Large vs Small chapters

[33girl]

Originally Posted by BAckbOwlsgIrl

Lane Swerve...

So if you have NM classes of 100+ and chapter size is 310ish. Wouldn't chapter size be 400ish? What happened to the 100 members that left? That is a drop out rate of 25%. What is being done to retain members? Sure we can say that part is finances, some don't like sorority life. But 100 members is HUGE! Then again, 25% is huge. I wish that this board would address membership retention more. I realize that it walks the line on membership selection, internal chapter operations, etc.

End of Lane Swerve...

That is exactly the part I don't get. I don't think it's treading the MS line. I know there have been some people on here who say that at their school, Greek is something you are gung ho on as a sophomore, junior year it's ok, and if you're a senior and still involved it's uncool.

And this isn't even telling the whole story - I'm sure there are girls who just pay their dues and fines and only show up to the bare minimum to stay an active and not get called in front of standards because they want to go to mixers and meet men, or because being able to say "I'm an XYZ alum" is advantageous socially after graduation. It's doubtful they really understand what sisterhood is, other than a means to a social end.

I'd like it to be that chapters aren't lauded/penalized for making/not making quota, but rather for their retention rate. I have no doubt that some of the chapters that are getting bitched at after every recruitment would all of a sudden be the fair-haired girls, and vice versa.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by DGTess

Someone who chooses SEC is probably in a very different place socially than someone who chooses a small private college, and looking for very different experiences (my chapter never once went to a football game). The sororities reflect that.

Your chapter was aware that football games existed, though. LOL. (I'm exaggerating, all the Greeks had members in band/front/majorettes, the football team and cheerleaders...although block seating would have resulted in many many empty blocks.)

[DGTess]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Your chapter was aware that football games existed, though. LOL. (I'm exaggerating, all the Greeks had members in band/front/majorettes, the football team and cheerleaders...although block seating would have resulted in many many empty blocks.)

While I was there, I don't *think* any of my sisters ever attended one; we had no band members, no cheerleaders, and no one affiliated with the athletic department. One sister was a buggy driver, but buggy is VERY specific to CMU. Football was simply not something much of the campus paid attention to. One of the school's chapters had a number of sisters who dated guys from one fraternity -- the one with the most football players, and they attended.

I simply use football to illustrate the relative priorities of the different campuses, and that when your entire chapter is 20-40 women, the chapters really can have entirely different personalities, where women really may find they don't fit in a few of them. Now that the chapter sizes at that school are over 100, perhaps the distinction isn't as pronounced.

[DubaiSis]

In those huge chapters, they may need to find a way to sort of transition them to half-alumnae status to keep them involved without asking more of them than they're willing to do. For instance, if they lived in, held an office, participated in X number of events over the last 2 years, always paid their bills on time, was never on academic probation (there are a litany of options here singly or in combination), then they only have to attend chapter once a month as a senior, or they don't have to attend any social functions, or they aren't obliged to do service hours, or whatever would keep them in the fold without overwhelming their senior year. Those of us who were collegiate members for 4 years and lived in for 3 can certainly appreciate the appeal of not having so much chapter responsibility as you prepare for graduation and the real world.

There might also need to be some social training for all collegians that when the going gets tough, quitting is not the answer. Or boredom isn't a sufficient reason to dump a commitment.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by DubaiSis

In those huge chapters, they may need to find a way to sort of transition them to half-alumnae status to keep them involved without asking more of them than they're willing to do. For instance, if they lived in, held an office, participated in X number of events over the last 2 years, always paid their bills on time, was never on academic probation (there are a litany of options here singly or in combination), then they only have to attend chapter once a month as a senior, or they don't have to attend any social functions, or they aren't obliged to do service hours, or whatever would keep them in the fold without overwhelming their senior year. Those of us who were collegiate members for 4 years and lived in for 3 can certainly appreciate the appeal of not having so much chapter responsibility as you prepare for graduation and the real world.

This is an OK idea, as long as it doesn't evolve to 1) pushing out women who DO want to be involved senior year/making senior year involvement "weird" 2) causing women to overload just for the sole purpose of being able to blow off everything senior year and still call themselves sisters.

Not only that, there are majors in which your junior year classes can often be WAY more time consuming than senior year classes, judging by how you're able to schedule things.

