Quote:
Originally Posted by Kwsailor
Hey, my name is Kyle Sailor and i go to University Of Texas at San Antonio and we just started a colony, and were are now working on our charter. I recently just got elected secretary also...so if any bros wanna give us some advice/ help anything helps, (ecspecially the close ones i.e. UT Texas State Texas Tech) that would be great.
thanks.
p.s. were already the second biggest fraternity on campus.
|
Congrats! I'm a founding father of Theta Rho at Grand Valley State University (MI). As if to add more fun, I was the Fourth Counselor when we chartered. FYI - Ritual is freakin sweet. Definitely something to look forward to. And, just as if to add cream to coffee, we were the second biggest chapter on campus when we chartered and officially claimed the top spot this semester.
My best advice is to make a name for yourselves early. We colonized in October and won Greek Week in April (our first Greek Week ever!). We lost Lip Sync (the biggest event) and softball (the second biggest event) horribly but came out on top because we evaluated the areas where we could score major points and jumped on them. In the end we only won by thirty points. Day one, however, had the events we knew we could do well in and, by focusing our efforts on our strengths, we came out of the first day with nearly 150 points more than our closest competitor. Do you have to win Greek Week? Not necessarily. You should, however, find something that screams to campus that you are there and you have every intention of becoming the Greek Power on campus.
It also doesn't hurt to cozy up with the sororities. Go to each of their (inter)national websites. Find their founders' day, their mascot and their flower. Show up on their founders day with their flower, a cake (or cookies or brownies or whatever) and a sweet song. They'll be all over you like a fat kid on a cupcake.
I'd also recomend getting involved. Encourage your members to join non-Greek student organizations and to not make their affiliation a secret. I ended up on student senate (every week in a T-Shirt or hoodie that proudly exclaimed SIGMA PI), the president of the law society, on the eboard of a sexual assault education group and in the college dems. Make moves towards Greek leadership as well. One year after colonizing we had one of our members won the presidency of IFC and this year I'm the VP of Judicial affairs and another of our brothers is the VP of programming.
Finally, be careful who you recruit. A few bad members can destroy a colony. Look at the obligations and the ideals. Recruit from there. We had a brother from another school whom we decided was not a good influence for us nor a good image of Sigma Pi for our campus (we ended up discovering that his chapter felt much the same). His behavior and comments alienated many on campus who were otherwise our friends and even alienated our own brothers. In the end we chose not to allow him to affiliate with our chapter and had to make it clear to him that he was not welcome among us. The damage he caused us when he was around was simply unforgivable. No matter how "devoted" he seemed to be to the fraternity it became clear that he did not devote himself to the Ten Obligations or the Five Ideals.
One last thing: Study for the test. Study hard. I've compared our test with those from many other greek organizations. Ours is a bitch. Read your I Believe manual. Take notes. Learn your stuff. Do it early. Believe me, it will help.