Officer elections
 

I have a love/hate kind of relationship with this time of year. It doesn't get any easier as an advisor versus being a collegiate.

Anybody else?

As a chapter adviser, I just returned from elections last night. My chapter has a slating committee but the drama was really in election night because of all of the nominations from the floor, (too long) speeches followed by discussion, and "trickle-down" of losing candidates from one position to the next. I don't think that elections are easy on anyone but can assure GC that our chapter bylaws regarding timing of speeches, etc. will be amended to make the night go much smoother (and hopefully faster) next time around.

As for slating ... I was only able to stay for the first half of voting and of those six positions, only one persone was slated for the position she was elected into, the other five were sisters who turned in applications (but were not slated) or were nominations from the floor.

Being from a small chapter and having a huge pledge class proportional to our size (we're currently half and half since two initiated members are inactive this semester), elections are definitely drama filled. We pretty much already know who is going to be president and our FVP is probably (and should be) staying the same ... our slating is pretty much only to see where the new members go.

I suppose a pro to our weird dynamic is that there's really no way that the slate can't pass ... Over half the chapter is on NomCom.

For some reason this was a huge problem for my chapter this semester. More than the usual number of officers seemed to have been totally confused about what their exact obligations were. One thing my chapter does is we have manuals for the different offices that lays out what they are supposed to do. Unfortunately, a lot of the manuals are out of date or non-existent, but they are very useful for transferring knowledge when they are up-to-date; if your chapter doesn’t do this, that might be a useful way to make some of the knowledge transferal stick. (Of course, it only works if the people actually read their manuals! But still).

One thing I really hate about this season is seeing certain people continuously shut out of holding offices. In some cases, its really because that person shouldn’t be holding an office, but sometimes great people just get over looked, even in my small chapter. For instance, there is one girl who is FABULOUS – very organized, very committed, and has done a good job at offices in the past. But she’s kind of a quiet, unassuming awesome, and suffers from “always the bridesmaid” syndrome. Basically everyone thinks she would be great as an officer, but for any individual office there is always someone people are more excited about, and everyone assumes this one girl will end up with some other office. But last semester she ended up not getting elected to anything, and I’m afraid it will happen again this semester! It breaks my heart (not to mention, I think she’d do a really great job and could bloom into a real leader of the chapter).

For some reason this was a huge problem for my chapter this semester. More than the usual number of officers seemed to have been totally confused about what their exact obligations were. One thing my chapter does is we have manuals for the different offices that lays out what they are supposed to do. Unfortunately, a lot of the manuals are out of date or non-existent, but they are very useful for transferring knowledge when they are up-to-date; if your chapter doesn’t do this, that might be a useful way to make some of the knowledge transferal stick. (Of course, it only works if the people actually read their manuals! But still).

One thing I really hate about this season is seeing certain people continuously shut out of holding offices. In some cases, its really because that person shouldn’t be holding an office, but sometimes great people just get over looked, even in my small chapter. For instance, there is one girl who is FABULOUS – very organized, very committed, and has done a good job at offices in the past. But she’s kind of a quiet, unassuming awesome, and suffers from “always the bridesmaid” syndrome. Basically everyone thinks she would be great as an officer, but for any individual office there is always someone people are more excited about, and everyone assumes this one girl will end up with some other office. But last semester she ended up not getting elected to anything, and I’m afraid it will happen again this semester! It breaks my heart, because even though she's a real trooper about it, it clearly hurts her feelings (not to mention, I think she’d do a really great job and could bloom into a real leader of the chapter if we'd give her the chance).

ugh elections are this sunday...this will be my first time going through this so im extremely nervous. however, in our chapter we can only nominate people from the floor that have already applied and been interviewed by our slating committee. so i cant see the process taking too long since we only have one member that wasn't slated that interviewed.

I was just initiated a few weeks ago and was slated for a position, so im really excited to see how all everything works.