Hi everyone!
Ok, I'm going to forewarn you. This message is going to be very very long.
I've done a lot of research and I've read through the 'Rush at UCSC' thread and the threads pertain to me at 'Before You Found A New Sorority.' But a lot of those threads are mostly 'Hi! I want to start a new sorority, what do I do?' I've done a lot of research and I've taken the initial steps, now I'm trying to figure out what to do next.
I want to start at the beginning. I'm a sophomore at a small liberal arts college and I've been interested in Greek Life. We have 11 houses on campus, 5 sororities, 5 fraternities, and one co-ed sorority/fraternity. My freshman and sophomore year, I went to the 'meet-and-greets' for several of the sororities. I've gotten bids from houses both years, but after careful consideration, I realized those houses weren't for me.
This year, one of my friends approached me about re-starting a sorority that never got officially passed through. At first I was a little weary. From the Greek Houses I saw on campus, I wasn't really interested in being in them. I didn't have a good fit at any of them and I didn't like what they represented so why would I make one to be like them? She convinced me and we starting talking about the org and what it would be like. What would make us different.
Since then, we've figured out our mission and what sets us apart. Why do we want to do this? To provide an option for other girls who also just don't 'fit' with the other houses on campus.
Our purpose:
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Challenge students with respect to their leadership development
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Act as a resource for the College and the College community
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Provide opportunities for growth and development
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Uphold high scholastic and ethical standards
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Promote unity and friendship among all members of the College
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Demonstrate quality service within and surrounding the College community
Every Greek org on our campus is supposed to do a certain amount of service each semester. We don't really see that with the other houses. Sure, they do a Relay for Life in a nearby larger city, but what about at the campus? What about in the surrounding community? The people that live here need help to. We are very strongly dedicated to service and we feel like our organization needs to be committed to service too. Therefor, keeping it simple: we are a social organization dedicated to service. Service will be a big part of who we are and what we do.
Each house has a motto like 'Women of a higher standard' or 'Remarkable women.' We've decided to be 'Ladies of Excellence' because, to us, any female can be a woman, but not all females are ladies. It takes a certain way of holding yourself to be presented as a lady and those are the girls we are looking for.
We hope to foster unity and friendship by working with other houses for events and already, we attend all of the events we can that other sororities host. We also don't see a lot of diversity in the other houses on campus, we intend to look at people from all types of background. Right now we have members who are Mexican, African-American, European-American, Itallian-american, Chinese, and multi-ethnic.
Another focus with our group is preparing for success. We want our girls to succeed. We have focus groups once or twice a month where we sit down and pull out our portfolio materials, resumes, cover letters, graduate school applications, and try to prepare for what we'll be doing after we graduate. If some of us are going on to graduate school, we study books that help prepare us for the GRE, the MCAT, the LSTAT, whatever it is. We work on it as a group. As sisters.
After several meetings with the Dean of Student Life, and the Associate Dean, we found our beginnings. After lots of paper work, recruitment of members and and advisor, we finally became a student organization. We call ourselves Ladies of Excellence because we don't feel it would be right to give ourselves our letters without being officially passed through. We have ten girls. We have a constitution, by laws, officers, letters, motto, colors. Our next step is to be voted in by the already existing sororities and fraternities. We don't want to seem as if we're better than the other houses, because then we would seem kind of stuck up. Who wants someone who's stuck up? We want to show ourselves as we really are, friendly girls who are trying to do something good for the college and greek life.
Initially, when I went to the Inter-society Council (ISC, the governing body of the GLO on campus) president, he said we'd have a hard time getting recognized because there's already too many houses on campus. We recently went back now that we're more organized and told him about our purpose and he was surprisingly receptive. He hopes we get the chance.
So how can we convince the other GLO's that we're worth being voted in and that we would be a good look for Greek Life as a whole?
Also, one thing we're missing is a pledging philosophy. At my school, we have anti-hazing rules to coincide with state laws. Unfortunately, incidents still happen during the process.
I'm an RA and two of my girls had to go to the hospital during pledging, and so did my best friend (who pledged a fraternity).
Our philosophy is "To treat the pledge as a sister in order to become a sister." We would NEVER physically, emotionally, or mentally abuse our pledges. All in all, we want to establish a relationship from trust and honesty, not out of fear and pain. We want it to be challenging, but not demeaning.
Do you have any ideas on what types of safe activities we could do for our potential pledges that would be a challenge, but not demeaning, disrespectful, or dangerous?
If you have any other ideas that you think will be helpful, I'm very open to them. I'm hoping to get some good feedback like I've seen in some of the other threads. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. There might be something I left out or need to clarify.
Thanks so much! I'm looking forward to the responses!