collegiates so both should be allowed to vote!;)

I don't think it's a matter of rationality, more of education. I mean we have some alum chapters where the women are OLD and there's no collegiate chapter anywhere nearby that probably had no idea what was going on when we voted on our new structure, or what ASA Advantage is. Basically they want to pay their national dues and be left alone. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, just that it is.

Do you have a mechanism to know for sure how your delegates voted? Our chapters elect/select their voting delegates and expect them to vote the chapter wishes. But there is no mechanism to know for sure that they did.

What do you consider OLD??? :D

This again shows the difference between the NPC and the NPHC when it comes to alumnae. (Not saying one is better than the other--just a different philosophy.) In the NPHC the only difference between alumnae chapters and collegiate chapters is that the former have received their degrees.

We do the same, but there is no way of knowing how the soror voted.

With today's technology--we use electronic voting keypads--I think that information should be made available to that chapter (only) because ultimately that delegate is accountable to the chapter.

In my chapter the voting delegate is our chapter president and the alternate is the first VP. We had a situation one year where the vote on an election was very close and we asked the prez how she voted. She refused to answer. Needless to say we did not elect her to a second term - LOL. But the real issue was did she choose her power to vote her personal desire and not the chapter's. And how often does that happen?

We've received printouts that we voted, but I don't (remember) think that it says what we've voted for. It's been different for each conference regionally and nationally. It is computerized on both levels.

The president and VP are automatically delegates in my chapter.

Just FYI, LXA pays for one delegate from each Chapter, therefore one vote as each Chapter is supposed to have at least one delegate there.

There is also a list of all Alumni who are attending and a meeting to elect Alumni delegates of which I was one at a previous G A.

This insures that no one Chapter will try and control the voting.

Remember, there are Bigger Universitys with with bigger memberships and then State Universitys with smaller memberships.

I will never forget that there was a Officer at our IHQ who wanted to do away with us smaller schools. What a jerk. I won't tell you where he is now but a leader of another GLO of service organization.

1 Vote-1 Chapter.

Kevin, does SN pay for two delegates?

depends on size of the chapter

This has been an informative thread but this discussion needs to go to to next level and engage the "politics" and the political process which these delegate rules engender. A few years ago I was in a chapter where a brother ran for Grand Basileus (national president). It was an eye opening experience!

^^^ I'm not going there! :D ;)

Neither am I! At least not on this board. :D

Well, as an example, we had a chapter at UCLA from 1926-1951, so do the math on the age of the alumnae from there, and they are mainly all in one alumnae chapter.

Then again, as you say, there isn't any difference between how the grad & undergrad chapters are run except for whether or not you're in school. I'm betting that the requirements for chapter formation, number of meetings a year, etc, for NPHC alumnae chapters are FAR FAR FAR more stringent than those for NPC alumnae chapters. But then again, I would wager every state in the union has at least one chapter - undergrad or grad - of every one of the NPHC sororities and fraternities. IFC and NPC groups just aren't like that. If I said ASA or KDR to someone in Oregon, they'd have no clue that I was talking about a national group.

Gotcha! lol

In SGR we determine the number of voting delegates by chapter size, for undergrad and grad. But, we also let our Life Members vote. So, a Life Member soror has to decide if she will vote as a delegate *or* Life Member. She can't vote as both.

The chapters tend to vote as a 'block'. That is to say, we discuss the issues that come up for voting in the chapter meeting before we attend the conference so that everyone is on the same page when the chapter votes at the conference.

For Our Grand Chapter Convention:
40+ member chapters : Three Delegates
Less Than 40 members chapter: Two Delegates
Alumni Chapters / Alumni Association: One ( as far as I know)

bumpity bump bump.

Well you see, there are pledged delegates , then they have super delegates who screw everything up because their purpose really defeats the whole purpose of having pledged delegates............wait a second thats not a fraternity, thats the DNC.

Thanks for the bump, 33girl. Interesting topic.

I find it surprising that many GLO's base the number of voting collegiate delegates on chapter size. Having been to many Grand Conventions of my own GLO, I can imagine that causing significant problems for some smaller chapters. I'm thinking particularly about proposals for increased fees. An example: For large chapters on competitive campuses, minor fee increases would be just that - minor. But for small chapters who are struggling and/or are on a campus where the whole Greek system is struggling, even minor fee increases can have a devastating effect on future recruiting and retention. I've seen it happen.

Again based only on my personal experience, collegiate voting delegates are the least knowledgeable in the workings of an I/national organization and have difficulties seeing the "big picture". It's simply due to inexperience within the org as well as in life. I've seen collegiate struggle to understand what a proposed change even means due to the formal/legalese way it's written. They have difficulty grasping how some change might have long term effects (good or bad) for their own individual chapter, other chapters across the country and the org as a whole. They often blindly follow Grand Council's, the Bylaw Review committee's or other "important" alums' recommendations simply because "these people must know what's best". That's not always the case.