Okay, I know you guys are gonna hate me for this post. Scavenger hunts as a sisterhood may seem like a good idea. And while I have NO DOUBT that chapters like all of ours would handle them in a lady like way, how can we ensure that 100% of Alpha Gam chapters would? We can't. And that is why we can't have them. Somewhere along they way, some chapter messed it up for everyone.
And really, I'm sure other HQ's are just as strict on policies, but how would the 'average' undergrad know if the other chapters on campus didn't follow the rules? I can say that other chapters on our campus don't even follow school policy, so how can we know what is really their HQ policy?
Also, I believe(and I might be wrong, so don't quote me), that you may be able to do scavenger hunts INSIDE your house if your chapter wishes. And, I'm assumming that you girls would be clean and tasteful. Call IHQ, they might be willing to work with you a little more than you think. You might have to send in the clues or have an advisor present, but if you're not doing anything wrong, that shouldn't matter.
Also though, try to understand what it's like on their side-they are sisters too. They've got 98% of chapters who follow the rules, do what they're supposed to do. But then you have that scary two percent, who are the biggest legal liability ever imagined. Being on the other side makes you look at it differently. They probably think that we may be missing out on things too, but they have to look at it in a different way. It's like being EC or President, you look at things differently.
My chapter has been in trouble before with IHQ. And we worked are asses off to get ourselves back on track. This year, during I-Week, we, as an EC, decided to do away with something that had become "tradtion", with the rationalization that it had only been done for three years, and that it was unneeded and did not show our true spirit of Alpha Gam. People were pissed, but they only saw one side. We saw if from a liability issue. So we didn't do it, and people afterward came up to me and said, 'you know I'm glad we didn't do that. The evening went so much better. The girls going through never even knew that something was different.' If you don't tell younger girls that we can't have paddles, but we used to, they'll never know the difference.
Personally(and I told some of my sisters this when our issue came up), I would rather leave our charter up on our wall, than to let IHQ have it for a stupid mistake we could have prevented.
Once again, my opinion...
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