Junior Slump

[madeline11]

Hey guys,

My chapter is in its third year at my university, and we seem to be at a crisis point. No one shows up to events anymore, and our chapter which was last year known for our enthusiasm placed last in Greek Week, which was a couple weeks ago. Our new members are still so enthusiastic about being in our chapter but it is almost painful to go to events and see that they are the only ones attending, because their older sisters just don't care enough to come out. Part of it I think is the conflict between the founding pledge class and the following, recruited classes because they want different things out of the sorority but an identity crisis may be part of it. I don't know what the deal is with low turnout, if it's because of a lackluster exec/nosy nationals/goodness knows what but I'm honestly embarrassed to wear my letters. Has anyone, especially new(ish) chapters experienced this? Do you have any suggestions on what we can do to improve chapter morale?

[amanda6035]

I'm a colony member, and my chapter (which is 4 1/2 years old now) "almost" went through something similar to what you're describing. We were a very very small chapter at the time and we were gettig burnt out on official meetings, and things we had to do, while trying to throw in some fun stuff as well. As small as we were, if you didnt show up to something, for whatever reason, it was inevitable that someone was going to look down on you for not being at whatever event.

So what we did to try to change things up a it, was instead of having official chapter meetings every single week, we changed our monthly schedule to look like this:
1st weekly meeting: Official chapter meeting. Ritual, etc.
2nd meeting: Sisterhood - something fun, dinner, movie, paper minutes with upcoming reminders.
3rd meeting: Program. Our FHQ required 3 programs per semester, and 85% of the chapter had to be present, so rather than scheduling a different day for the program, we did it during chapter time so nobody would have an excuse to not be there. Paper minutes with reminders.
4th meeting: Sisterhood or social/mixer. Paper minutes with reminders.
5th meeting (if it was a month that a 5th week fell on our meeting nights. Off week, paper minutes emailed out and available at chapter office.

By doing this, it made it where we didnt have to schedule so many additional things, and people were more enthusiastic about our weekly events because it was official formal chapter ever single week.


Do you guys have an attendance policy? Does it need to be revamped? Maybe the older members dont come because they are being forced to come to so many other things, or there are no consequences for not maintaining what events they SHOULD be at?

PM me if you want. I have some ideas you may be interested in.

[33girl]

The colonizing sisters have worked very hard, so there probably is some burnout there. If the group was local for a good while, it may be that national status is not all they thought it was cracked up to be.

Your nationals should be helping you in this transition period. Ask for help. If you don't get it, ask again (and again and again).

And the founders have to remember - they are the ones who recruited the newer members. They didn't drop them in from a spaceship.

[phisiglindsey]

Originally Posted by amanda6035

Do you guys have an attendance policy? Does it need to be revamped? Maybe the older members dont come because they are being forced to come to so many other things, or there are no consequences for not maintaining what events they SHOULD be at?

It seems to me that an attendance policy is exactly what you need, but not just an attendance policy. My sorority went through something similar to this where weekly events were skipped, and when people showed up they weren't really happy to be there. Your chapter should have an attendance policy to ensure women will show up. Also, there may be some underlining issues going on that you are unaware of. We had a lot going on in our chapter that was really apparent until we sat down and discussed it. We did an open forum after a meeting one night, getting out everything we needed to talk about. No one held back, and it got pretty crazy and heated at times, but after we did it, the chapter came together like I've never seen.