MadMax,
This is another long story based on many assumptions.
The threat of the college having us shut down by the city and/or the school possibly outlawing pledging a greek organization were the only reasons we considered being re-recognized. Lancaster City is a very conservative town, and Franklin and Marshall is a private school. Before re-recognition was even brought up, when the new president of the college was signed in, he started making phone calls to the city fire dept. to have them inspect us and all the other chapter houses, I think, in the hopes of either shutting us down or taking away permits so we couldn't have parties in the house, the latter of which happened to our house and it took 7 months to get it back, killed our rush, and made a very very unpleasant situation. So anyway, the school starts making these calls, I know they start making these calls because I'm friends with one of the Lancaster City Police Officers who is responsible for dealing with F and M and Greek matters, and he told me that their office started receiving calls from the new president. I go into the president's office to find out what the hell is going on because at this point there is no dialogue between the college our any Greek Organizations, we can't use the school for any functions, they give us no support, and they aren't allowed to come into our private houses, and it has been like this for lets say, 15 years. The president of the college tells me that there is no dialogue between him or the College and the Fire and Police departments, which is total BS. So now the greek houses are getting inspected sometimes 2-3 times a week by the city fire department, waiting to find something to condemn us. There's no way to put a stop to it because John Fry is working with The City, the conservative mayor who would love to see us shut down, and all these other commericial companies to cleanup Lancaster and start putting up businesses for the college and surrounding area to increase revenue, etc. Everyone loves this new president because he's throwing F and M money around, and it seems all he is asking for in return is for them to put a leash on us.
Second point, the college may possibly expell students who pledge a Greek Organization. I know this sounds highly illegal but it has happened at other private schools, and I think there has since been a supreme court ruling against private colleges being able to do this, but the possiblity still stands.
So basically we were scared into re-recognition. The new president seemed to have a lot of pull in different areas, and we didn't want to see exactly how much pull until it was too late. Our nationals were on our back to be re-recognized until they heard that the school wanted sophomore pledging, but then they still just told us to find a way to supplement it. Our older alumni, though very sympathetic to our situation, wanted re-recognition because that's the way it was when they were in school (when faculty members would come to the houses and drink with the students at parties) and everything was much more normal. To see a faculty member in a house today, the faculty member would probably get fired. It's so ridiculous!
So anyway, with all this pressure from all sides it was impossible to say, "no, we don't want re-recognition." The pressure to stop hazing, to improve community service, to have the school "help us" with inspections so the big bad city doesn't condemn us, to impove our standing with national, to improve our academics, to improve alumni involvement, and to not get expelled by the school was too much to say, "no thank you, we'll pass."
The new president threw his political weight around to accomplish this re-recognition regardless of the Greeks at the present time not wanting to be re-recognized, it would be like if you had a deadbeat father who abandoned you and walked out on your life for 15 years, made your life hell, never gave you any child support, made your mom pissed off, then came back into your life and demanded that you start talking to him, even though he's not going to provide you with any support, and your grandparents (the alumni) want you to go ahead and start talking to him because, you know, he is your father and you should be on good terms with him. By no means am I trying to offend anyone by this scenario, and I apologize if I did, but we feel like that abandoned child, it's hard to erase 15 years of bad terms and come back the next year and act like nothing happened and have even stricter rules. There should have been more gradual steps, but Fry doesn't have time for that, he's probably moving on in a few years once our ranking makes it up to one of the top 20 liberal arts colleges instead of the top 30; his work will be done at that point.
Sorry for the rambling...it's amazing I just found this message board and I have all this pent up anger at the school and all this crap they pulled on us. I feel much better now
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Ed