living in the house!?

JMUduke · #1 07-08-2002, 03:09 PM

Ok, i need you advice again...hope you all aren't getting sick of my complaining

At my campus, the sororities all are on campus, and most of the fraternities are off...however, the sororities are required to fill the house or else they get the house taken away, fined, etc. well the officer in charge of this (house manager, which is kinda like an RA) is the one responsible for filling the house. now I am also an officer, so what can I tell the other girls to do to help the house manager get the house filled? Last year so many houses on our campus, especially ours, had trouble filling the house and now a few have to pay more from chapter dues to the office of res life on campus for the empty spaces. trust me, we tried to force girls to live in the house, but that SUCKS!! No one wants to be forced to change their plans halfway through the year...so how would you all encourage new members to wanna live in the house?!?! Any suggestions would be appreciated..

kddani · #2 07-08-2002, 03:16 PM

I'm not sure how many spots are in your house, but we have a suite that holds 16 people that we have to fill (total is 60).
What we do to ensure most of the suite is full, is
1) all council members are required to live in the suite. Which fills the suite, and also makes them more efficient officers sometimes- easier to get in touch with
2) social and house manager have to live there.
These are in our bylaws. There's 9 on council, so that leaves only a few spots. A lot of our newer members want to live in the suite. Also many times seniors live in our suite, because on our campus you're only guaranteed on campus housing for 3 years. So in lieu of moving off campus, they just live in the suite.
It comes and goes though. Some years everyone wants to live in the suite, other times people don't. After a year where everyone who lives there and gets along and has fun, everyone else wants to live there. If people don't get along, no one wants to live there the next year.
I loved living there, always being near the action, always knowing what was going on,and ALWAYS having someone around to hang out with. Make it seem as fun as possible, because it is!

aephi alum · #3 07-08-2002, 03:22 PM

My sorority did not have a house, but a friend of mine from a housed sorority tells me that if there was a vacant spot in the house, all sisters who were eligible to live there but chose not to had to pay their share of the rent for the vacant spot (rather than having the rent come out of the chapter's main operating budget). It sounds blunt, but if eligible sisters have to take a hit in the wallet, they may reconsider.

You may want to make up a list of the advantages of living in the house - for example, if room and board is cheaper than living in the dorms, say so. If your house needs renovations, make them. Maybe you can find a way to make it easier for a sister to move back into the dorms if she lives in the house for a semester and decides she really doesn't like it.

We never had this problem, but I hope this helps anyway...

maggieaxid · #4 07-08-2002, 03:22 PM

we had a similar problem when i was a sophmore...one person who lived in the house was transferring and they had to find someone immediately to fill the space, but it only could be filled by someone who already lived on campus (it was some sort of school policy and almost all juniors and seniors live off campus) so they got all the girls that still lived on campus and made us pro and con infront of the exec board and then we kind of just came to a consensus as to who it would be....well, it ended up being me. at first i was all scared to tell my anti-greek roomate that i was moving out. That really sucked and she became more anti greek after that....(even though she joined a colony the following semester) and it totally ruined our friendship.
however, i absolutely adored living in the house after i got over that. i loved the goofiness with my sisters, and getting to know them soooo well, plus having pranks and water balloon fights with the fraternities, BBQ's, sister's always let you drive your car and you always have somebody that will go out with you or walk with you in the dark someplace. and living in a house was so much better than living in a dorm too! plus, all of our greek houses are together in one spot and i got to know people from every organization.

kddani · #5 07-08-2002, 03:25 PM

i forgot, in our bylaws and our list of membership obligations, filling the house/suite is listed as an obligation of membership.
So if things get bad when trying to fill it, we play that card.
Check to see if yours have anything similar.

nauadpi · #6 07-08-2002, 04:51 PM

I know in my chapter we have to fill so much space in an all greek hall. We have a wing of the hall and the rooms have to be filled. Well our bylaws do state that if we need people to live in they have to. Also, we have those rules like exec board members have to live in. When it comes down to it, we just remind girls that if we dont have our space in the hall, we will disapear as a sorority off campus fairly quickly.

Tom Earp · #7 07-08-2002, 05:45 PM

Living in the House helps pay the Bills!
Bills are not paid, you all suffer!

Have had the same Problem!

Bite the bullet and do it or lose money for your Org!

OnePlus69Is70 · #8 07-08-2002, 09:25 PM

We simply require everyone to live in the house, without exception. We start with the seniors and move down until the house is full, and the remainder are required to remain in the dorms until there's an opening in the house. We make exceptions for RA's, but that's about it. Anyone who wants to leave the house needs to explain his reasoning to the chapter at a general meeting, and that's usually a tough sell.

It seems harsh, but we need every room full to keep the house.