Losing a chapter?

[MelonJello]

We have been struggling for quite a few years now, and we haven't given up. Actually, our house will be open next year, albeit with 80% of the girls gone. The situation is long and complicated, but we all love our house and we want the best for it. We have tried everything possible, and it is not your judgement to say we have a horrible attitude.

Originally posted by dphies00
Hey there -
Your chapter is not going to close. It seems like you guys at Cornell have a horrible attitude. If you didn't get the amount of girls who are worth the effort, you need to examine why and try to fix that part of your chapter. Admiting defeat is sad and pathetic. From what I read on this thread, it sounds like you guys let the other GLOs on your campus decide that you guys were done and you didn't say otherwise.
And Nationals would not yank your chapter like that. (If they were that mean, they wouldn't be our sisters and we would have really lost our charter three or four years ago.) If you let them, they will help you so much that your MRA will become your new best friend. You just have a lot of work ahead of you. I'm VPR of my chapter and we're starting our second year of Warning II Recruitment status (plus a few other Warnings we need to overcome) and yet we're a better chapter now than ever before. If you guys want to save your chapter, then do it. But do not whine that you do not get NMs when you're letting other people admit your defeat.
Okay now I'm done being a b*tch and seriously, if you girls at Cornell want to feel better about the position you're in, e mail me at laurabonetti@hotmail.com and find out the saga of the Eta Chapter. Its a really overuse cliche, but the darkest hour really is before the dawn. Cheesiness done, I swear.

[shadokat]

dphies00--

I tend to agree with your statements regarding help from volunteers. Melon, with the help of your MRA and other national officers, your chapter will thrive again. While I am a COA for my region, the MRA is one of my best friends too because she helps out these women!!

Melon, I'd love to help you all, so please, if you have any questions at all, I encourage you to PM me. With a lot of alumnae support, your chapter will grow into a great one.

YITS,
Heather

[fire1977]

I'll have to agree with laura (dphies00) on that one (the not giving up thing) not only because she is my sister, but because she is an awesome VPR.....if you need some help brain storming, I will be glad to help you guys (and any other chapter for that matter) I will be taking over the MRA position next year for Western PA and I have been working closely with ETa this year...sometimes my ideas are a little crazy, but I hope dphies00 would agree that sometimes my crazy ideas can lead to something better! lol

Also if you need ideas don't be afraid to use your advisors, that's what they are there for. Particularly Linnette the Director of recruitment, I can guarantee that she would devote as much time as possible to any chapter that **asks, and isn't afraid to try**. I'm not implying that you aren't, however, I just graduated last year and I know how I felt about advisors in general.

I understand that you are frustrated, but I know that dphies00 is only trying to help....often the first hurdlle is attitude. Just use a positive swing to things.

So like I said, I am here to help!!
Good luck

[kddani]

the dphie chapter at my school has done a good job of surviving through troubled times (which arent' exactly unique on the campus, the panhellenic there needs major work).
But one point of advice that would help any chapter, and i feel would help this chapter, is simply to be nicer to people, especially fellow greeks! I have encountered several very nice members of the thischapter, but also have encountered very rude members. For example, the elevator in the building was not working on the first floor lobby, so we had to go up to a different floor to get it. Well, myself and another girl walked up to 3 (the dphie's floor) because we thought they were nicer and friendlier than the girls on 2. Well, we stood in the lobby and waited for the elevator, not touching anything, not looking down the halls or anything. And the sisters sitting in the informal end (it's hard to describe the layout of the sorority hall) said, loud enough for us to hear, "what are they doing here? who said they could come on our floor" and other rude things that we were obviously meant to overhear. This is among several other unfortunate encouters.
Having a good attitude and giving out positive PR helps a chapter immensely. My chapter had been in some problems a few semesters ago, and a PR overhaul totally turned things around.
I'd hate to see another sorority leave our campus. I would love to see all of our sororities succeed. But please remember, that kindness and friendlieness can do a world of good, and the opposite can do a world of negative PR.

[fire1977]

I'm sorry that you feel that way about the chapter. However perhaps I can shed some light on why they were being "rude".
My last year at pitt which was fall 200-spring 2001, I lived in the suite. We had the misfortune of having a sorority that decided to take things from our suite a prank. It happened repetitively including leaving marks on our new furniture and stealing things from our foyer. They even went so far as to break into our current presidents room and write things through her planner. The sad thing is that we didin't even provoke this sorority. It happened so frequently that we had to lock the doors to both ends of our suite. When we finally caught them, they blamed it on two of their new members even though we actually caught sisters. Rather than be vindictive and charge them with theft. We agreed to let them pay for the stolen items. We kept it pretty quite, rather than announce it to the entire greek community. Therefore, it is not surprising that they are a little hostile towards random people on their floor. Put yourself into this situation, and maybe you would fell the same way.