I'd rather see this as something chapters initiate locally rather than nationally mandated - the chapter that has pledge classes of 100 every year may find some merit in this. The chapter that has pledge classes of 10 will be crippled by it.

[DGTess]

And a small chapter may not have the luxury of doing without some of its sisters.

[ColdInCanada11]

Originally Posted by DubaiSis

In those huge chapters, they may need to find a way to sort of transition them to half-alumnae status to keep them involved without asking more of them than they're willing to do. For instance, if they lived in, held an office, participated in X number of events over the last 2 years, always paid their bills on time, was never on academic probation (there are a litany of options here singly or in combination), then they only have to attend chapter once a month as a senior, or they don't have to attend any social functions, or they aren't obliged to do service hours, or whatever would keep them in the fold without overwhelming their senior year. Those of us who were collegiate members for 4 years and lived in for 3 can certainly appreciate the appeal of not having so much chapter responsibility as you prepare for graduation and the real world.

There might also need to be some social training for all collegians that when the going gets tough, quitting is not the answer. Or boredom isn't a sufficient reason to dump a commitment.

I wholeheartedly agree with you, DubaiSis. Our chapter was not huge at all (usually ~25 members), but they could have afforded to have 3-5 of us not there all the time. I can say for those people applying to grad school, there are far more important things to be doing than mini-golfing or whatever the exchange is. I understand that you would want senior members there at meetings because they will have the most experience and therefore may be able to offer a solution that younger members hadn't considered. By my last semester, I was focused on the fact that I was moving 5,000km away and that I needed to start researching sources for my thesis, not on random events. Obviously, some events like COR and philanthropy need to have members there, and I think that those should not fall by the wayside. However, social and sisterhood are a different matter. Some of my favourite memories are from sisterhood events, but watching "Insert chickflick movie here" a month before I graduated was not going to make/break my experience. Ditto for exchanges, if I haven't met these people before now, it's probably not the end of my life.

I know that Alpha Gam does have provisions for seniors, and the Delta programming (I'm assuming other orgs do as well), but sometimes younger members need to try to understand what graduating members are going through outside of the chapter.

[DubaiSis]

Originally Posted by 33girl

I'd rather see this as something chapters initiate locally rather than nationally mandated - the chapter that has pledge classes of 100 every year may find some merit in this. The chapter that has pledge classes of 10 will be crippled by it.

Oh absolutely. Just as we've discussed the variations on Alumnae chapters, the collegiate chapters also have to run differently, including the number of activities and the number of offices held. As it is, I think a lot of chapters would be surprised at what the minimum requirements are to be a real chapter. And if the house isn't full, you have to live in. That's just how it goes - bills have to be paid. But if you have the freedom to limit the responsibilities of the seniors (still, president is pretty much always going to be a senior, isn't it?) I think that would help. And for the heavy junior load, maybe there could be a 1 semester "off" type policy, if you can justify it and you've done your part up to the one killer semester. AND a few people being off the radar won't affect the chapter as a whole.

There might a benefit as well to a KROS (seniors) program.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

We did the following for seniors:

1) No more door/phone duty
2) Senior events, like exchanges (mixers) or happy hours at 21+ venues
3) A special senior/phi event so the seniors got to know the new members
4) A senior chair in charge of planning 2 and 3

It's less about course load and more about the fact that nobody cared, by senior year, about going to fraternity exchanges and stuff like that. You have your group of friends who you want to hang out with, and you don't need to meet random dudes once/month. I would say that this was mostly fourth-year seniors, though. For women who pledged as sophomores, and were thus in their third year as a senior, it was common to still live in the house.

I would say, across campus, a soph/jr president was just as common as a jr/sr president.

[TSteven]

Originally Posted by BAckbOwlsgIrl

So if you have NM classes of 100+ and chapter size is 310ish. Wouldn't chapter size be 400ish? What happened to the 100 members that left? That is a dropout rate of 25%. What is being done to retain members? Sure we can say that part is finances, some don't like sorority life. But 100 members is HUGE! Then again, 25% is huge. I wish that this board would address membership retention more. I realize that it walks the line on membership selection, internal chapter operations, etc.

