First, I'm going to hold off for a moment on the "Tier" discussion.
I'm with you for the most part and will thus paste:
Quote:
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Kappa Sigma Area recruitment manager visited us like once every 6 weeks, and that even though we already had a number of people that was already half a fraternity at our college. Empty promises everywhere. No help for going through rush. A box of 6 t-shirts and some pens. And that with a fee of 45 dollars a month... All in all, it did not seem that Kappa Sigma wanted to put in the effort or money to support a new/rechartering...
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BINGO! That isn't to say that I don't recognize that you should be able to do it yourself but as I pointed out above, most people won't know how to do this. And from what I keep hearing, the selection tends to get some of the last people you really want for ARMs. I'm going to be flat out about that because I think that eventually someone will say, "aha, there's may be a problem there and some people are offering possible solutions." It will happen.
I'm not going to write and essay to agree with what you and others are saying. But I will say that there are many guys who have some experience in challenging situations and would love to help out. Some really good suggestions have also been put up on this thread. Most of what makes chapters work and grow is informal and doesn't come across well in the PC world where anything that has to do with selectivity, ambition, achievement, cooperation, independence, masculinity, commonality, belief systems and codes or even just having fun is scary and off putting to so many. Many of these things are exactly why people join fraternities and stay committed but sometimes this is exactly what people don't know how to implement and how to sell. And every principle of marketing goes out the window with this bowing to PC too.
Where you are off at IMHO, is that you are claiming that fraternities that don't have a house that try to come in or reestablish can't at Tier 1 schools. Nope. Virtually every fraternity around at these schools, including those who didn't have houses came back Yale comes to mind where only one fraternity had a house to come back to but really the case is that organizations that are at these schools more often than not come without housing and work together to get a formal or informal house, and this is something (as I posted earlier) that the ARM or national should consider helping guys set up. In fact, it's these technical details on recruiting and setting up and maintaining housing, etc. that I think is the most important thing that you can do for guys as a fraternity.
Something you said though (and this is only speculation!) sort of point to why things may have been bound to fail with our group. If you have a bunch of negative, hyper-critical guys who don't believe in things like classification or anything remotely associated with that sort of thinking they are pretty damned from the get go. If it was me I would immediately have gotten rid of any guys like that from the jump because they are just going to kill things or be a dead weight in my experience. Competitive schools are also full of mediocre folks who may have done well on a test but are emotionally unintelligent and just not good at very many things; and some of them hide their inadequacy behind negativity. (This is probably much more common in "competitive" schools more than other places.) And you have to be upfront with guys how that works, i.e., without buy-in as a group and as individuals you are pretty much fucked. That translates to a lot of life by the way. Instead of spending time reading all the stupid, sophomoric criticisms of fraternity life, really prospective fraternity men should spend more time looking at these things through a social science lens and understanding just what the dynamics are of successful groups and why they work when they work. Too many prospective members fail to do that and too many fraternities fail to outline such education.
I appreciate far left idealism that frees us of any distinction, difference of attainment, etc. though I don't share it. I'm not here to argue this and will spare you a subsequent back and forth because there is no argument to be made. Not only are there ubiquitous rankings, some more popular than others, and a widely understood hierarchy in institutions, this plays itself out in important ways, such as graduate school admission, hiring, social relations and status, and universal recognition of education. In fact I was just talking to someone who has a PhD whose education was not recognized in Germany and that sort of "bias" formally and informally regarding U.S. schools is more common than one might imagine. The hiring in "better" law firms (though I suppose the Vault rankings and lawyer rankings also means nothing to you) and upper level management track for many financial firms are heavily predicated towards those school rankings. The same goes for certain areas of upper level government hiring. As to what seems to bother you- I'm not defending (or condemning) elitism and class reproduction as an element of American or international higher education but it doesn't disappear by our pretending it is not there. Universities love to talk shi# but look at how quickly they point to their rankings when they are favorable. The past 40 years only one POTUS elected wasn't an Ivy Leaguer or military academy grad. Check the SCOTUS, ditto with only the top schools. Again though, there are teams of people from Ivy League and other competitive schools destined for never achieving much and others in less competitive or ranked schools that will achieve more so I'm not implying this always is the way of things.
I could go on regarding the "tiers" and so forth, I just think that the whole conversation is sort of without purpose. How can we deny the undeniable just because may not like it? If anyone is being honest they will admit that a large piece of what drives campus fraternity life is determining values and codes and attainment and then trying to be the best at them.
Best of luck if you guys are trying again. Hit me up and I'll help as I can if you'd like. I think if you are part of the group I think you are we may have some connection. TTYS.