Universities Removing Recognition

[Kevin]

Yeah.. well when your national pulls your charter, you probably wouldn't even have the ability to argue as it'd have to be the HQ doing the arguing since you couldn't exist anyhow without their recognition.

It doesn't sound too smart on your part to not be in constant communication with your HQ through this process.

[Tennessee]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Yeah.. well when your national pulls your charter, you probably wouldn't even have the ability to argue as it'd have to be the HQ doing the arguing since you couldn't exist anyhow without their recognition.

It doesn't sound too smart on your part to not be in constant communication with your HQ through this process.

Agreed.. It wouldn't be too smart on the chapters part. There has been much advice from me as well as other alums to fly to MhQ and have a face to face. However I dont believe that the chapter has followed through with this..

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by Tennessee

Agreed.. It wouldn't be too smart on the chapters part. There has been much advice from me as well as other alums to fly to MhQ and have a face to face. However I dont believe that the chapter has followed through with this..

It sounds like you don't even have a major officer position in the chapter. You either first need to obtain that or you at least need to convince one of those officers to do what you want to do.

Without one of them, probably whoever is in charge, really, you have no business speaking on behalf of your chapter, to your HQ or even really to alums. Y'all are best served to have one voice.

If your officers are dragging their feet in a situation where the charter might get revoked, then y'all need to remove them from office and find someone who will be effective.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Kevin

It sounds like you don't even have a major officer position in the chapter. You either first need to obtain that or you at least need to convince one of those officers to do what you want to do.

Without one of them, probably whoever is in charge, really, you have no business speaking on behalf of your chapter, to your HQ or even really to alums.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I took Tennessee's comment about "advice from me as well as other alums" to mean he is an alum, not an active.

[Tennessee]

Yes I am a concerned alum... I realize there is only so much that I can do besides give advice.

However, I am more interested with University's "power" to be able to relinquish a chapter's recognition based on events that may have happened before these actives where even in college.

On top of that..
I feel as though the University has kept unproven/questionable events as reports for long periods of time and used every single one whether the incidents really involved a member of the fraternity or not. No proof.. All heresay..

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by Tennessee

Yes I am a concerned alum... I realize there is only so much that I can do besides give advice.

However, I am more interested with University's "power" to be able to relinquish a chapter's recognition based on events that may have happened before these actives where even in college.

On top of that..
I feel as though the University has kept unproven/questionable events as reports for long periods of time and used every single one whether the incidents really involved a member of the fraternity or not. No proof.. All heresay..

Most of what administrators rely on to close chapters is unprovable hearsay. If they were held to the standards of the rules of evidence, they wouldn't be able to push through their anti-greek agendas.. and that would be inconvenient. There's nothing that requires them to apply any standard of evidence though. I suppose that a chapter might be owed due process, but all that is required there is notice and an opportunity to be heard. Beyond that, there's no requirement of fairness unless there's something I don't know about which is entirely possible.

If you're going to the university and ask them to overturn their own ruling, I guess you could do that. Such a thing happened at my alma mater when an organization was booted for low grades, etc., their HQ didn't pull their charter, they got their stuff together and are doing alright now. The university rerecognized them. All is well now.

At any rate, I'm sure that differs from school to school. You'd probably still need the cooperation of your HQ and chapter to even have this conversation with the school.

If you think about it though, most closed/unrecognized chapters are in a fairly similar position. When a school closes a chapter, they generally are saying that they think there's something irreversibly wrong with the culture of that chapter. If your chapter has a hazing problem or anything like that, the school is going to be unlikely to rerecognize you.

What might help is for the chapter to drop whatever traditional pledging process they had before and fully adopt whatever your HQ has as far as national programming.

You should definitely get in contact with your national/the chapter about becoming an advisor if you're really interested in this.

[Tennessee]

I agree with a lot that you have said.. It is more difficult to change the culture of an organization than to just start over.. I admit that I may not have been given all of the information from the chapter and the Greek Life Office. So a decision of the MhQ not recognizing them may in fact be warrented. We shall see what decision they will make.

As an example though, there was an organization at my college that got in trouble for hazing (having hood on a kid outside the house) and they lost recognition through the school for a year. Their MhQ decided to still recognize them, they rushed guys (although not through the Council Rush Rules/Regulations) they had events (although no "official" ones with sororities). It was really quite interesting to see a fraternity's ability to be somewhat effective without recognition from the school. They ended up coming back and getting recognition from the school a year later and I believe they haven't looked back since.