Secondly it is not very kosher to list a specific chapters missgivings on this site and I'd really appreciate it if you removed your specific mention of the chapter, it's not really in the panhellinc spirit.

Again I am sorry that you felt that way and hope this sheds a little more light on it.

[kddani]

I would like to apologize for upsetting anyone with my post. I did take off the specific chapter name, but i'm not going to rescind my post. What i said was true of what happened to me, I didn't fabricate anything or intentially try to deface the sisters of dphie. And i'm taking a lot of time to write this response, in hoping that i can address everything that i mean to say.
I'm also really sorry that you are having such horrible troubles with other houses. We thankfully haven't had any real problems with other houses.
However, two wrongs do not make a right, nor is it "in the panhellenic spirit". Treating someone badly or rudely just because someone has treated you badly is not the right way to handle things. Especially when the people had nothing to do with what happened to your house. I remember my mother used to say to me when i was younger and happened to have a fight with a friend, she would say "kill them with kindness". Instead of making rude comments, if they were genuinely concerned as to why we were on the floor, someone could have said "can we help you?" or something of the sort. We would have gladly explained that we choose to go to your floor b/c we thought your house was a lot friendlier and nicer than the floor below you. But unfortunately, we were proved wrong.
Also, shouldn't you treat others as you want to be treated? By being rude and nasty to people, aren't you acting no better than those who were hurtful to you? That's not helping you get along with other houses at all. I know that our house isn't a house that you were having problems with. And i believe that both me and the other girl i was with were wearing letters that day.
Intersorority-relations may be more important that you realize. If a member of another house knows someone that's thinking about rushing, if your house has treated them badly, they're going to make sure that that comes across to the person thinking about rushing. This influence happens more than you may think, especially on our campus. People talk, people find out about the reputations different houses have.
For those of you who are familiar with my sorority's chapter at this school, you know how much we have gone through in the past 2 years. We have improved incredibly, and most of it can be contributed to postive PR. And the purpose of my first post was to say that you need to work on PR more. Like the commericial says, "image is everything". Not exactly physical appearance, but how you come across to people. And that is something that my house had worked incredibly hard on, and succeeded. And i know that your chapter could do it as well. I'm now an alumna and i've been through a lot the past few years. If you ever wanted advice or ideas on how we did it, i would love to help you.
Once again, i apologize if i offended you. But i love being Greek with all my heart, and really wish for the system to survive at our school. We lost Kappa Alpha Theta the year i pledged, and it has been rumored that we can lose more. And i apologize if your nationls does read this board and it gets you into some sort of "trouble". But i hope that your nationals office doesn't base it's news on chapters on internet message boards, i'm sure they would take it with a grain of salt. I just really hope that the chapter can work on this.

[fire1977]

Okay I have waited a few days to respond to this and while I realy don't want to, I am going to.
First of all by panhellenic spirit I mean helping out other sororities by not speaking about them negatively. It does not help out the other sororities on your campus by posting these kinds of things on their specific site where a PNM could see this. While I gave reasons for why the chapter may have responded that way I understand why they may, and I thought perhaps you would too. I never said that it was appropriate, I just gave a reason as to why they reacted that way. I also did asked you to remove specific references to the chapter and I wanted to thank you for doing so. I didn't ask you to remove your post, you are perfectly entitled to your opinion and of course your experiences both positive and negative. It would have been a better help if rather than post this experience for the world to see you could have done it privately to the active member on this board stating your concern for what kind of image this would bring to the chapter. It doesn't help to speak negatively about another sorority as you know, this one, or any of the others for that matter. By doing this you also reflect negatively on your house as well.
As far as "image is everything", I'll have to disagree. These girls live by our motto, esse quam videri, to be rather than to seem to be. They are real, they are not mean girls by any way. They are the embodiment of our letters and of our founding principles. You state that it is rumored that you can lose more chapters. This chapter is not in danger of losing it's charter. The sororities there go through different phases, it's the chapters that can hold together through this and make it through that are the true sisters.
The last thing I would like to address is the whole "nationals" thing. In all honesty I believe that our headquarters has other things to do than be concerned about this. The only person who should be concerned is me, I work with their PR chair and I am not worried, because I know that they won't do it again. Their pr plan and recruitment plan are already in place and they are already on their way back to prominence on campus.

Thanks for offering to help though!! We appreciate it!!! I did a search of your posts and I notice that you are trying to start an alum association. We are too so if you need any help pm me!!!

Have a great summer!!!