Quote:
Originally posted by 33girl
I totally agree - we never had alums at formal when I was in school, but once we started going I think it helped relations btwn alums & collegians tremendously. When the only time you see alums is at annual functions, you don't connect with them any more than you do with the yearly antihazing speaker or any other annual program you have.
The point is to make the alums feel that even if they are not always WITH the chapter, they are still PART of the chapter. I don't mean running it, and that does become a problem, but - one of our regional directors (I heart you Deb  ) has encouraged us to not use collegian or alum, to just say SISTER. After all, that is what we are. When we don't differentiate between the two we are really enforcing the idea of lifetime commitment.
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Ditto--
While it's important to get contacts out to alumni for the big events of each year, it's just as important to give alumni a heads up to the chapter meetings or weekly hangouts so that they can come and spend time with the chapter in a more casual atmosphere-- because really, that's where you get to know people and stay connected.
I live about 25 miles from my undergraduate chapter, and since none of the active sisters have cars (it's honestly a pain in the neck to have one in Boston), my casual time with them has been to invite them out to dinner. Since they don't have cars and want to see other parts of Massachusetts, I pick them up, we hang out and chat wherever, and then I bring them back to campus. We don't even necessarily talk chapter stuff-- but get to know each other as people. It cuts down that intimidation that I'm an alumni and therefore on some weird level that they're not.
~ mel.