Adjusting Alumnae Relationships

[Kevin]

I'm part of our alumni advisory leadership group (I'm nominally in charge). One thing which I think is important for alumni is to ensure that interaction with collegiate members is both positive and productive. It's all about finding the right people to advise in the right things.

One thing we've been successful with is not having a rigid structure. It allows us to let alums quietly stand down without being fired from a position when other commitments become more important. It also allows you to make sure the alumni advisory group is properly structured for the chapter it advises. And chapters' needs change every year.

Now alumnae coming back to haze members is serious and should be dealt with first by whoever is in charge of your alumnae group and should she fail, move up the chain of command. That is completely unacceptable and if that happened in my organization, i.e., alumni coming back to haze members being known about and not dealt with by leadership, we could be looking at sanctions from HQ.

[ThetaPrincess24]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Now alumnae coming back to haze members is serious and should be dealt with first by whoever is in charge of your alumnae group and should she fail, move up the chain of command. That is completely unacceptable and if that happened in my organization, i.e., alumni coming back to haze members being known about and not dealt with by leadership, we could be looking at sanctions from HQ.

Yes! Yes! When I was board chair for my chapter, we had a few young alumnae/recent graduates that I had to flat out have a frank discussion with regarding the encouragement of undermining advisors, chapter leadership, and interference in the elections process. I had a few frank discussions with alumnae, older and in some cases much older than myself who had trouble grasping the concept that policy changes over time based on a variety of issues, but always with a purpose. This means what was policy or permitted in their day does not fly today and to please respect that--I even gave them copies of updated policy. Further I informed them if they could not respect current policy and stop undermining and badmouthing it to members and chapter leadership, to please stop coming around. I took some initial flack for it, but it worked. I might also state that I had backing and support from chapter leadership, my entire advisory board and district team as well, which helped.

This kind of issue was a growing cancer in my chapter for quite a while. Once this stopped, chapter leadership gained more confidence and the chapter was able to move away from that and operate at a more efficient level without the added drama. They still struggle with some alumnae support but that has more to do with not planning events at an optimal time (9pm on a Sunday night for example), lack of notice, and alumnae that fail to keep their contact information up to date.