Quote:
Originally posted by justme
With that said, I don't really see anything wrong with wanting a new chapter to be able to establish its own identity. How can they do that when everywhere they look, women are wearing letters that don't actually belong to their local chapter? What's so wrong with asking members of the former chapter to quietly fade into the background while this new group of women build their new chapter. Seems to me that letting the "old" chapter members be involved is like seeing a sign on a restaurant, "Under New Management", walking in, and seeing the same hostess, servers, and bartenders... why would I expect the food to taste any differently?
Personally, I think this particular issue is OLD. Alpha Xi Delta's name keeps coming up over an issue that is three years old. AND, I might add, that while the perceptions of a chapter member are very real and I don't doubt that this is how she perceived the way everything played out, there are at least two sides to every story and we have only heard one - okay two if you count the campus newspaper which I always take with a grain of salt.
I think this has been a good discussion but I would suggest that if anyone sees a reason to continue the topic, that a new thread be opened that isn't aimed at one group in particular.
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The problem is that, like I said in my post, the national officers are seeing this from a business standpoint whereas the collegians are seeing it from a sisterhood standpoint, and that can lead to a lot of hurt feelings. As mentioned earlier, asking these new alums not to wear letters (a privilege that every alumna should be allowed) is basically the equivalent of saying "We're ashamed of you, and we don't want our national organization to be associated with you." And no sisters should ever be treated like that. Like KR said, if they don't want these sisters wearing letters, they need to have the guts to terminate them altogether instead of giving them alum status and then not allowing them to do anything that alums would normally be able to do.
I don't think anybody is associating this solely with Alpha Xi Delta, though. It's a Panhellenic problem. As mentioned, Sigma Kappa asked collegians of a closed chapter to do the same thing, and I'm sure many other organizations that do immediate recolonizations have similar policies. And none of us have perfect IHQs who treat their sisters perfectly fairly all the time. I'm sure most of us can tell horror stories about one member of our IHQ who should just not have been in the position she was in.
Do immediate recolonizations work? It seems like most of the stories I've heard about them are negative, leading to hurt feelings on the collegians' side and no real improvement for the new chapter since there is no time to let their previous reputation die. Girls are still hesitant to join a chapter with a "reputation" (true or not), even if the girls in that chapter are completely different from the ones that created the reputation. Does anybody know of some successful immediate recolonizations?