How to make our local sorority legitimate?

[mayor13]

I know this thread is kind of old but I do want to know how to make our local sorority "legitimate", not for the reasons of issues with other sororities though.

Our schools & most schools in the NYC area do not recognize Greek life, at all-national or not. We can have "on campus clubs" that do not have any of the Greek letters in them and the clubs have to be open to all students. (Usually these are used for fund raising and to be able to have a table during orientation)

Recently, we had 3 girls decide to drop with no warning. They did not show up for a ceremony and from that point on stopped all communication. 2 of the girls that dropped were our VP/Pledge Mother & our ritualist. They had all of our ceremony stuff in their possession as well as our scrapbook (with some of the girls personal photos(baby/family photos)) and our sorority position books.

We have done everything we can to try to get this stuff back with no results. One of the sisters has a father involved with the police who said that because we are not "legitimate" we cannot do anything.

At this point it seems there is nothing we can do, but I want to stop this from even being an issue in the future.

I do not know what else we can do to become "legitimate" short of trying to become apart of a National sorority, which we do not want. We have by-laws, have been published in the papers for our charity work and have a bank account in the sororities name.

Does anyone know what other routes we can take so we aren't faced with this situation ever again?

[knight_shadow]

Originally Posted by mayor13

I know this thread is kind of old but I do want to know how to make our local sorority "legitimate", not for the reasons of issues with other sororities though.

Our schools & most schools in the NYC area do not recognize Greek life, at all-national or not. We can have "on campus clubs" that do not have any of the Greek letters in them and the clubs have to be open to all students. (Usually these are used for fund raising and to be able to have a table during orientation)

Recently, we had 3 girls decide to drop with no warning. They did not show up for a ceremony and from that point on stopped all communication. 2 of the girls that dropped were our VP/Pledge Mother & our ritualist. They had all of our ceremony stuff in their possession as well as our scrapbook (with some of the girls personal photos(baby/family photos)) and our sorority position books.

We have done everything we can to try to get this stuff back with no results. One of the sisters has a father involved with the police who said that because we are not "legitimate" we cannot do anything.

At this point it seems there is nothing we can do, but I want to stop this from even being an issue in the future.

I do not know what else we can do to become "legitimate" short of trying to become apart of a National sorority, which we do not want. We have by-laws, have been published in the papers for our charity work and have a bank account in the sororities name.

Does anyone know what other routes we can take so we aren't faced with this situation ever again?

There's no "official" entity that you have to go through to be considered "legitimate" when it comes to Greek life. If your local is operating the way your founders envisioned, you're legit.

And (someone correct me if I'm wrong) unless you have something signed by sisters stating that all XYZ property belongs to XYZ, I'm not sure how you'd get your stuff back. Maybe from now on, keep it in a centralized location so that individual sisters won't have your information at home (maybe a safe deposit box?).

[mayor13]

Originally Posted by knight_shadow

There's no "official" entity that you have to go through to be considered "legitimate" when it comes to Greek life. If your local is operating the way your founders envisioned, you're legit.

And (someone correct me if I'm wrong) unless you have something signed by sisters stating that all XYZ property belongs to XYZ, I'm not sure how you'd get your stuff back. Maybe from now on, keep it in a centralized location so that individual sisters won't have your information at home (maybe a safe deposit box?).

I am actually one of the founders, and it is operating the way we first planned. But according to legal standpoints, we are not a "legitimate organization" to be able to file a complaint.

Thats where I was looking for clarification. What would we need to do to be considered a legal legitimate organization?

I have to double check if the bylaws that are signed by each girl have anything in there about our stuff, but the safe deposit box--or something like that, is a good idea. Im not sure we could actually use that as we would need these things on a weekly to bi weekly basis, but maybe we could keep all hard copies there. Ill have to talk it over with the other active founder. Thanks for the advice.