IN NEED OF SERIOUS HELP

[ladiishotta]

I attend Westwood College in Chicago, we're not a university. we're a 3 year college, my friends and i are trying to start a co-ed Frat. We've come up with the name, colors, bi-laws, we have elected officers, our mission is to help foster children between the ages of 13-17 (the ones that dont get adopted as quick), we have fund raising ideas, and we're ready to do this! im looking for a big brother or sister who i can ask questions and ask for advice.

We should be taking all of our information to our administrators soon, pray for us

[RhoGamma09]

I assume youre talking about Big Brothers Big Sisters? Lol, because I am a Big, but my little isnt in need of help. So I cant help you there. This sounds like a Big Brothers/Big Sisters kind of thing, they dont have an org at your school that has a program like this?

You could call those types of programs up and see how you can help, I dont even know if you necessarily need to be a co-ed fraternity to do this kind of work.

There are lots of posts on starting GLOs, theres even a sticky up at the top of this section, I would look through that, and like I said, explore your options of venues through which you could do work like this.

[ladiishotta]

no lol,
you dont understand what im saying. Im looking for someone who is already in a fraternity/sorority to help me with this process. i have alot of questions that need answers lol.

[RhoGamma09]

Lol, okay well, I am in a sorority, and I am quite active...so, my reply is still valid. What kind of questions do you have?

And once again, read the sticky, search some threads, there is a ton of information on here already.

I dont know if you understand what Big Sisters means in "greek"....I would instead probably say "...looking for sorority/fraternity members..."

[ladiishotta]

i read before i joined this website lol.
ok we have the name of the frat but how do we determine the names for the chapters?? do we just make them up ourselves?

and we're trying to start this from the ground up, so any advice you can give would be great!

[RhoGamma09]

Well, first off, I wouldnt refer to it as a frat, I would stick to fraternity. Especially if you want to start this and be taken seriously.

And, if youre trying to start a local organization, then chapters has nothing to do with you right now, I mean, you need chapters if youre a national organization, which you wont be, so, you can just be your group and your school. If you really wanted to I guess you could consider yourself the Alpha chapter (SOME but not all chapters are named by the greek alphabet, starting with the first letter then going from there, there are other methods though, of course, nothing I say is ever on the "end all" basis because I realize there are plenty of things out there that operate differently from my GLO) but, like I said, youre just going to be local if you do this, so *it doesnt matter.*

I would keep reading the posts and maybe try to look up some service fraternities and often times they will have information about membership, starting a chapter at your school, etc. It would be much easier and better to go through something that is already established, I feel like you would get more accomplished.

[knight_shadow]

I wouldn't refer to this undertaking as a fraternity at all. This sounds like a great idea for an organization, but it doesn't necessarily need to be Greek.

Why do you feel the need to make this into a Greek organization? Not trying to be a hard-ass -- this is a legitimate question.

[agzg]

First, are there other clubs and organizations on campus? Any of this nature? Someone always has to be the first but knowing what I know about Westwood (and other, similar colleges), there is often a very good reason why there is no greek life on campus.

[ladiishotta]

because we had an assembly about 2 months ago about activities, sports, and greek life on campus and the reason why there are no sororities and fraternities is because no one wants to start one or they dont have the energy to find one that is already established to join it. so we said what if we started one would u want to pledge and put ur all into this and they said yes. so we're trying to take the steps to go national.

[ladiishotta]

There isnt any greek life because no one has brought it to the administrations attention.

[knight_shadow]

You can't just "go national." Your organization needs to be able to survive on the local level and there needs to be interest at other campuses.

But again -- why does this need to be a fraternity?

[RhoGamma09]

I agree with the statements above, as I said earlier, I dont think you need a fraternity to help kids. I think you have a great idea and it is a great cause, but I can think of 2 or 3 orgs off the top of my head at my campus that help mentor children and do community service to benefit them in our area, and they are not Greek. They do great things as an org, but they certainly dont need to be Greek.

I mean, if you want to have a GLO on campus, then that is a different matter, but like I said, it might just be easier to go through an existing national and ask them for help with starting a chapter at your campus.

I think you need to focus what your needs/wants are for this org you'd like to start.

[DubaiSis]

Here's my 2 cents. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. There are some great service fraternities out there that you could become part of. Alpha Phi Omega is the only one I can think of (I'm an NPC gal myself), but that is the first one that popped up when I googled Service Fraternity. I'd start talking to your student life office about that possibility as well as doing some research (here is a great place to start) about who fits your goals the closest.

But I would do some reading about the different kind of fraternities out there as well as the etiquette, protocol and terminology so you don't get caught by someone who is cranky. Like the Frat thing. I don't know why it's offensive, but it's a no-no word.

Best of luck. I'll be interested to hear how this progresses.

[ladiishotta]

Thank you all.
and i sorry about using that word, i just typed it like that kuz it was shorter. i didnt know it was bad. but im going to do extensive research and i hope this goes well.

[Psi U MC Vito]

Why exactly do you want a fraternity though. You never answered that question. I think what you want to do is a good thing, but you don't need to be Greek to do it.