IFC Benefits

[Rudey]

I was hoping others could help me find an answer to this. The IFC on my campus has been shifting in and out of existence since the start of greek life. Recently they want to inject some life into it after a year in which the school tried to set up some sort of system where greek life would come more under their control.

However the IFC would be an independent student org which would have communication with the school and provide a voice for male greek life. Thus it wouldn't simply be some extended function of the administration to control us.

But I still can't fully see the benefits of an IFC. The only thing I can see is that fraternities would have a more unified voice with the administration. Still the university would not provide us with any funding.

So please tell me the reason for an IFC and the benefits for it. James, Rob, Blaine...any other guys know?

-Rudey

[Optimist Prime]

IFC is good. You basicly watch each others asses so no body gets screwed. Just make sure no girly rules about rush are set up and you'll be okay.

[KSigkid]

IFC is good for a number of reasons (our IFC just got itself into shape, so I'm starting to see these)

1) Like you said, a unified Greek front, which not only looks good to administration, but also to the student body in general. Rushees will get a good feeling if the fraternities are helping each other out, not trash talking each other (or at least keeping trash talking to a minimum)

2) New Ideas: Whether it's mixer ideas, philanthropies, or even operational ideas (collectind dues, rules enforcement, etc.), you can really pick up some good ideas from other chapters on campus; find out what works for some chapters, what doesn't work for others.

3) Rush help - when you can get IFC events together, and have all fraternities participating, that's that many more people (and that much more money) you can use towards making the events that much better.

Granted, this all depends on the chapters on campus and the quality of leaders elected to IFC. If you have a lot of fighting within the Greek system, or IFC e-boards that aren't motivated, you're back at square one.

Collin

my capus doesn't have a strong greek community, hence a weak IFC. It keeps us in check like a balance of power ensuring that one house won't destroy the fragile greek system at RIT. Most people here despise it, though friends of mine in other schools and other fraternities speak very highly of their IFC's.

[Kevin]

When our campus' IFC has good leadership, it performs well and helps overall. When it doesn't it's essentially just another meeting we have to send someone to. I think it's helped a lot though with other houses. IFC provides a forum for houses that are on unfriendly terms to air out their differences. Without IFC I'd imagine that Greek Life at UCO would look like a bunch of brawling rednecks..

[sigtau305]

IFC has a National web site(The North American Interfraternity Conference) if you want to check it out and get some Ideas.

the URL is:


http://www.nicindy.org


Hope that helps you a little bit

[MysticCat]

Originally posted by sigtau305
IFC has a National web site(The North American Interfraternity Conference) if you want to check it out and get some Ideas.

Technically, the NIC and campus IFCs are different things, and so far as I know, there is usually no official relationship between them. A GLO chapter can belong to a campus IFC without the GLO's national org being a member of the NIC. (This is the case with many Phi Mu Alpha chapters.) Likewise, a local GLO can be in a campus IFC, which if I'm not mistaken is Rudey's situation.

[Rudey]

Yeah I'm more concerned about the local college's IFC. I believe that they do want to pay some fee (about $150) to get some sort of national recognition but I'm not sure what having your local be a part of the national IFC entails.

It seems to me like it would do very little. I'm pushing to have it remain very weak while still being a part of it. It's great to have a group that can communicate to the school, but really, I don't need another group telling us when to rush or how to act.

-Rudey

[madmax]

I think IFC sucks.

I am all for a student run IFC that has the fraternities doing the planning, organizing, and working together to benefit all groups involved, but IFC isn't about that anymore. It's a puppet organization of the university and the decisions are made by the university to benefit the university. IFC has become a machine of red tape and BS.

A few members of GC have pointed out positives of IFC such as a unified front, trading ideas on rush, mixers, philanthropy, but if fraternities dropped out of the school sponsored IFC and formed their own "fraternity council" the could still have the benefits that have been mentioned minus all the BS.


The bottom line is the results. How many school's have growing Greek systems or Greek Systems that are maintaining their current positions on campus? Not too many. Rush numbers are down, membership is down, and you have less money. In sorority language that means you are not meeting quota, you are not at total and you are going to have to COB or you national might threaten to pull your charter.

If you go to whatever school and look at the old composites vs. the new composites you will probably find that the average chapters size has has gone from 200-100(large campus), 100-50(medium size), or 50-25(small school) and that is happening while the school is growing. If a campus grows by a hypothetical 10%, Greek life should grow by 10% not decrease. This isn't efvery campus. I know there are some Greek systems that are doing great but they are the minority.

[DeltaSigStan]

Originally posted by madmax
I think IFC sucks.

I am all for a student run IFC that has the fraternities doing the planning, organizing, and working together to benefit all groups involved, but IFC isn't about that anymore. It's a puppet organization of the university and the decisions are made by the university to benefit the university. IFC has become a machine of red tape and BS.

A few members of GC have pointed out positives of IFC such as a unified front, trading ideas on rush, mixers, philanthropy, but if fraternities dropped out of the school sponsored IFC and formed their own "fraternity council" the could still have the benefits that have been mentioned minus all the BS.


The bottom line is the results. How many school's have growing Greek systems or Greek Systems that are maintaining their current positions on campus? Not too many. Rush numbers are down, membership is down, and you have less money. In sorority language that means you are not meeting quota, you are not at total and you are going to have to COB or you national might threaten to pull your charter.

If you go to whatever school and look at the old composites vs. the new composites you will probably find that the average chapters size has has gone from 200-100(large campus), 100-50(medium size), or 50-25(small school) and that is happening while the school is growing. If a campus grows by a hypothetical 10%, Greek life should grow by 10% not decrease. This isn't efvery campus. I know there are some Greek systems that are doing great but they are the minority.

