Quote:
Originally Posted by denimeans
I go to a medium-sized Midwestern school and I’m in an NPC sorority. Our chapter is amazing. We’ve stayed at total for the entirety of my membership, we were sorority of the year at my campus last year, we are one of the top rated chapters of our sorority. We have one major problem. No one wants to live in the house, and for legitimate reasons.
We are 10 slots short of filling our house next year. That means we have about $20,000 our house corp isn’t getting, and this will be divided by the non-house girls (40 some) as empty-bed fees. That’s about $500 a cut, money none of these girls have. Girls won’t move in now because everyone is already leased somewhere else. I’m fearing massive drops, debt because even if we send credit agents after these girls we don’t get everything, and low morale. What have your chapters done in this situation? Any creative ideas for a fix? We need to get that money somehow.
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Aside from medical or scholastic issues, there is no "legitimate" excuse for not living in a chapter facility if there is a requirement to do so. And if women do have medical or scholastic issues, a letter from their physician or student advisor needs to accompany their request to live out and even then, it should be decided on by the House Corp or Advisory Board whether or not to grant live out status.
I dealt with this at the chapter I advised. We eventually had to be extremely firm with chapter members. Members were informed during their new member period that they basically had to live in the house for two years (usually soph-jr year). That way they knew from the very beginning what the expectations were for living in. We also did not grant live out status unless it was a
serious medical issue. If girls wanted to live out, they had to resign membership. No exceptions. The first year was difficult - they had about 10% of the chapter resign. But after the expectation was made known, that number decreased the following years. These provisions were in the chapter bylaws, but almost noone, aside from the chapter officers, knew that - even after a chapter reading of the bylaws.
In order to recoup the money lost, you can try and work out a payment plan for the women who need to pay the extra money, or you can cut areas from other parts of the budget. We found cutting the social budget made the biggest impact. Or tell the women that because of the shortage of funds, there cannot be any updates to the chapter facility.
No matter what, the House Corp
needs to be paid.