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Alpha Gamma Delta requires that new members are initiated within 8 weeks of their new member ceremony and I've had women ask these kinds of questions often. There are things you can do to ease the financial burden, such as: Figure they will be members for 7 months and therefore owe dues for those 7 months too. Rather than requiring the new member fee, Initiation fee AND the first 3 months dues prior to Initiation, make sure you get the new member fee and initiation fee from them on time and split up the total amount for the 7 months of dues over the next semester. That way it's more spread out and won't hurt quite so much.
If you are continually having trouble with new members making grades, select members with higher high school GPAs, pair up study buddies with new members and initiated members to help make sure they will succeed and/or ask for progress reports. They could have a form that they need a professor to sign a week or so before Initiation indicating that they are earning at least a 2.0 in each class. Also, make sure that you are focusing enough on scholarship during their new member period and not overscheduling them. Find out their test/paper schedules and put them on a big calendar and avoid doing a lot in a week where many of them are swamped. We do this for members and new members and call it a crisis calendar. We then avoid planning events when more than a certain number of members have tests/major papers due. Engage them in workshops on good study habits, note taking, etc.
We can carry over a new member under certain circumstances as long as we follow the proper process for doing so. I can't see holding over an entire group because some of them must have met the requirements for initiation. For us, delaying Initiation would also mean delaying elections which could also cause problems in registering for our leadership conferences, which usually has to be done in early December. You have to know who the officers are to figure out who is attending. Eliminating the opportunity for the new members to be officers greatly reduces the number of women who get to serve in leadership positions.
I am from a day when it was delayed in the fall semester but not in the winter and I do understand the desire to have grades in but I respect our new rules and try to find ways to help the chapters work with them.
Dee
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