fraternity or sorority history you'd like to know
 

As your self-appointed professor of fraternity-sorority history, I feel compelled to share information with you about the early history and development of our Greek system. I feel that the more we learn of the trials and tribulations of those members who preceded us, and the miracles that occured so that our organizations even survived, the more respect and love we have for our respective organizations.

I am extremely fortunate to have at my dispisal a wealth of information to research about colleges, fraternities and sororities. If there is a subject, an issue or a question you have, I will be happy to research it if you will send me a private message.

Currently I am working on two potential threads which, hopefully, someone will find interesting.

This may be too general/broad a topic, but I'm interested in the early relationships between GLOs and the colleges. Currently, the norm is that GLOs are organized, supervised, and assisted by the "host" institution.

Coming from a chapter at a university that does not "recognize" GLOs, I'm interested in the evolution of the relationship.

thanks for the many interesting tidbits, OldU!

Really?

In my Fraternity, the 'host' institutes do not organize or assist the establishment of new chapters. They must approve the establishment of the group (without said approval, no new chapter can be organized), and the chartering org must follow whatever policies may exist at that school. But organize and assist? That is the responsibility of the students forming that new chapter, and assistance come from our Fraternity in the form of a sponsor (area alumni who help them out).

Can't speak on how things are done amoung the social GLOs.

Michael,

I was thinking more of the role of Greek Adviser or the Greek Affairs office within Student Affairs, where the university/college has a staff member who assists the greater Greek community (not individual chapters, but councils, for instance). Does that mesh more with your experience? My choice of verbs was perhaps vague.

For many of our chapters, it seems they serve two masters - our international organization and their college/university.

Well, even for my Fraternity its similiar.

We typically fall under the 'Clubs and Organizations' heading in the Student Affairs office (whatever it might be called). They will typically have policies and procedures that must be followed. But they usually DON'T have the time to organize the clubs, or usually assist them (that's usually left to the advisors, who may not be faculty/staff people). In my experience with chartering efforts, beyond being told the rules they must follow, there is little help/assistance received from the school officials. If the social GLOs get this, its something the non-socials and non-GLOs don't get.

As our chapters are chartered to the schools, it is expected that they must follow any policies of that school. If they have policies stricter then our National Org, they take precedence. That's always been a given in our Fraternity.

I'm sure it varies from school to school, but in my experience, social GLOs are more closely kept tabs on, and with that does come greater assistance (asked for or otherwise).

I went to a school with so many more student orgs compared to the number of social GLOs (400 or so vs. under 50); governance for the two groups was therefore very unequal. Personally, I preferred the less-campus-oversight model - it worked just fine.

/hijack

Three if the organization is part of a conference, a council or an association.

And I would find this interesting as well. The whole development of the campus system (i.e. early relationships between GLOs and the colleges). I have always speculated that it has been NPC driven and it would be interesting to see if that is the case.

It depends.

My Fraternity is part of the Professional Fraternity Association. I think most of our membership is probably ignorant of it. The PFA in no way governs us, AFAIK there are no policies we follow that have come about because of them. Its more of a cooperative group.

The various social GLO interfraternity groups are different (NIC, NPHC, NPC, et al). But not having first hand experience with this, I'll leave that to others.

We have changed due to things like federal laws. And our Risk Management policies are quite similiar to most other GLOs.

Oldu,
I was wondering how much information you could find on a local organization, at a much smaller school in upstate NY.
If not, no worries, but I was curious :) If you can, let me know and I'll post my information or PM you.
Thanks! :D

oldu, do you have access to the papers of Wilson Heller?

You might be correct there. I've always viewed it like this: they are OUR members, but they are THEIR students.

Most of the time if an NPC group loses recognition (because of probation/breaking rules, etc.) from the host institution, the sorority HQ follows suit (if they haven't already acted before). Not so always with the men's groups.

NutBrnHair:

You are a real aficionada of Greek information if you know of Wilson Heller.

Yes, I have seen Heller's papers. I just did another post about the best places to find fraternity/sorority information. University of Illinois has some 19 boxes of his material. That, along with a lot more fascinating archives make it "heaven" for anyone interested a early Greek history and later developments.

I also knew Wilson personally and visited him in L. A. just months before he got ill and retired. He was a lovable but ornery coot.

Perhaps you have a benevolent master, as it were, with the Professional Fraternity Association . However, my point still should apply. If - for what ever reason - the PFA decided to implement certain policies, the member organizations would either have to adhere to the policies or withdraw from the PFA.

I feel it might go further than the host institution and HQ recognition and perhaps has more to do with membership selection and colonization. Generally speaking, the NIC has always advocated a more wide open year round recruitment. And an unrestricted colonization meaning that if an NIC organization wanted to colonize, they should be allowed to do so. The bottom line being little to no rules by the NIC and as a result, perhaps more power to each campus IFC.

Now as I understand it, while there is some leeway for each campus, the NPC has certain rules that cover such things as the type of recruitment, how to set quota during recruitment, the size of chapters (i.e. campus total), how a campus goes about selecting new chapters to colonize, etc. These things are more structured in nature then NIC rush and/or colonization. As such, my speculation is that most campuses' Greek Life Advisors and/or Departments have been tailored more around the NPC rules. Perhaps simply because they do exist. And these "rules" are now being applied to the campus IFC since there are few to no NIC rules governing the IFC. As a result, we are now seeing more IFC rushes (recruitment) being conducted similar to the NPC recruitment. And while it may go against NIC Standards, many campuses now require their IFC to approve an NIC organization before it is allowed to colonize. Again, these policies (rules) are more inline with the NPC than the NIC.

This is why I feel that the development of the campus wide Greek system, in its current manifestation, has been influenced more by the NPC than the NIC. And I would venture to guess perhaps more than the NPHC as well.