socials on decline?

[FuzzieAlum]

Huh. I am an alum but still young enough that I keep up with what's going on at my campus, and the number of mixers doesn't seem to have dropped at all. To be honest, though, the girls find ways around it. Everyone goes home, changes, and then comes back to the boys' house and then they just happen to drink!

There are several dry fraternitiy houses on campus and they still have parties and mixers - I don't think the loss of alcohol has affected their numbers or popularity.

It does seem a little hypocritical of us to complain that we're no longer allowed to have alcohol at the fraternity houses anymore, though, whether it's because our own rules forbid it or because the fraternity's or university's rules do. After all, we've been "using" the fraternities for years - our houses have been dry forever. Turnabout is fair play, I guess.

[SigEp42]

Our socials started going down to the point we didn’t have any for a semester or two but recently everyone found a loop hole that says mixers only last 2 hours after that it’s considered friends hanging out and you can do what you want. Our seniors swear it’s not the same as when they pledged but its better than nothing.
Some of the things we do now are
Fun and games mixer – twister, or any other game
Italian wedding- the dry part is a dinner then you get your partner
I hope this helps

[KSig RC]

Sure, we can't distinctly prove causation, but . . .

There's a large group of ladies here saying that new policies have limited the social aspect of their house, to the point of making the experience markedly different from previous.

No one will explicitly say it, but it seems like a lot of the comments point toward "Now, it is less fun."

Remembering that nearly every one of our orgs here (assuming NPC and NIC at the center of this particular organization) were founded as social organizations . . . there seems to be at least some sort of flaw in logic here.

Have decisions made to lower insurance costs and liability risks left organizations (esp sororities) with few options to live up to this founding purpose as well as previous?

To me, it seems like the moves made to 'go dry' were very sharp, almost overbearingly so, and that very little resembling a successful attempt has been made to help the houses (on a chapter-to-chapter basis) recover the social aspect of greek life.

To me, this is a potentially great loss - losing the "Good Ol' Days" are one thing, but for these girls the good old days shouldn't be 3 years ago.

[OnePlus69Is70]

I'll chime in. If you go by the number of registered parties, and events that are strictly Greek, then there's no social life here. But parties are rarely registered. Our typical weekend is four or five of the fraternities holding huge 200-300 person bashes, $5 for GDI's, girls and Greeks get in free. The parties invariably get broken up by the town police (the university has no jurisdiction).

This year we had a new NPC advisor who tried to get the sororities to go for dry mixers and such (the advisor just graduated from OU, where she claims such things go on). She also tried to get the women to keep out of the fraternity houses. It was somewhat less than successful, although her influence did produce the first acceptable Greek Week in years.

For my house, we're dry, so we don't hold the huge parties, and we're small, so the sororities look down their pretty noses at us. Though I can't blame them- an exchange between a 20-man fraternity and a 70-woman sorority would be a bit lopsided. So we don't have any traditional socials. We have some random BBQ's and holiday parties, but that's it. At least on the dry side, next year we at least get some company- Theta Chi's new colony will be dry.

[Kamikazee]

Originally posted by kristiAZD
Mixers were so much fun when I pledged. Now we never have them. To tell you the truth, I feel as if my chapter is run more like a business and all we ever do is philanthropy work. This is fine, but I would like to have some fun too and we just aren't allowed to anymore. And fun doesn't even need to include alcohol but it seems that these days the word fun means alcohol to headquarters. There are rules in place that are justified, and I understand them, but there is no room for freedom to have fun anymore and that is what I am really starting to hate about being in a greek organization.

I totally agree. When I was a pledge it was a blast. Now that I am a member, my sorority life doesn't extend beyond business meetings. There are some cool parties, but there few and far in between. If greek life doesn't start to show some more spunk... I don't know how I can tell people at recruitment about all the "fun" we have. Philanthropy aside (a worthy and noble cause), greek life is about having fun and that doesn't neccessary mean consuming large amounts of alcohol. I would rather go to a dry party than no party at all.