Rechartering Efforts at Saint Augustine's

[gamma_girl52]

Originally Posted by MiQuelW

Hello all,

I have a question/problem that is relatively different from some of the issues that I've seen posted here. My group and I have no problems doing service projects on and off campus discreetly (which helps in terms of "coming out" presentations), and the desire to recharter APO is well known around the yard. The problem, however, is that reactivating chapters have to return as co-ed(and we're trying to), but we have Gamma Sigma Sigma on the yard and many female prospectives tend to gravitate towards them. And I don't mean to sound negative, because I have plenty of 25/52 love, but it's hard for me to recruit females; Especially at a school like Saint Augustine's where Greek Membership in total is low. Last year we crossed 2 ZPB, 5 PBS, 5 KAY, and 9 DST... and that was one of the largest intake seasons for a few semesters. So I'm doing great to have found 11 men who are interested (and are actually working hard!) for Alpha Phi Omega, but the females here have the "I don't want to join a fraternity" mentality... which is funny, because Gamma Sig made me interested in Service Orgs, but I had the "I don't want to join a sorority" mentality.

I've noticed that particularly at HBCU's. That's just the mentality...if it's a frat then men are in it and not a mix of men or women. Not all HBCU's are like this because there are co-ed chapters of APO on HBCU campuses but I was wondering when this type of scenario would come out.

I'm curious as to what the National Fraternity would do in a case like this (and if I'm out of my lane for asking, sorry). It looks like these guys are well on their way, just with no women right now. Would their request for PG status be turned down?

[Quala67]

I can't say what the current M&E Director would do, but I know in the past that there was at least one group that applied to charter, and was told that unless they had representation from the other gender, the application would be put on hold. Now, this group had the opposite problem - they were predominantly female, and hustled to recruit at least 3 guys to charter.

[naraht]

Huh. I don't know if this will affect when you can become a Petitioning Group, but I do know by the time you get to that point, the staff definitely starts looking at whether the group reflects the student body, which you are up front about the fact that your group doesn't. (It does sound like you are definitely working to change that though) The school as best as I can tell online is about 50-50 by gender. From Jamie's comment, that other group was able to get to PG status all female though.

There are people that I know who have been both Alpha Phi Omega brothers and Gamma Sigma Sigma sisters, but it is rare and in the cases I know of, they joined one and then transfered schools and joined the other at the new school.

As for what to do to represent (if that is the word that you want) on campus as part of becoming a Petitioning Group, let me give that some thought. Remember, you are probably going to have more Alpha Phi Omega brothers on campus at St. Augustine for your PG ceremony than you will at any other time prior to chartering...