Wishinhopin and Starting a new Chapter

[James]

Part 1. The beginning. Or the easy time.


This is inspired by the thread in the Rush Forum by wishinhopin that is trying to start a new National sorority chapter at her school. This is that thread: Rush at USCS

I wanted to share some my own experiences as a chapter starter with her as well as some of the conclusions and ideas I have come to as a result. I am posting here because quite frankly her thread is WAY too long.

1. Its hard to be the primary founder

I had the idea of starting a fraternity chapter myself. I told some friends over a beer I would do it, and I was stuck. I had to do it. Usually its a small group, in my case it was just me. This was about January.

There is always a prime pusher, and its an awesome responsibility. If you are your group's prime mover it will probably fail if you quit or fold.

I spoke to a regional director of SAE and he said an entire interest group of over 20 members just folded because the prime mover didn't come back to school.

*2. NEVER talk to only one national organization at a time. It should be at least six.

While it was still just an idea in my head, I developed a criteria to determine which Fraternities to contact. For me they had to be among the largest, for future and resource reasons. And they also had to have chapters within a reasonable distance of my campus.

I had to have contacted no less than eight fraternities and spoke to their expansion people. Or in the case of SAM and DKE their regional directors.

This made things simpler because it put me in a position to move quickly, if one said no, or was taking too long, I had another in place.

And when the first one failed, casuing the loss of 70 males from the Greek system. I automatically had back-ups before the ink was dry.

*3. Talk to everyone, anyone, and make a list of them. Get them to sign if possible.

For an idea to take fruit it has to be spoekn out loud. I told my friends, my associates, people I just sat at lunch with. I brought it up in bar conversation. And hell, I exaggerated the amount of support I had. The idea is to cause excitement. And I spoke to a lot of people.

I would also take tentative agreements as solid. I knew that most people would not come out and show up unless the National was right there. so I had direct happy supporters and "sleepers".

*4. If you entice the National to show, the people will come.

The National that I worked out an agreement with came to campus the end of February beginning of March. And recruitment was off.

They were doing something called a Cold Start where they go to a campus and just start without an organized interest group. Only it wasn't so cold at my campus. I had laid down the ground work, see above. And men came out of the wood work, maybe 30 I had spoken too directly, and 30 or so more, at the end of only one week!

We could have kept recruiting through a hundred or so.

We acted as an interest group and even participated in DZ's Fraternity Feud.

And then everything went horribly wrong and it all folded into itself.

I'll post the full details if people are interested. But suffice to say the National and I disagreed, there were problems with the school, and it didn't happen that semester.

Since I made no effort to hold the group together it disintegrated over the summer. See the first point about Prime Movers and think about a group that size going to pieces.

Continued next post: The bad year

[James]

1. Get back on your frigging Horse. Don't know when to die.

Ok, its still Spring of the same year. In fact its about 24 hours after the first attempt failed. I am already on the phone with some of the other Nationals that i spoke to in the past and am still telling people that this will work.

This is where it gets darker.

Coming back in the Fall there was a moratorium on new Fraternities. That means no one was allowed to colonize. So now I was faced with trying to form a group when I couldn't even show them a national because I didn't know when the moratorium was going to end. As I said before the original group had disintegrated which left . . . one member: Me again.

2. Have another beer

Thats not really a rule lol. But it helps to unwind and reaffirm what you are doing.

At this point I went back and talked to everyone again . . .

I had just gotten into a car accident so it was much harder to manifest the sheer energy this time, but I slowly got attracted some people . . . i think it finally got up to maybe 15 tops at times to meet in barren meeting rooms.

And then slowly we got the point and started acting together socially.

I also kept recruiting ghost members. If someone listened to my spiel and seemed interested or was an acquaintance I wrote their name, activites, and GPA own on my list. And some of them were among the most prominent Students in school. Student government members, Editor of the paper etc. . .

I don't think one of those ghost members actually ended up joining, and out of the 10-15 that sat through endless meetings during that bleak semester, maybe 4 of them ended up joining.

Quite an attrition rate. Expect it.

However, that ghost list might very well have been what got me the deal with the Nationa's that agreed, because they wanted an interest group, not a "cold start".

And in my defense. It was the timing of the colonization that rendered a lot of those people unable to join. We colonized like mere weeks before school was over in the Spring. And many of them were seniors.

And we did get all the numbers that national's asked of us. Its just that almost none of them were among the people that were around that Bleak Fall, and only one of them other than me had been there the previous Spring.





Continued . . . some tips.

[funksoulbrudda]

What school was this at? I am researching this very subject myself.

