In what circumstances would you support reorganization or closing?

[AGDee]

Originally Posted by FSUZeta

but was agd on campus continously or did they take some time off and then came back on?

We were on campus last semester. The existing collegians were given alumna status. There's a thread about it in the Recruitment forum. Two of our international officers went there in person and talked with the women who were being given alumna status. The women were strongly encouraged to immediatley be active alumnae and were given all of the options available to them to do that, including a Junior Circle, which is what we call our alumnae groups for women under 35. They were wonderful women who had been working very hard and they received recognition for that hard work. They were tired and hadn't had a great collegiate experience since they were struggling with numbers for a while.

This is the second Big 10 school where we've done this in the last 6 years. We also did it at the University of Michigan. That chapter is doing alright, but it has been a slower progression. They had their best recruitment year this year and are still building up numbers, but have shown a huge improvement. Different campuses yield different results.

At Michigan State, the Fraternity chose to not immediately recolonize for various reasons. We are renting that house out to either AOPi or ADPi (sorry, I can't remember which at the moment). We are behind Alpha Xi Delta for recolonization and recruitment is down all over the state due to our extremely poor economic situation, so it's difficult to estimate when that recolonization will happen. We are all pulling for it though. It's one of our earlier chapters.

The decision is based on so many factors that it's really hard to make a blanket rule. Campus climate, finances (especially when there is a house to consider), the general state of other NPCs on campus (you can note that several closed at Michigan State within a couple years of each other so that could be a factor), etc. I think a lot of it ends up being HOW it's done, not whether it is done. It is ALWAYS a heart wrenching decision as Heather pointed out earlier.

On the positive side, one of the chapters I oversee in PA (Lafayette) went from 12 to 43 members this year and we are so excited for them. They happened to find a large group of friends who were interested in joining a sorority together and all of them clicked. Since the initial group, those women have brought in more of their friends. On a campus where Total is 75, they will have a better chance to really compete in Formal Recruitment next fall with around 35 members returning to campus. With 12, it's simply overwhelming. We're very excited for them, but they worked hard and kept an open mind too. It has also been hard work for them to integrate so many newer members into the chapter but they are doing a great job.

[susan314]

Originally Posted by AGDee

We were on campus last semester. The existing collegians were given alumna status. There's a thread about it in the Recruitment forum. Two of our international officers went there in person and talked with the women who were being given alumna status. The women were strongly encouraged to immediatley be active alumnae and were given all of the options available to them to do that, including a Junior Circle, which is what we call our alumnae groups for women under 35. They were wonderful women who had been working very hard and they received recognition for that hard work. They were tired and hadn't had a great collegiate experience since they were struggling with numbers for a while.

This is the second Big 10 school where we've done this in the last 6 years. We also did it at the University of Michigan. That chapter is doing alright, but it has been a slower progression. They had their best recruitment year this year and are still building up numbers, but have shown a huge improvement. Different campuses yield different results.

At Michigan State, the Fraternity chose to not immediately recolonize for various reasons. We are renting that house out to either AOPi or ADPi(sorry, I can't remember which at the moment). We are behind Alpha Xi Delta for recolonization and recruitment is down all over the state due to our extremely poor economic situation, so it's difficult to estimate when that recolonization will happen. We are all pulling for it though. It's one of our earlier chapters.

The decision is based on so many factors that it's really hard to make a blanket rule. Campus climate, finances (especially when there is a house to consider), the general state of other NPCs on campus (you can note that several closed at Michigan State within a couple years of each other so that could be a factor), etc. I think a lot of it ends up being HOW it's done, not whether it is done. It is ALWAYS a heart wrenching decision as Heather pointed out earlier.

AOPi are the ones renting "my house" (sorry, I lived there for several years, so I'll always think of it as "my house" ) - ADPi does not have a chapter at Michigan State.

AGDee has summed it up pretty well. The reorg at University of Michigan and Ohio State both seem to be going very well. (And, in both cases, involved making current undergraduate students alumnae.) However, I agree that the difference with the situation vs. the blow up surrounding the DePauw issue was the way IHQ handled things. Having been involved with Michigan State's chapter almost up to the closing, I think that the women of the chapter would have been receptive to an immediate reorganization/recolonization. (For the reasons AGDee mentioned - having been stressed out from trying to keep a small chapter afloat...alumnae status may have been a welcome break vs. the heavy commitment involved with a recolonization.)

