Over programming

[prettyv]

Our campus has a (as it's been described) "small but vibrant" Greek life. It's not large, but it's not small either. We're growing quite rapidly, we've recently colonized a new sorority, and they're expecting quota to keep increasing.

One problem that we're experiencing now with the chapters all growing, and our Greek system growing, is everyone is feeling more stressed out and over-programmed. Especially March. March has been traditionally the month where Greek Week is held, it's where a lot of the big signature philanthropy events are scheduled and it's also hell-month for most students (midterms at the beginning, papers at the end.) As a result, our philanthropy events are actually getting LESS people out to them than previous years, as people are too stressed to even come. We're making similar money, but there's a lot more: "Hey, sorry, XYZ can't submit a team this year, but here's a registration fee anyway."

Now, considering our Greek system is still significantly smaller than most campuses, we're clearly approaching this the wrong way. A couple of suggestions that have been made:

1. Having "blackout" weekends, so only one Greek event can happen per weekend.
- Cons to this, are that some chapters then will have to throw together their philanthropies in February, where most elections occur in November/December. It's a really small amount of time to throw together an event, and no organization wants to volunteer to put it together so fast.

2. "Teaming up" to do philanthropy events.
- Cons: This seems like we'd make less money, as people probably wouldn't submit double the teams/pay double the money. Plus then, who's going to absorb whose events?

How do campuses with 2/3 times the chapters deal with this? Our chapter has about 20 GLOs, with roughly 70 members a piece (some being significantly smaller, not many being significantly larger.)