Thanks!

[g41965]

What an interesting post. Best of luck, please tell us the rest of the story!

[James]

Ok so the Fall semester comes around after the first Group folded and we are still facing the "Greek Life Review" which is a silly name for what schools do from time to time when they want to hurt Greek Systems.

So we have a small group meeting weekly but no way to colonize or even set up a time table.

Fall ends and Spring begins. We still have the silly Greek Life moratorium and the school showed no real intention of lifting it, even though the "reviewers" aren't even meeting lol.

So I started looking for alternatives. I was speaking to the executive director of DKE and he told me that a state school cannot actually deny recognition to any group that wants to come on campus.

And luckily he gave me a Precedent setting Supreme Court Case, Healy Vs. James 1972 that gave me ammunition.

Basically the supreme court case stated that publicly funded schools cannot deny recognition to new groups seeking affiliation.

The actual case involved the Students for a Democratic Society. The university didn't want the group to come to campus because it had a reputation for violent protest. The Supreme Court decided that the reputation for violence was not nough to keep a chapter from forming. Here is a link for the case:

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/script...s/408/169.html

So I printed it out and gave it to a militant friend. And he went and yelled at the administration, threatened them with a law suit and voila. The moratorium was lifted.

(As a side note: Members of IFC's and PAnhell's narrowly avoid law suits when you are not allowing expansion. Its just that people do not know their rights. PErsonally I would name eveyrone involved in a personal law suit just to force them to spend the money to get lawyers, if for no other reason than they annoyed me by being stupid.)

Now it was a matter of choosing a national .. .

[James]

Now came the time to commit to a National.

Of all the ones I had spoken to only one wasn't interested at that time.

The three finalists were: SAE, DKE, and Kappa Sig.

SAE and Kappa Sig were the most heavily favored because they both fit my original criteria the best. Large Nationals, good resources, and many local chapters.

As you have realized by now lol. We chose Kappa Sigma, the only decision up to that point that I allowed group input.

The clincher was that I had a number of people going into their senior years. And it was quite feasible to finish the Kappa Sigma Colony program in very little time. The SAE program was also easily finished, but it was explained to me that there was a 6-month mandatory review after the program was finished and before the chapter was installed. That would have left my seniors graduating which didn't seem fair.


I had developed a better relationship with the SAE alum officer I had spoken to, he was older and a much more experienced proffessional. The officer we eventually got from Kappa Sig was less experienced, and we didn't have a good relationship.

The personal factor should never be underestimated because that led to all kinds of problems inside the chapter itself, that almost killed us. There was a running joke among the senior chapter leadership that we would succeed despite National interference.

Once the committment was made we recruited the minimum number we needed to start, barely and was colonized. Less than a year later we were installed.

[FuzzieAlum]

(As a side note: Members of IFC's and PAnhell's narrowly avoid law suits when you are not allowing expansion. Its just that people do not know their rights.

Er, maybe. But in the case of Panhel, who is going to sue? NPC set up the expansion system itself. No member group is going to sue, because that would be sheer hypocrisy. ("Your Rho Beta chapter voted no to expansion at Big State ... so how do your claim you have the right to expand wherever you want?") And locals can opt out of the Panhel system and operate (from the university's perspective) underground, so they don't have much incentive to sue.

[James]

Suing and winning being different things . . . but I wonder if a group of girls might not be able to sue the individual members of a local panhell for making the decision not to allow expansion.

Lets say a sorority agreed to expand with the local NPC's approval, and the local girls said no. If the other girls could show damage . . .

Originally posted by FuzzieAlum
Er, maybe. But in the case of Panhel, who is going to sue? NPC set up the expansion system itself. No member group is going to sue, because that would be sheer hypocrisy. ("Your Rho Beta chapter voted no to expansion at Big State ... so how do your claim you have the right to expand wherever you want?") And locals can opt out of the Panhel system and operate (from the university's perspective) underground, so they don't have much incentive to sue.

[dzandiloo]

Originally posted by James
Suing and winning being different things . . . but I wonder if a group of girls might not be able to sue the individual members of a local panhell for making the decision not to allow expansion.

That's what I was thinking...say a local sorority of about 50 women were denied the chance to become a national, even though there was at least one National organization who was dying to colonize them, but the local panhel voted expansion down (despite everyone being at or near total, and high numbers of women not receiving bids every year...). I would think that local sorority should have legal recourse against the local panhel for not allowing them to associate w/a national org (since the national will not colonize w/o being invited by the local panhel). Of course I realize this could be pretty dangerous to campuses trying to protect their smaller chapters, though.... Guess that's a slippery slope.

