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Originally Posted by 33girl
The Greek system just became re-recognized after how many years?? I'm glad you guys are feeling positive, but seriously, in that situation, I wouldn't trust promises of a Greek Row in the "near future" any further than I could throw them.
There are smaller NPC groups who had these same issues as well and from what I've seen of their members on GC and other venues, their members didn't use these things as an excuse to try and free themselves from the group. Instead, they took the initiative to try to build up their groups and try harder.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ForeverRoses
I think this goes back to the debate of what is this group going to give me, versus what can I add and contribute to this group.
Personally, I have always felt more of a part of a group when I feel like I am adding and contributing versus just waiting for what they are going to give me.
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Personally, I have always felt more of a part of a group when I feel like I am adding and contributing versus just waiting for what they are going to give me.[/QUOTE]
Thanks once again for your thoughts on the situation. And I — and the rest of my sorority — would agree with you that it’s in contributing that one feels like one belongs to a group. That’s certainly what we’ve done on a chapter level, academically, philanthropically, and simply in supporting our sisters through thick and thin.
To the extent that you’re suggesting we should have continued in an affiliation with an organization that was not meeting its promises to us, hadn’t been meeting its promises to us for the extent of our careers with the organization, and wasn’t offering us any concrete assurances that they would be meeting those promises in the future — well, I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with you. (And once again, this is not meant as an insult to BootyKBG or her board. I wish them the best of luck).
I realize that if you’ve been lucky enough to be a proud member of a sorority for decades, three to four years of broken promises probably seems like nothing. Please understand, though, that that’s the whole of my career as a collegiate sister, and more than half the history of my chapter. We can’t look back to say, “the glorious ’80s” or something. We had to make our decision based on our experiences and whether we thought the situation would improve. And since the assurances we were given that it would were the exact same assurances we’d been receiving for years — without the situation improving — we elected, unanimously, to ask for disaffiliation.
It was never a matter of “but NPC can offer us so much more!” It was, “Do I feel like I’ve been treated well by this organization, and am I comfortable leaving my younger sisters in this situation?” The answer was no.
With regard to the question of whether or not we did disaffiliate fully, I can only say, once again, that I know for a fact that my sorority set out to fulfill every letter of the law and that we never had any intention of disrespecting KBG. I heard from multiple members of our executive board that we, our director of Greek Life, and NPC received an e-mail from KBG nationals releasing us. I cannot imagine our executive board moving forward with extension without this release, nor can I see our Greek Life office or NPC allowing us to do so. We certainly would never have attempted to “hoodwink” NPC or KD, who we respect very much as organizations and are grateful to be a part of.
And on a personal note, if you wanted to PM me, I would be very interested in your suggestions for what you think we could have done. Because if we had thought there was something we could have done, we definitely would have done it (no one was thrilled about having to break the affiliation). There was just this sense of really … hopeless disenfranchisement, I guess is the best way to put it. And we did what we did because we really thought it was our only option.