Franklin & Marshall: Reversing the Trend

[PhiPsiRuss]

Originally posted by efrackel
As far as I see it...the current goodtime Greek System at Franklin and Marshall College is being replaced by a Nazi Regime and is totally F-ed!!

check out this link---> http://www.fandm.edu/greeklife/

Ed Frackelton '04 (yeah, I was just graduated),
Former President
Upsilon Chapter, Delta Sigma Phi Fraternity

Time will tell, but if F&M greek alumni stay organized, they can prevent the administration from getting heavy handed.

[33girl]

Russ kinda touched on what I was going to say...

Do the fraternities & sororities themselves have a good amount of donations (of $$, materials and/or time) from their alums? If so, I'm guessing the school would like to divert some of that to their own coffers. It's one of those things where I guess it's hard to tell if alums will increase the amount of their donating and give to the college AND the GLO, or if they'll move their money.

Sorry if this makes no sense, I had a very festive night.

[PhiPsiRuss]

I've been told that F&M, like most schools with greeks, receives the majority of donations from their greek minority. That was probably a factor in rerecognition.

They now have 16 years of alumni, who are just now beginning to make money, that will be more easy to develop as donors if their GLOs are rerecognized.

[33girl]

But if, as some of the people there seem to think, rerecognition results in the Greek system becoming smaller or changing dramatically from what they are used to, will that really make people donate?

I'm not arguing with you Russ, I just have a feeling that "rerecognition = more Greek alums donating to F & M" isn't as cut and dried as the admin seems to think it might be. I mean, one of the guys in our student affairs office once said that he would like to see a Greek village in Clarion. There would be alums just over the moon about that prospect, and there would probably also be some who didn't like the idea of the Greeks having to leave their old houses and arbitrarily put in a village.

[squashfly3]

working for an office that deals with alumni donations for the past two years, i don't know if PhiPsiRuss is right about most of the donations coming from greek alumni, especially at F&M. i think it may actually be the opposite, with less greeks giving money to the school and giving it their GLOs instead. i've actually seen this happen a number of times. so i do think that the president is hoping that more greek alumni will give money to the school, instead of solely to their organization.
and i think that if the greek system is changed so much that it actually hurts the greeks, that greek alumni will absolutely be less willing to donate money to the college. but it all just depends on how re-rec actually happens. being a greek next year at F&M should definitely prove to be quite interesting.

[Tom Earp]

We can only hope that F & M Greeks will see a change for the best!

I for one know and have told many people that if LXA is not at The Un. I will not even come back to My Alma Mater!

And from what I have seen Greeks do and are willing to donate money for the betterment of not only Their Organization, but for the betterment of Said School.

Just my thinking!

[madmax]

Originally posted by efrackel
What's up people,

I feel fairly confident saying that only 10% of the greek organizations on campus wanted re-recognition, and we certainly were not one of them.

If 90% of the organizations are against the idea then why are you going through with the plan? Why don't you just continue to operate as usual?

[efrackel]

MadMax,

This is another long story based on many assumptions.

