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 How do you handle alumnae who are putting their negative $.02 in or who are telling new members the gossip of the chapter?
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I faced this situation a while back at our biggest alumni event yet. My chapter organized a 180 person alumni reception on the skybox level of ODU's basketball arena on our annual rivalry game against VCU. We had 4 of the 5 founding members of the chapter there, and alumni from over 4 decades of our fraternity.
Some of our candidates pledged Sigma Nu with the expressed interest of avoiding a fraternity with an "Animal House" mentality... and then they met some of our 1990's alums.
One of these "gentlemen" (and I use the term loosely) was recalling how he used to date the cheerleader that wore the school's mascot suit, and how he had sex with her at a party with the mascot head on, took polaroid photos, and passed them around the party shortly after it happened. He also told tales of parties where furniture was thrown from the roof, freshmen were used as "beer wenches", there were streaking races around the house where the loser had to drink beer out of his shoe, etc. Really crazy, raunchy stuff that made some of our pledges look at our alumni with disgust, and then at some of the active members that they hadn't met yet with a more cautious attitude.
Here's how I explained to our PNMs that we aren't all like "Yankee": I explained that the 1990's generation of our fraternity nearly got expelled from school due to recruiting some really questionable folks and getting into some bad situations with parties and grades, and that for years after them, we weren't allowed to recruit so that the chapter could come back with a fresh start... without them.
Remind your members that just because someone is alumni, it doesn't mean they have all the answers. They are your brother/sister, just older. If the alumni in question is destabilizing your chapter, or endangering it, take them aside and explain to them what they're doing wrong, or suggest a new area they can help in that would put them in less of a position to meddle in chapter affairs .