But, I don't think the campus climate would have been as receptive to an immediate recolonization as perhaps OSU and U of M were. As AGDee mentioned, there were other chapters closing around the same time as ours did. Personally, I think that chapter total should have been lowered on campus years before it got to the point where we closed. We lost one chapter (Tri Delts) while I was an undergraduate in the 90s. Of the 16 remaining chapters after Tri Delts left campus, at least 6 were seriously under chapter total. (Chapter total was 110, I believe, at at least 6 chapters were around 60 members or fewer. And there was a stretch of time where only 3 of the 16 sororities had 100 members or more.) 3 chapters - AGD, Alpha Xi Delta, and Phi Mu - closed within a few years of each other shortly after 2000. That left a few other struggling chapters to be the "low men on the numbers totem pole." If chapter total had been lowered in the mid to late 90s, I firmly believe that some (if not all) of the chapters that closed could have been saved. (In retrospect, I wish I would have pushed a little harder to consider the chapter total issue - I served for a year on the Panhellenic Exec Board during a time when it could have possibly turned things around. However, most of the rest of the exec board and the chapter delegates were not receptive to the idea - I had the impression that many of them felt that their Nationals would not "let" them vote to lower total...for reasons I didn't completely know and/or understand.)

[UGAalum94]

I'm for circling the wagons, but I want to make sure that the danger is outside the circle when we do. Unless there are some clear expectations about how a GLO should do the re-organizations the right way and an understanding that they are supposed to rarely be done at all, I think we will all end up looking (and being) worse if it happens more frequently.

I agree though with the sense that the DePauw situation could have blown up in the press with any re-organization. Theirs was kind of a perfect storm of what can go wrong, but most situations would not have played much better in the press.

[LPIDelta]

I am pretty sure every NPC group is paying attention to the situation at De Pauw and re-evaluating how they handle these situations and taking stock. We can't make a clear cut way to do this because every situation is different.

[AGDee]

I also want to add.. it's easy to criticize the women at the helm of an organization, but we need to remember, these women LOVE these organizations and volunteer unbelievable amounts of time to the organizations. When they make decisions, they make the best decision they can at the time with the information that they have and their number one priority is the well being of the organization as a whole. They are putting their hearts and souls into our organizations, even if they don't always handle something the best way.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by Heather17

We can't make a clear cut way to do this because every situation is different.

I don't know that we could have a single defined way, but I think we could define a few acceptable options.

Although every situation has its differences, I think you could categorize them and know what your options were.

[UGAalum94]

Why wouldn't expansion rush work in any situation where re-organization or closing/quickly re-opening would work?

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

Why wouldn't expansion rush work in any situation where re-organization or closing/quickly re-opening would work?

I think sometimes the current chapter members really aren't motivated to work as hard as an expansion rush would require. Not that they don't care, but it is a lot of time and effort and if you've been COBing for the past 4 years straight you might not have the energy anymore. It probably also depends on how set in their ways the Greek culture is. Is it the members or the chapter itself? How will the other sororities react to the recolonized chapter vs. the current members working harder?

[LPIDelta]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

I don't know that we could have a single defined way, but I think we could define a few acceptable options.

Although every situation has its differences, I think you could categorize them and know what your options were.

Where are these options to be kept? Who is going to grade the groups on how they handle these things? Who will decide what is acceptable? What would work for one group, will not work for others. Human and financial resources are different--priorities and values are different among orgs. I appreciate where you're coming from, but its not anyone's place to tell another org how to do things.

[UGAalum94]

Weird: I really thought I had responded, but the post didn't appear.

I think that people in the general public, press, university administration will all grade and judge and that all groups would be better off if they agreed to follow generally agreed upon protocols. I think they could be enforceable however all other NPC guidelines are or aren't.

Even though every situation is different, we do have rules and guidelines for rush, and we end up having similar policies in a lot of other areas too.

The problem with just letting each doing it's own thing is that big blow-ups like the DePauw situation reflect on everyone. Since we all know that our groups have also reorganized chapters or closed and immediate re-opened them, it's not as if we can honestly say, "well, we would never do that." And I think that whatever autonomy each group would give up would be more than rewarded by the peace of mind (and better PR and image) that would come with having a well defined process.