No house, no mixer
 

I'm a new member of my organization and need help in figuring what we can do to have some sort of traditional mixer. Basically my school doesn't have any greek housing, and getting one in the area is next to impossible. The only way to get a house would be to have a few members rent one out. there cannot be any association with the organization. Only a few fraternities have been able to do this, mine not being one of them. Lack of a house is the main reason we don't have many mixers. I cant count the number of girls who have told us they want to mix with us but we don't have a house, and neither do they. The only way it seems to work is if we do quads using one of the other fraternity houses but....lets just say they don't enjoy sharing.

We try to use the dorms but they're just to small and to easily broken up by security. The other option are events like bowling nights, but a lot of the guys are really want to have some sort of traditional mixer...any ideas??

Can you rent out a few hours at a local bar or restaurant? Thats what my campus's do for date and crush parties.

The university center/student union may allow you to reserve a large room. When I was in school, we did this sometimes. While the room was free, we had to get food and alcohol from the school (a little more expensive than getting it from a 3rd party vendor).

Why not plan a mixer around an activity? Try bowling or ice skating or going to the theater or going to a restaurant or renting out a club/bar/banquet facility or something along those lines?

He said they had bowling and don't want to do that anymore.

Try having a quad mixer w/ 2 sororities and one of the other unhoused fraternities, and rent out a space. If there aren't any bars/restaurants available or if they don't want to lose an evening's business call the Moose hall or someplace similar.

If getting a traditional house is that impossible, try having members rent attached units in an apartment complex. Not as good as a house but hella better than the dorm.

thanks for all the advice!

I really appreciate for your advice

When I was in school, I attended MANY mixers (everyone had a house) and probably only 10% of them were at a house. We had roller skating nights, ice skating nights, date night to baseball games, a bar rented out for a party, etc. It will cost more, because you have to pay for whatever venue you are renting.... but don't think you can't mix without a house!

You might not have to rent out an entire venue, depending on the size of your group. There are many restaurants that have upstairs areas that can be reserved free of charge for larger groups.

If you're in the mood for something casual as the weather warms up, you can do a BBQ mixer with a sorority and have a softball game, etc. This is relatively inexpensive and a lot of fun.

It really depends if you want boos, and are we talking about underage drinking.
Also is it a dry campus.

Reserving a room on campus is fairly easy most places but there are a lot of rules.
Houses are a bit harder to find but have no rules.

2 weeks ago we threw a party and a house some non greek friends are renting. pretty much borrowed it for saturday night for $360 (NYC area) Paid for anything that gets broken and we provided the DJ, Sound system, lights, boos, etc...

Just a warning, we lost money but that is mostly because the turnout was smaller then we expected.

Our mixers had to be dry, no bones about it. But believe it or not you can have fun without alcohol. ;) We had food fights on one of the quads, ice skating, bonfires, movie nights (all you need for that is someone's house with a large living room), cook outs at baseball/soccer games, etc. Think about activities you can do outside or in a private home with cheap supplies...building a fire is cheap, hotdogs and burgers are cheap, renting a dvd and projector is cheap, etc.