Sorority in crisis, please help!!

[33girl]

Originally Posted by alum

But CMU Housing has more than enough for undergrads with no social restrictions as the sorority houses had. Housing had a lottery:rising srs picked rooms the first night, jrs the 2nd, sophs the 3rd.

I liked being in a dorm but wouldn't have minded parts of Squirrel Hill. After all, a lot of our professors and students came from there. Oakland and Shadyside? Not so sure.

Ah OK. I'm not saying Squill itself is scary, rather the prospect of being from Pigsknuckle PA and trying to find an apartment is.

[adpiucf]

Is Pigsknuckle a real place? I know there are a few cities in PA with weird names... LOL.

[33girl]

No, Pigsknuckle is a reference from Animal House. We do however have Slippery Rock, Scalp Level and Blue Ball.

[adpiucf]

Ah thank you! LOL

And let's not forget Intercourse, PA.

I lived in Philly through elementary school. I remember the map of PA hanging in the classroom... I don't think all those town founders had intended for those names to sound as silly as we find them today.... but they do make for a good laugh.

[AlphaFrog]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Slippery Rock

SLIMEY PEBBLE!!!

*Ghost GLO*

Sorry, I'm done.

[Kevin]

Knowing nothing about how sororities work...

Is the OP a member of the chapter?

If so, why isn't the house corporation doing their job? This is not a problem that the active chapter should be facing alone. They're simply not equipped.

The house corp needs to come in and tell 'em how it's going to be... or they can sell the house. This has got to be a problem with some older chapters where the members of the house corp no longer have a personal financial stake in whether or not the house gets foreclosed on. If these folks don't want to do their jobs, perhaps it's time for your HQ to have a come to Jesus with your alumnae?

[angelic1]

We ran into a similiar situation when I was a sophmore in my chapter. And had several emergency meetings to resolve the issue. Our chapter house rooms are owned by the school, we rent the rest. Its odd - its "your house", but not really.

Here is what we did...
first we held a meeting to see if anyone would give up their current leases - girls would do whatever to help find another roommate to sublease in her place/chapter would pay the apartment fees for subleasing.

Any girl in the house could buy out an entire room to live by herself (two girls per room was standard)

Or we were forced to have nonmembers move in. Which would have been very bad - since we owned some much of the extras in the house and letters everywhere.

What ended up happening ... many girls gave up leases to move in... people helped find others to fill their leases. One girl bought out an entire room. Thats year problem solved.

To avoid the situation in the future first a mandatory requirement that you are required to live in the house one year was adopted. This was told to girls rushing up front, but at the same time we talked up living in the house big time so that girls would want to live their freshman year.

Second a lottery system was done up to make things fair. First everyone wishing to move in could sign a contract, second the lottery was done - if you had not lived in the house and were younger class you had a better chance to having your name drawn, etc. Very unlikely if you were older/lived in the house before that you were name would be chosen.

Yes, we had girls drop out instead of living in the house, but honestly if you didn't want to live in the house just because then why were you in the sorority in the first place.

For the rest of the time I was there things worked out - honestly I do not know how the housing situation has been since.

[Tom Earp]

Seems the O P is not interested any longer.

Maybe she doesn't care?

It is still of interest for all of us who own House Buildings.

[raincoat]

Originally Posted by Tom Earp

Seems the O P is not interested any longer.

Maybe she doesn't care?

It is still of interest for all of us who own House Buildings.

Uh, it's only been a few hours. She probably just has a life outside of GC.

[ForeverRoses]

Why is this problem just coming up now? I went to a medium-sized midwestern university and we had to have our housing contracts in place by the end of winter quarter.
We used to have a meeting of all actives and those that wanted to live in the house would sign up to do so. If there were empty spots, then those who had signed up to live in the house would leave the room, followed by those who had already lived in the house. Then everyone who had yet to live in got to sit in the room until the house was full.

The only options I see are 1) force girls to break thier lease 2) allow new members to move into the house right away. If the new members are in dorms, the university might allow sophmores and up to break thier contracts and move into the house.

Whatever you do, make sure that during recuitment, it looks like the house is full- so if you have 1 girl in a double- put a comforter or whatever on the spare bed so that it looks like 2 girls are there (especially during open house).

[SnowLady]

... we could hijack this thread and just talk about fun PA city names including:

Beaver Falls, Mars, Zelienople lol

But back to the subject:

You definately need bylaws that have live-in requirements. The colleges that I attended required the officers to live-in. You don't live in, you lose your office. And since it's a standard to fill the house, those that aren't living in (or have not filled in the live-in requirement) are put on probation.

We used a point system. Each member recieved a point for holding office, living in, their year in college - some other things that escape me now. So after the officers signed their lease if there were rooms left over, we went to the points. Lower the points, more than likely that you'll live in.

I feel your pain of filling the house. I've been on that fence as a collegian and as an alumnae advisor.