Colonization Ideas/Greek Life
 

Hi everyone,

I'm on Panhel at a small school in Texas where Greek life makes up about 30% of campus. We have a new sorority colonizing next semester and I'm looking for event ideas to help them feel integrated into the greater Greek community. But at the same time, our school does not have the strongest Greek community.. sororities dont have any contact with one another really.. it's kind of sad, but we have strong recriument at least.

Do you have any ideas of how to better out Greek life/cohesion and at the same time bring in the new sorority? Social events? Philanthropy? Requirements...?

Thanks a bunch!!

Our campus had a pretty segregated (by council and even by chapters within councils) Greek life until last year. We had a Greek life retreat, each chapter got to send 7 or 8 representatives and groups were mixed. I think it was a standard NIC retreat, with traveling leaders and booklets, etc. Its called Impact Leadership Retreat. The experience went a long way in bringing Greeks closer together as a whole. We benefited a lot from it. We learned about different councils, chapters within our council, and individuals, and then brought that knowledge back to our chapters.

The leadership retreat is a good idea, or a team-building workshop for the whole system, men and women. Creative problem solving, something crafty, something physical, with the teams all mixed up, of course.

Best of luck to you and to them! Maybe this is a good opportunity to make your Greek system more unified.

Alabama has done a great thing to help the new groups coming on (Alpha Phi 2 years ago and DG in 2011). PH asked women from the groups currently on campus to volunteer to be on Team Alpha Phi and Team DG. They meet with the reps from those groups leading up to the colonization, talking with them about campus culture, the events the Greeks have, what everyone does for recruitment, etc. They have even met with the architects planning the houses to talk about what they like and don't like in their own houses, etc. Great PH way of integrating the new group into the campus.

This is an awesome idea.

If a group comes in and markets itself as "not like the other sororities" their pool of potential members will die out sooner rather than later. You're the new kid on the block, don't think everyone is going to bend to your will.

To the OP, I've also heard (if your housing situation permits this) of having a sort of sleepover where women go and stay the night at another sorority's house. Seeing everyone in their jammies with Proactiv smeared on their faces goes a long way towards the "we're all in this together" feeling. :)

I'm not too sure how to help with new chapters. However, to help with the relations between chapters, we have dinner exchanges where members from one chapter go to a house for dinner and then the members go from that house back to the other house for dessert. It helps us get to know other chapters and make friends, thus bringing us closer together.

One of my favorite memories Panhellenic memories is when a couple of weeks after recruitment, one of the other sororities had my chapter over for a dinner and get-to-know-you event with us and our new members.