[James]

Especially with private colleges that might not allow the option of local organizations.

Originally posted by dzandiloo
That's what I was thinking...say a local sorority of about 50 women were denied the chance to become a national, even though there was at least one National organization who was dying to colonize them, but the local panhel voted expansion down (despite everyone being at or near total, and high numbers of women not receiving bids every year...). I would think that local sorority should have legal recourse against the local panhel for not allowing them to associate w/a national org (since the national will not colonize w/o being invited by the local panhel). Of course I realize this could be pretty dangerous to campuses trying to protect their smaller chapters, though.... Guess that's a slippery slope.

[FuzzieAlum]

OK, I see that. I was going to say, then, that where would they get the money to sue? - but then I realized there would always be someone to "sponsor" them.

How often does it happen that there is a group of local girls with a national pre-interested, where the local really does have enough interested members to succeed (like if you have 10 and ceiling on your campus is 150, that doesn't count) that Panhel turns them down?

I suppose Panhel's argument is that, well, several of our chapters are struggling, so join them instead. And they have a point. But I could see that not being good enough. If all the sororities on campus are the ones with stronger Christian roots, and the local wants to bring in AEPhi, it could turn into a religion issue, for example. Or if you could prove that the other chapters haze badly, you could argue you have a right to a hazing-free choice.

[PhiRhoSister]

Originally posted by FuzzieAlum
How often does it happen that there is a group of local girls with a national pre-interested, where the local really does have enough interested members to succeed (like if you have 10 and ceiling on your campus is 150, that doesn't count) that Panhel turns them down?

I suppose Panhel's argument is that, well, several of our chapters are struggling, so join them instead. And they have a point. But I could see that not being good enough. If all the sororities on campus are the ones with stronger Christian roots, and the local wants to bring in AEPhi, it could turn into a religion issue, for example. Or if you could prove that the other chapters haze badly, you could argue you have a right to a hazing-free choice.

Believe it or not, this happens all the time! When my sorority first starting expanding, the campus Panhels always turned down our interest groups. The Panhel reasons were either the sorority was not eligible for membership in Panhel (because the Panhel Bylaws only allowed for NPC sororities) OR the Panhel decide not to open the campus up for expansion (i.e., anti-competition attitude).

After realizing that we would never be able to expand to large campuses if we had to get a Panhel's approval, we now just get recognized as a student organization first and then work with the Greek Life office. With the help of the Greek Life office, the Panhel will usually re-write their bylaws in order to recognize our colony/chapter.

Unfortunately, sometime even the Greek Life office is not helpful. So in those cases, we have had to work our way up the university chain-of command. It two cases, we went all the way up to the VP of Students before we were able to be recognized under Greek Life and Panhel.

[texas*princess]

Originally posted by PhiRhoSister
The Panhel reasons were either the sorority was not eligible for membership in Panhel (because the Panhel Bylaws only allowed for NPC sororities) OR the Panhel decide not to open the campus up for expansion (i.e., anti-competition attitude).

Deciding not to opn the campus up for expansion does not always equal an anti-competition attitude. From what I know about opening a campus for expansion, Panhel councils try to look out for the best interests of their existing groups because they would not want to see a chapter who may be struggling at the moment fold because another group is added. In addition, I don't think a Panhel council would open the campus for expansion if some of the sororities are already having trouble meeting quota.

[PhiRhoSister]

Originally posted by texas*princess
Deciding not to opn the campus up for expansion does not always equal an anti-competition attitude.

This is true, if there are no existing groups on the campus trying to form a new sorority.

However, I was taking the example of an existing viable group on campus where the campus Panhel chooses not to recognize the group. Then, preventing another group in the marketplace is in and of itself anti-competitive in nature -- regardless of how large or small the other sororities are. Basically, the other sororities on the Panhel would be funtioning as an oligopoly.

As to whether this type of situation would fall under the anti-trust laws would be interesting to know.

[texas*princess]

Originally posted by PhiRhoSister
However, I was taking the example of an existing viable group on campus where the campus Panhel chooses not to recognize the group. Then, preventing another group in the marketplace is in and of itself anti-competitive in nature -- regardless of how large or small the other sororities are.

I don't neccessarily know what campus this is, or *why* the Panhel council you speak of did not wish to extend the Panhel for extension. There is usually a good reason why they do what they do.

Whether the existing group in question is viable or not does not ultimately decide on how the Panhel would vote. There are a lot of factors to be considered when deciding whether or not to extend the Panhel, so it should not always be seen as a negative thing when a group does not get recognized. But that's just IMHO.