The threat of the college having us shut down by the city and/or the school possibly outlawing pledging a greek organization were the only reasons we considered being re-recognized. Lancaster City is a very conservative town, and Franklin and Marshall is a private school. Before re-recognition was even brought up, when the new president of the college was signed in, he started making phone calls to the city fire dept. to have them inspect us and all the other chapter houses, I think, in the hopes of either shutting us down or taking away permits so we couldn't have parties in the house, the latter of which happened to our house and it took 7 months to get it back, killed our rush, and made a very very unpleasant situation. So anyway, the school starts making these calls, I know they start making these calls because I'm friends with one of the Lancaster City Police Officers who is responsible for dealing with F and M and Greek matters, and he told me that their office started receiving calls from the new president. I go into the president's office to find out what the hell is going on because at this point there is no dialogue between the college our any Greek Organizations, we can't use the school for any functions, they give us no support, and they aren't allowed to come into our private houses, and it has been like this for lets say, 15 years. The president of the college tells me that there is no dialogue between him or the College and the Fire and Police departments, which is total BS. So now the greek houses are getting inspected sometimes 2-3 times a week by the city fire department, waiting to find something to condemn us. There's no way to put a stop to it because John Fry is working with The City, the conservative mayor who would love to see us shut down, and all these other commericial companies to cleanup Lancaster and start putting up businesses for the college and surrounding area to increase revenue, etc. Everyone loves this new president because he's throwing F and M money around, and it seems all he is asking for in return is for them to put a leash on us.
Second point, the college may possibly expell students who pledge a Greek Organization. I know this sounds highly illegal but it has happened at other private schools, and I think there has since been a supreme court ruling against private colleges being able to do this, but the possiblity still stands.
So basically we were scared into re-recognition. The new president seemed to have a lot of pull in different areas, and we didn't want to see exactly how much pull until it was too late. Our nationals were on our back to be re-recognized until they heard that the school wanted sophomore pledging, but then they still just told us to find a way to supplement it. Our older alumni, though very sympathetic to our situation, wanted re-recognition because that's the way it was when they were in school (when faculty members would come to the houses and drink with the students at parties) and everything was much more normal. To see a faculty member in a house today, the faculty member would probably get fired. It's so ridiculous!
So anyway, with all this pressure from all sides it was impossible to say, "no, we don't want re-recognition." The pressure to stop hazing, to improve community service, to have the school "help us" with inspections so the big bad city doesn't condemn us, to impove our standing with national, to improve our academics, to improve alumni involvement, and to not get expelled by the school was too much to say, "no thank you, we'll pass."
The new president threw his political weight around to accomplish this re-recognition regardless of the Greeks at the present time not wanting to be re-recognized, it would be like if you had a deadbeat father who abandoned you and walked out on your life for 15 years, made your life hell, never gave you any child support, made your mom pissed off, then came back into your life and demanded that you start talking to him, even though he's not going to provide you with any support, and your grandparents (the alumni) want you to go ahead and start talking to him because, you know, he is your father and you should be on good terms with him. By no means am I trying to offend anyone by this scenario, and I apologize if I did, but we feel like that abandoned child, it's hard to erase 15 years of bad terms and come back the next year and act like nothing happened and have even stricter rules. There should have been more gradual steps, but Fry doesn't have time for that, he's probably moving on in a few years once our ranking makes it up to one of the top 20 liberal arts colleges instead of the top 30; his work will be done at that point.
Sorry for the rambling...it's amazing I just found this message board and I have all this pent up anger at the school and all this crap they pulled on us. I feel much better now .

Ed

[Kevin]

What the fire code enforcement folks are doing sounds like outright harassment. You should speak with an attorney.

[33girl]

Ed,

I like your deadbeat dad anaolgy. As far as presidents who do things at the school to build up their own resume...don't even get me started, LOL.

Unless the fire department is inspecting ALL housing where large groups live - do you also have like the football players' house, the baseball house etc? - what they are doing IS harassment. If the school would say they are concerned about the safety of houses with more than X amount of people in them and want the fire dept to check on them that would be fine. To target fraternities, however, is completely wrong. Especially since they don't recognize you. It's like if the government denies the mafia exists they can't pass a bill giving $$ to efforts to fight it.

You cannot be expelled for joining a fraternity if all its activities take place off campus, any more than they can expel you for joining Jews for Jesus or the Aryan Nation. DKE used to have the info about this on their site but I can't find it. You can get those nice students down the road at Dickinson Law to fight this for you (while they are still there, that is).

I think this is going to be WAY more difficult for the guys than the girls since so many of the sorority rules are already super strict.

[PhiPsiRuss]

Originally posted by squashfly3
working for an office that deals with alumni donations for the past two years, i don't know if PhiPsiRuss is right about most of the donations coming from greek alumni, especially at F&M.

I don't know if I'm right about that either, but as I stated in an earlier post, its what I was told.

[PhiPsiRuss]

Originally posted by 33girl
You cannot be expelled for joining a fraternity if all its activities take place off campus

That's probably the case, unless incoming students signed an agreement to not join.

[33girl]

But again, I think that would go back to my mafia argument...how can they regulate something that as far as the school is concerned really doesn't exist?

[DeltAlum]

Originally posted by PhiPsiRuss
I've been told that F&M, like most schools with greeks, receives the majority of donations from their greek minority.

I think this is a misperception which is perpetuated by a comment on many Greek websites that Greeks donate more than others.

Unfortunately, there are two ways to interpret that comment.

While it is true in most schools that donations from Greeks tend to be higher percentage-wise than from non-Greeks, fraternity and sorority members are a minority, so the actual real amount in dollars from Greeks is much smaller.

Also, I believe that Greeks are more likely to donate than their independent classmates.

[PhiPsiRuss]

Originally posted by 33girl
But again, I think that would go back to my mafia argument...how can they regulate something that as far as the school is concerned really doesn't exist?

Witch hunts.