Conclaves - Back to the Future

[Shane Foley]

Originally Posted by Bilski

Personally, I'd love to see more regional conclaves. Simply put, few brothers can afford to fly out to Texas in the middle of the first month of the spring semester. The same goes for most GA/LS's which span more days than many can take off from their summer jobs. I'm not sure how these conferences were losing money, but they sound like a great investment to me.

Regional conferences seem to be the best solution to dispersing new programs as well. The TBI could be much more effectively spread if I could send 8 or more brothers to a regional conference instead of trying to get the 1 or 2 that attend GA to tell us all about it. I believe there was a push to have regional alumni trained in the program for a similar purpose and it seems to me like they'd have that much less work to do if they didn't have to travel to all the chapters!

Lastly, one of the biggest challenges facing my zeta is the lack of officer training. Since most GA/LS's focus on recruitment, IMPACT leadership, and this new TBI there's no use for me to send an Theta, Iota, Gamma, Epsilon, or Tau. As a chapter that is still recovering from a drastic membership crisis, the continuity of officer training has been interrupted, only to be replaced with the shell of an officer manual those old PDFs on fraternitymanuals.com can offer. I look forward to the new manuals IHQ is writing, but I wish there was something more hands-on available in the interim and for the future.

The reason the RLC were costly--They were in expensive hotels. While HQ tried to reduce the costs, expensive rooms and meals add up. Having more local conferences have more flexibility as people can priceline rooms and/or stack a lot of people in a room. College students (especially those from the same chapter) don't need fancy accomodations.

Another option that was tried 5 years ago were one-day gatherings organized by the ELCs at a chapter. It was designed for fewer chapters and a more relaxed format and FREE. There were advantages and disadvantages to those gatherings. The purpose was to provide more opportunities for contacts with brothers from other chapters.

Shane