What are the problems in your house?

Betarulz! · #1 03-28-2002, 07:57 PM

Okay there were some posts previously about chapters having difficulty in maintianing a 2.5 house GPA. Obviously this is something that Alpha Tau is not dealing with.

It made me start to wonder what everyone considers their chapters weaknesses. And in the spirit of mutual assistance, perhaps we could help each other with coming up with new ideas to solve these problems.

I'll start (duh!): I'd say that Alpha Tau's biggest problem, (and also our biggest strength) is that we very rarely seem able to come together as a house in a consensus...it's not an actual problem, but it is the root of all our other problems. We are a very diverse house in terms of opinions and agendas and therefore we have problems. I've never seen a unaimous vote, even on something like the changing of all references to a 2.5 GPA to be a 2.6 GPA. I'm not sure it is something that can ever be fixed. From this diversity comes the problems - most notably socially where the split lies along those who party and those who don't. The split causes problems when allocating funds to our social budget and also how our parties should be run.

yours in
__Kai__

Geoff

ZZ-kai- · #2 03-28-2002, 10:34 PM

It is difficult to say what the chapters biggest problems are internally, because I am an alumni. However, as you mentioned, I know that a problem with our chapter is our minimum GPA. We do not wait for grades before initiating....hence, we do not know if a 2.5 has/will be achieved. Secondly, it seems as though many of the younger guys seem to think the Beta house is just a safe-haven for them to drink. That is not only a problem with Beta Theta Pi, but with the police. Other than that, our chapter has a pretty strong brotherhood, and doesn't really have voting issues. Some votes are really close, but that just signifies their importance.

-kai-

Betarulz! · #3 03-29-2002, 12:43 AM

What kind of academic policies do you have in place at ZZ?

For Alpha Tau, Our pledge program requires 12 hours per week of documented study hours. We had study hours from 6-9 on tuesday and wednesday nights as a pledge class in the library supervised by our scholarship chairman. Another three were supposed to be with our pledge fathers, and the final three were individual (this was decided by my pledge class not the active chapter).

We also give out a lot of cash as incentive. For the first semester a pledge is in the house if they get a 4.0 GPA they recieve $500 cash and a 14k Gold Beta ring.
For each active member that gets a 4.0 they recieve $50, and further the scholarship chairman creates groups of three or four members (we call them Triads) and if everyone in the Triad makes grades above a 3.33 then each person gets $100. I think the triad program is good b/c it not only puts a goal out there for each individual to meet, it puts a little brotherly pressure for everyone to do well because everyone wants the cash at the end of the semester.

For anyone who doesn't achieve a 2.5 there are a wide variety of things that could be done. Kai commitee and the brother make the decision so that the plan is followed. Often it's supervised study hours (this past semester the few brothers under a 2.5 were in charge of taking our hold over pledges to study hours).

ZZ-kai- · #4 03-29-2002, 09:18 AM

Our chapter just installed a Kai Committee, and because it is fairly new, it hasn't dealt with grades yet. We do have standards set in place, along with sanctions, however for some reason, they were not being followed. To say the least, the Scholarship chair has been re-introduced to the Constitution and now knows what he can do to repremand brothers with poor GPAs.

We do have study partners (high GPA assisting low GPA), and if a semester GPA is 2.0 or lower, they have 6 mandatory study hours in the Library and then if they have a semester GPA of 2.5 or lower, they have 4 mandatory hours. We do not have any cash incentives.....but that would be nice. We have done the Rush Through Scholarship for about 4 years, but it has been done poorly. We are trying to re-install that so it works appropriately.

Keep in mind, UWO is NOT a scholars school, so our standards are very minimum (....shouldn't be an excuse though).

-kai-

chscrew144 · #5 04-20-2002, 11:00 PM

UWO as in Western?

ZZ-kai- · #6 04-21-2002, 05:12 PM

Nope, sorry about that. UWO as in Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

Quote:

Originally posted by chscrew144
UWO as in Western?

chscrew144 · #7 04-22-2002, 06:03 AM

oh, cuz i believe there's a chapter at western here (full name Univeristy of Western Ontario aka UWO or just simply Western)

Coramoor · #8 04-29-2002, 11:34 PM

I really can't find any major problems in my chapter....just a whole bunch of little ones that add up.