[breathesgelatin]

My problem with the "the person should volunteer with collegiates first" is that it's assuming the old model of AI - sometimes conflated with honorary initiation. In that model, unself-conscious women willingly gave of their time because they saw a chapter in need - moms, faculty or staff on campus, house mothers, etc. They had no expectation of being "rewarded" with initiation. But with the rise of internet awareness of AI, I feel like now that we're saying "You shouldn't sorority shop or just contact alum clubs" and pushing the collegiate involvement aspect, we're going to get weirdos contacting collegiate chapters, randomly wanting to "volunteer." Which in my opinion is even worse than sorority shopping/calling up alum clubs/calling up national offices, because the collegiate chapters are honestly probably much less prepared to deal with such requests. I mean I don't know about most chapters, but speaking for my chapter I think I was the only one who knew anything about AI (through GC) until we actually got a request to initiate someone for AI. Maybe with some of the orgs were AI is more common the collegiate chapters are better educated, but I can't imagine the average collegian knows much about AI...

That's why my ideal AI program would look more like the NPHC graduate membership intake programs. The other great thing about those programs is that you can always say "we are not conducting intake right now." End of story. That said, I reiterate that I realize most alum clubs and orgs don't have the programming and resources to conduct programs on that level at this point. Nor, I guess, would most NPC orgs want to. But I think it's the only thing that would solve the problem of "sorority shopping" if AI is going to continue to exist.

One more clarification though... I do think that there will always be selfless women (moms, faculty/staff volunteers, house moms) who help chapters and then are invited to membership. The awareness of AI isn't so widespread that every non-member who volunteers with a chapter is doing it just for a chance at initiation. But I think that GC members' current emphasis on collegiate volunteerism (whereas we used to say, contact the national office, or local alum club, or whatever) is going to lead to crazy women doing just that... You know? Like there's no good way for us to even discuss AI, because whatever we say, crazy women will take too far, unless we either A) completely end the programs or B) just say it's by invitation only and not to even bother contacting ANYONE. I realize that no GCer these days is saying "Contact the collegiates and ask to help out" as they were saying to contact alum clubs back in the day, but I'm worried that by even talking about collegiate volunteerism as a reason for AI, we're going to indirectly encourage people to start calling up chapters.