Any Ideas to Improve Chapter Cooperation and Communication?

[awal89]

I was recently elected Panhellenic President for our campus, and one of my goals that I have set for myself is to get chapter presidents communicating and chapters working together. I feel that cooperation is one of the first steps to improving our campus image.

So far on my campus, it has pretty much been every chapter for themselves and we haven't helped each other when chapters are struggling. During my 4 years on campus, we have lost 4 chapters.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to improve the chapter president communication and our overall Greek community?

[33girl]

Don't put the whole onus on the presidents. You want to have ALL the women in the Greek community on board with helping to improve things. Try having an all-sorority retreat or daylong event, if possible.

Are all chapters at total and making quota regularly? When was total last re-evaluated? If there's more than one chapter below total, it most likely is artificially high and needs to be lowered. Contact your NPC regional person for help with this.

If losing 4 chapters in that amount of time hasn't woken people up that a change is needed, quite frankly, I don't know what will.

[RaggedyAnn]

I was thinking something similar to 33. Maybe have sorority socials, so that the Panhellenic sisters can get to know each other. We started the idea of spaghetti dinners back when I was on campus. A couple of years ago, I met an alum from another sorority and she was talking about the good times their chapter had with ours at these dinners. She was at least 10 years younger than me.

[Titchou]

Do you have a Presidents Roundtable every semester/quarter? Where does PH meet? Some campuses rotate among the houses/suites. Does the GA meet with the chapter advisers regularly? What about a GIN system for PH communications? Does anyone on your campus use GIN?

[awal89]

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to put the whole thing on the presidents, but my thinking was that if they start communicating and working together members may be more likely to start getting to know other chapters as well (and I admit that I may be wrong in this).

I have tried socials, but each chapter remains with their sisters and doesn't really branch out (for the most part, there are exceptions). We could try doing dinners, do you have any other social ideas that have worked well?

We have a president roundtable meeting once a month, but the problem is that in the past, there has been do disscussion, we all just sit in silence. I am trying to think of ways to facilitate conversations but not really sure how to go about it.

Our GA does have regular meetings with chapter advisors throughout the semester. I'm not sure what a GIN system is, as far as I know, no one on our campus uses this.

[33girl]

If the chapters have houses and they're large enough to accomodate this, do a progressive dinner. Salad at G Phi B, appetizers at the 2nd group, dinner at the 3rd and dessert at the 4th. It's always neat when you can see someone else's house because after you join they almost become "forbidden" territory.

If the houses can't accomodate everyone, then pick 5-10 (depending on house size) girls from each chapter. Get everyone's member roster and pick names out of a hat. The last thing you want is to have the 5 girls from XYZ who are up each other's butts 24/7 and don't socialize with their own sisters, let alone other sororities.

As far as the lack of discussion during discussion...have your regional NPC rep come in and facilitate. If this isn't her forte she can find someone who can help you.

If there's an unofficial "brother/sister fraternity" mode on campus, do everything you can to squash it (up to and including getting your Greek advisor or national consultants to make it sound like if you don't cease and desist, you will all drown in a lake of fire). That kind of stuff just makes girls crazy and possessive and goes a LONG way towards animosity among the orgs.

[ASTalumna06]

In my freshman year of college, one of the things I remember most was the ‘Thanksgiving Dinner for Six’ that I attended. Every year, the week before Thanksgiving, the campus hosted this dinner, anyone could sign up (for a small fee, if I remember correctly), and a huge turkey dinner would be served. There were 6 people at a table, all randomly placed. Even if you signed up with a friend, you couldn’t choose to sit with them – everyone had an assigned seat. There were 2 professors and 4 students at each table. It was a great way to get to know other people on campus, or to at least have a nice dinner and conversation with people that you probably would have never met or talked to otherwise.

You could host a dinner on campus at the beginning of the semester as a joint sorority event (and maybe get the fraternities involved as well, depending on the level of interest and how many there are on your campus). You could have 2 members of different sororities at each table, and then random people to fill in the additional 4 spots (or you could have additional sorority members and random people, depending on the space and how many people sign up… e.g. 4 members of different sororities and 6 random people, etc.). I would also open it to both males and females.

This could be a great opportunity to have the sororities bond, AND to help everyone to meet tons of new people on campus – which always helps with recruitment and the building of chapters. Also, I would make a few rules: wearing sorority letters is not allowed, talking about Greek Life is not allowed.. and I probably wouldn't advertise it as being hosted by the sororities, either. The point isn’t to try and intimidate those who aren’t Greek, nor is it to make it known to which sorority each girl is a member.

[awal89]

Thanks for all of the ideas!