Eliminating Conflict w/ Another Org

[ilpwineg]

I'm not going to name the organization I belong to or the other organization because I'd rather not cause even more drama...


Greek life on my campus is extremely small, there's only 3 NPCs, a lot of local organizations, but almost all of them are culturally specific. We're a commuter campus, and most organizations are relatively small, local and national. My organization was founded about 4 years ago. Without going into too much detail our founders belonged to one of the NPCs, had their differences decided to split from that org and create a new local sorority.

It's nearly 4 years later, and not all of the drama and hard feelings have subsided, yet most of the current actives in both orgs were not present for the split and the things that happened thereafter. Two semesters ago we were approached by their social chair to have a mixer with them and a fraternity. The fraternity came, but the girls pulled out at the last minute. Since then there have been a few select incidents where their girls were rude and disrespectful to some of our girls.

The fraternities we associate with on campus know that there is conflict between our two organizations, and tend to joke about the rivalry, but they are very careful to not choose sides. There have been several occasions where I have heard of other organizations talking about the rivalry, and even making up stories about how much we "hate ABC". Things are just getting really uncomfortable with ABC. A close friend lives with some members of ABC and was even worried that I wouldn't come over because of the other girls.

I feel like with a new year upon us this is the perfect time to settle the rivalry/conflict once and for all. Yes, a little competition can be fun, but this has gotten too dirty and is hurting the reps of both of our organizations. I'm not saying we all need to be best buddies, but i believe that we should have a healthy relationship with ABC, one in which girls from both sides feel comfortable talking to, or even saying hi to each other. Potentially I hope that we may be able to have mixers with ABC as we have had with other sororities which were very successful in building greek bonds.

Have any of you ever gone through a similar problem? If so what did you do to reconcile...or does anyone have any suggestions on what we could possibly do?

Thanks so much for your input