[Eupolis]

Earlier posted by Erik P Conard
Obviously Natalie, you have not worked with the Greeks on much of a scale. . . .

Originally posted by Erik P Conard

Natalie, with all due respect, you are either
1) new at this and/or
2) have not had the leadership experience or demands and/or
3) have not had to pay the bills and/or
4) have been to few if any province or national-level conferences
To maintain a 10-15 member chapter over any period of time is
to drain the organization, money-wise, as NONE can afford to
keep such a chapter on the rolls for very long. If quality has any
thing to do with it, you will not remain a 10-15 member outfit very
long as everyone on campus will want to join your group
You obviously mean well but do not have a clue what it takes to
run a chapter and carry your load. Go local.

Mr. Conard,

Aside from having a noticeable love for the word "obviously" in your rhetoric, you "obviously" have a very narrow view of what greek life and life in a national organization can be.

Now you can probably see why I don't like the rhetorical devices that you've been using, so let's abandon that approach to argument.

Let's step through your list above and see if we can take apart the argument in it, if indeed there be any. I mean you no personal ill, but I disagree strongly with your argument, so I am not going to be particularly gentle with it.

1) New at this. The only plausible purpose of this particular statement -- that I can imagine -- is to demean Natalie's credibility. You discard it far too readily.

2) Have not had the leadership experience or demands. I cannot follow the logic in this remark at all. As I said above, I'm from a campus where the GLOs, all of which are nationally affiliated, range in size from 14 to maybe 40, none more than 50, on a campus of about 1300 total. It is at least as demanding to lead a group of 14 as it is to lead a group of 40. There are more tasks to be accomplished by fewer people; more is demanded of each. A single slacker is more dangerous to the organization than she or he would be among larger numbers. A personal conflict by sheer mathematics involves a greater proportion of the members. Because of the nature of personal relationships and the burdens on the individuals, a personal conflict is likely to be more challenging as well. These challenges can be overcome, but do not have an illusory view of the kind of achievement that takes. The demands are higher, not lower. Those who achieve them accomplish and grow more, not less.

3) Have not had to pay the bills. You speak as though every chapter has the same kinds of bills. In fact, different chapters have very different kinds of financial obligations. Some live in school-owned housing. Some have no housing. They do not all attempt the same scale of programs. The insurance and maintenance burdens are likely to differ substantially depending on the organization's housing situation. Do not assume that all schools are alike in this respect, that all organizations are alike, or that only one kind of Greek life is (a) ideal or (b) deserving of participation in national organizations. If this is the point you want to make, you have a lot more to prove.

4) Have been to few if any province-level or national conferences. Mr. Conard, at conferences, does your organization send its small chapters the message that they are a drain on resources and not worth the fraternity's letters? From what I have heard, any organization that would give that kind of message is the exception, not the rule. All of the conference stories that I have heard, from members of numerous organizations, involve a great amount of cheering on and support for the smaller chapters. In the end, I think that this point amounts to another baseless attack on credibility.

The necessities of Greek life are not identical in every situation or on every campus, and it is not the case that only one size of chapter can offer members unique benefits. I can only imagine that at the school you attend or once attended, a chapter is not a worthwhile effort unless it has 50 members to support a mansion-- maybe the greek system and campus there simply don't 'work' that way. Maybe a large house is a sheer necessity for recruitment there. But that is simply not the case everywhere. I attended a small college for undergraduate and a large university for graduate school. My chapter's house is school-owned and has a capacity of twenty-three people. This is a higher capacity than the house it had before it went into school-owned housing around 1940. Historically, the sororities have had no housing whatsoever, though that is starting to change. Do you mean to imply that my chapter is not worth the effort? That the entire Greek system at my college is not worth the effort? That the organization that owns a house worth $1.2 million on the University of Colorado campus near where I now live for some reason should not have a fourteen-member chapter on the campus of my own alma mater? Is their sisterhood somehow weaker on the basis of a priori principles that you have not articulated? My hunch is that the small chapter's sisterhood is in some ways more dynamic and powerful. My chapter does not have the 60 members that it had in the 1950s; it has around 30. I would not say that it is weak.

If you wish to prove that a chapter with fewer than 50 members is worthless and ought not to be nationally affiliated, you have an argument to make that is far more challenging and demands much more cautious and complete an analysis than anything you have heretofore said. I've seen nothing yet that accounts for the variability between campuses and between chapters. I've seen nothing that provides any valid reason that a small chapter should not be nationally affiliated -- or in any event you have not laid every step of your argument out clearly. I have seen no explanation as to the benefits of Greek life that I supposedly missed out on by being a member of a chapter with 36 members at its largest point while I was there. I have not seen an explanation as to why what I did obtain from that experience was economically not worth the investment of time, energy, and money. (The latter investment was really not that bad at all, and I am not at all wealthy.)

What exactly are these resources that are supposedly being drained by the small chapters? How is it that are they so completely drained that they ought to be expelled -- or asked to resign -- from the ranks of those who strive to attain the ideals that their organizations espouse? Ought we really to reject our brothers and sisters who have small groups at a given school because they are small? I can't claim any knowledge about your organization; I believe that such an approach would run counter to the cardinal principles of my own.

My case is probably most difficult on large campuses where some organizations have 50, 100, or more members and large houses while others have fewer than 35 members and smaller houses or no housing. My campus was nothing like that, but I grew up in Madison, WI, and went to law school at the University of Minnesota. From what I've seen, diversity among chapters in terms of size assures that different kinds of Greek-letter chapters are available to those who might prefer different personal dynamics in their organization. I would not have wanted to join an organization with 100 members; 30 to 40 suits me just fine. Yes, on the big campuses, those smaller organizations are usually striving to grow to the size of the others, but they are not worthless in the interim.

A chapter on a large campus that has numerous large chapters might be small for numerous reasons. In some cases, the small size may be a symptom of poor management, shoddy personal relations within the chapter, and general failure to achieve. In that kind of case, yes, there is a problem with the small chapter. But the small size is not the problem, it is a symptom of other problems. On the other hand, small size might reflect a different personality that simply draws fewer people in recruitment, or of the lack of a house or other typical recruitment "draws." In that case, if the chapter is internally well-run, is not struggling to maintain its existence, and can offer its members the brother- and sisterhood that are at the core of fraternal life, then I just can't see what the problem is. If such a chapter is struggling to exist from year to year, then it needs to reexamine its approach to recruitment and perhaps redefine its identity a bit, but we should probably do that to some extent every year anyway.

In short, I argue again that what you are claiming are simple facts of life of fraternity life are not universal facts that apply to every Greek environment. If your argument depends on assumptions that facts about Greek life are universal, then be prepared to make a strong argument that those facts are universal -- an argument that does not merely state, "this fact is universal." There is in small Greek life at least as powerful a potential for the development of strong brother- and sisterhood as there is in large Greek life.

Alternatively, we can let this entire argument go. In my opinion, it should not have been bumped.

Greek life -- national Greek life -- exhibits itself in different ways on different chapters. Small size is not necessarily weakness, and it is definitely not worthlessness.

You put your real name on your posts; it doesn't seem fair for me not to.

** edited for grammar, reduction of rhetoric, and adding two paragraphs.

--
Timothy P. Hadley -- tph-lex.com
Mu Chapter of Phi Kappa Tau, initiated January 1996.
Lawrence University, 1999.
University of Minnesota Law School, 2002.