Originally Posted by 33girl

I'd like it to be that chapters aren't lauded/penalized for making/not making quota, but rather for their retention rate. I have no doubt that some of the chapters that are getting bitched at after every recruitment would all of a sudden be the fair-haired girls, and vice versa.

I suspect that in most cases, these 300 plus chapters are over campus total even after members quit or become alumnae. Also, the chapter may not hear much about retention from their HQ simply because HQ knows that these "mega" chapters are likely to have retention issues. Yes 25% is a huge amount and I am sure the HQs desire to retain everyone. But I am guessing it would be difficult to develop specific retention programs for these “mega” chapters - especially in the cases where campus expansion is possible and thus more manageable chapters.

Frankly, I wouldn’t know where to begin to address retention issues for such large chapters.

[Titchou]

The 300 member classes are after recruitment. They probably only came back with around 210. Then you have those who don't get initiated, leave school, transfer, do an off campus program where PH doesn't count then in total or graduate early. General attrition in other words. Not all resign...some leave thru normal channels.

[AngelPhiSig]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Yes, it was an old dorm. They held the most women (52 as opposed to 14-16 for the rest of the sorority houses) BUT the bedrooms themselves were postage stamp sized AND most of the members had to buy meal plans (a lot of the reason of moving off campus, which our houses were, was to not have to eat caf food anymore) since only upperclassmen had kitchen privileges due to the amount of people living in the house. Since Ali and I were in school, the ZTAs are no longer in this house and the largest sorority house (D Phi E's) is more like a block of apartments - I'm not sure how they do the common area, the last time I was in it it was a fraternity house and scary.

I forgot they arent in there anymore - where do they live now? I only know whats going on with Phi Sig (and getting our old house back and not that one back in the "triangle" area of the old Sig Tau/KDR and I cant remember who was there area... ) Im wondering if it hurt their recruitment. I know having a house at CU is a big thing - and having one close is better. I thought I had heard the university had bought the ZTA, Tri Sigma, and such houses...

[AngelPhiSig]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Your chapter was aware that football games existed, though. LOL. (I'm exaggerating, all the Greeks had members in band/front/majorettes, the football team and cheerleaders...although block seating would have resulted in many many empty blocks.)

Football haha. I was in the colorguard and still dont recall much football. I dont think anyone says "Oh hey, I wanna go to CU for football!" However, we did have that one guy who made it to the Arizona NFL team...

Another difference between where we were and big schools. I would have loved to have been at big football games with big tailgates, instead of now at homecoming, hanging outside of the Tavern.

[AngelPhiSig]

Sorry for another post:

I just realized:

the way I feel when I hear about these large chapters, and how it just seems so foreign to me, well - women from large chapters probably cant fathom the idea of a chapter of 40-50 women and classes of 10!

Another thing Im wondering - on these campuses with large chapters - are the fraternity chapters just as large?

[BAckbOwlsgIrl]

I am happy see the topic of membership retention being discussed on GC.

Although, I mention large chapters with retention, I also see similar numbers with small to mid sized chapters; eg. 30-50 new member classes. Losing 25% is still an issue no matter what size you are. For struggling chapters, it become so much more important. Those members are toward chapter total. And if you are nearer to total, your nationals will not be on your back so much.

I think that part of it is membership selection; we need to select who we think is going to stay. At the same time, so much goes on between Freshman and Senior year. That gung-ho freshman is now trying to be make her future after college and may not identify with the rest of the chapter. There is life outside of the chapter and she knows it.

Sure it is great that a chapter can recruit way above quota. But, it means little if you can't keep them around through initiation and graduation.
Yes, I realize life will happen; women will drop out out of college, move, etc. I know of women whose fathers lost their jobs and had to move back home miles away.

When I hear of chapters putting women before standards just paying their dues and not being involved, I am somewhat saddened. I am sure that anyone of the small chapters would love that woman just for paying her dues. It is one more tick toward the every popular chapter total. I know it is wrong but for a chapter needing money, they might not care much. At the same time, I can't stress how important why members aren't involved. Some of it can be the drama in the chapter, let alone at the physical house. Just because there is a chapter adviser, does not mean that she will be able to police the situation.

I love what chapters are doing for Seniors. To this day I still remember one of my Senior pledge buddies. She introduced herself to me. No biggie. That was it. I looked up to her. We have connected after all of these years.