Do you go to SDSU lol? Because that just describes everything our IFC is like.

[Rudey]

Dude, I got the pm. Thanks.

I tried to post this earlier but it didn't let me. I was wondering what you thought a student run fraternity council could offer. I go to a small school (4,000 people, 8% greek) where parties are open to the entire campus and generally are the same every year. Plus if venues like GC allow houses to see what's going on at other campuses and chances are one house, isn't going to use the idea of another house on the same campus the whole idea sharing becomes moot.

So what're the benefits that you see is what I'm asking in something like this?

-Rudey

Originally posted by madmax
I think IFC sucks.

I am all for a student run IFC that has the fraternities doing the planning, organizing, and working together to benefit all groups involved, but IFC isn't about that anymore. It's a puppet organization of the university and the decisions are made by the university to benefit the university. IFC has become a machine of red tape and BS.

A few members of GC have pointed out positives of IFC such as a unified front, trading ideas on rush, mixers, philanthropy, but if fraternities dropped out of the school sponsored IFC and formed their own "fraternity council" the could still have the benefits that have been mentioned minus all the BS.


The bottom line is the results. How many school's have growing Greek systems or Greek Systems that are maintaining their current positions on campus? Not too many. Rush numbers are down, membership is down, and you have less money. In sorority language that means you are not meeting quota, you are not at total and you are going to have to COB or you national might threaten to pull your charter.

If you go to whatever school and look at the old composites vs. the new composites you will probably find that the average chapters size has has gone from 200-100(large campus), 100-50(medium size), or 50-25(small school) and that is happening while the school is growing. If a campus grows by a hypothetical 10%, Greek life should grow by 10% not decrease. This isn't efvery campus. I know there are some Greek systems that are doing great but they are the minority.

[Kevin]

Originally posted by Rudey
Dude, I got the pm. Thanks.

I tried to post this earlier but it didn't let me. I was wondering what you thought a student run fraternity council could offer. I go to a small school (4,000 people, 8% greek) where parties are open to the entire campus and generally are the same every year. Plus if venues like GC allow houses to see what's going on at other campuses and chances are one house, isn't going to use the idea of another house on the same campus the whole idea sharing becomes moot.

So what're the benefits that you see is what I'm asking in something like this?

-Rudey

So ya'll actually don't do anything as just "IFC"? Where all houses participate in something together? If you don't share events like rush, homecoming, etc... You're right there is no point (except if your president looks good on your resume). Doing thing as a group though will get you better campus recognition and will help everyone to shoot for the same goals. If you only have 8% Greek then your IFC's goal should be to increase the number of students that go through Rush. It could work towards that goal by promoting Greek Life in general.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by ktsnake


So ya'll actually don't do anything as just "IFC"? Where all houses participate in something together? If you don't share events like rush, homecoming, etc... You're right there is no point (except if your president looks good on your resume). Doing thing as a group though will get you better campus recognition and will help everyone to shoot for the same goals. If you only have 8% Greek then your IFC's goal should be to increase the number of students that go through Rush. It could work towards that goal by promoting Greek Life in general.

Just last year one sorority sorta pushed a Greek Week where half the fraternities and the sororities did stuff. It was really weak.

Also, my school doesn't have homecoming. The only thing that comes close to that is Greek Sing which is at the end of the year and I think our school was the first to do it. Basically all alums come back to their houses and there are dinners/parties followed by a competition of singing/acts.

We don't want to do a common rush. That is just a way to push restrictions on us that we do not want. We do however want to promote Greek life and increase the greek population.

-Rudey
--Any ideas?

[KSig RC]

Originally posted by Rudey
We don't want to do a common rush. That is just a way to push restrictions on us that we do not want. We do however want to promote Greek life and increase the greek population.

Even without common rush, pooling money in an IFC-like environment can allow you to do bigger, better pre-rush events, and those are what really gets the word out.

This year, for instance, we put a couple grand into doing a big Greek BBQ - every chapter set up a booth, we cooked burgers and dogs, the girls sang and the guys played touch football. Fliers went up all over campus, with the BBQ info as well as rush schedules for each house. It went over very well, but probably wouldn't have happened without the IFC.

As far as other benefits, some right off the top of my head:

-Self-policing: if the school is comfortable with the IFC, you stand a good chance of gaining a (limited) ability to police yourselves. For instance: a chapter gets in some trouble, IFC sanctions (rush? social? fines?) could be levied rather than the school taking action.

-School relations: Putting a unified face on greek life, as well as putting good guys in positions to have interaction with school officials, can make the school feel better about the greek system, and create positive relationships between school officials and fraternity life.

-Inter-chapter relations: meeting guys from other houses, and working with them regularly, definitely helps with relations between different chapters. For instance, two LXAs on IFC have done great jobs this semester, and end up being really cool guys, and so we have a couple events in the works that Kappa Sigma and LXA are co-sponsering.


There can definitely be advantages to the IFC; just like anything else, however, if it's run poorly it is worthless. Also, if you have large disparities between chapter sizes then it can feel like the larger chapters are simply buying t-shirts for the smaller ones, as we pay a set amount per head in the chapter, and thus pay more than twice the amount of the smallest chapters. Overall though, when well-run, the IFC has created a lot of oppotunities for our greek system.

[Optimist Prime]

IFC is good when works right. Its better to have one than to look back and be like "damn we should have worked together." why are the pizza placxes clossed I'm hungry.