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  #31  
Old 09-23-2020, 11:50 AM
content.camille content.camille is offline
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Originally Posted by 33girl View Post
They are, but there are a lot of shy/unsure adults.
I'd also say that while it takes a lot of strength to stand up to one's enemies, it takes even more to stand up to one's friends.

When I was in university, my greatest fear was having no friends or having all of my friends leave me, I joined my sisterhood so I'd always have friends and sisters to depend on, especially because I was so far from home. When my eldest rushed, she was terrified that if she didn't rush and her friends did, they'd stop talking to her because she hadn't gone Greek or her friends that had decided to forgo rush would stop talking to her because she HAD gone Greek. When she did rush, she did lose friends. I think this is precisely the same thing, these children (and I say that because I wasn't an adult until nearly 25 and didn't know what I wanted until near 30) are faced with a decision of disaffiliating and "rising up" against their nationals to seem woke/progressive and "on the right side of history" or keeping membership in a chapter that they love and cherish.

I've come to a point where I honestly think that in a situation like this, there's truly no winning. You either disaffiliate and run the risk of losing your Greek friends or you stay affiliated and run the risk of losing your friends that have chosen to disaffiliate.

Last edited by content.camille; 09-23-2020 at 11:52 AM. Reason: Spacing
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  #32  
Old 09-23-2020, 12:35 PM
OhSoDetermined OhSoDetermined is offline
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This wave to leave and abolish greek life is not the push with NPHC organizations. I think the focus or brotherhood/sisterhood + service = the expectation that you have the responsibility to do even more during trying times. The option to just walk away and think someone else will handle it, will fight to solve the injustice, really isn’t a option. It’s time to get your hands dirty. So that is my observation, what else is the organization offering to make the members “feel” relevant. Why is this component missing? What is the message from the national body that is then communicated to the local undergraduate chapters? Do the alumni/alumnae associations have a connection with these local chapters to speak to how the creed, motto, etc connects to true action during these times.
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  #33  
Old 09-23-2020, 01:12 PM
Sen's Revenge Sen's Revenge is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 33girl View Post
They are, but there are a lot of shy/unsure adults.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ASTalumna06 View Post
And if you're sitting in a business meeting and 75% of the members are up in arms and calling to disband, it takes a really strong person to stand up and fight back against that.
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Originally Posted by content.camille View Post
I'd also say that while it takes a lot of strength to stand up to one's enemies, it takes even more to stand up to one's friends.
This language is utterly foreign to me.

Being established on principles of democracy in the first place, it fascinates me to hear that organizations would have members who are afraid to dissent.

C'est la vie, I guess.
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  #34  
Old 09-23-2020, 01:49 PM
ASTalumna06 ASTalumna06 is offline
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Originally Posted by Sen's Revenge View Post
This language is utterly foreign to me.

Being established on principles of democracy in the first place, it fascinates me to hear that organizations would have members who are afraid to dissent.

C'est la vie, I guess.
You think that every member of every organization is a strong-willed person who's willing to buck the system and move forward on their own without the support of their friends? Hm...

This isn't a situation where most chapter members want to hold a mixer and there are a handful who are against it. This is a larger and much more complicated situation.

We keep reading the stories about the members who are wanting to shut the whole thing down. I'd be interested in reading articles about the members from those same chapters who want to stick it out and make positive change. I wonder if the national organizations are hearing from them.
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  #35  
Old 09-23-2020, 01:56 PM
content.camille content.camille is offline
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Originally Posted by Sen's Revenge View Post
This language is utterly foreign to me.

Being established on principles of democracy in the first place, it fascinates me to hear that organizations would have members who are afraid to dissent.

C'est la vie, I guess.
I quoted Dumbledore, there's no reason to read into it.
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  #36  
Old 09-23-2020, 03:08 PM
Sen's Revenge Sen's Revenge is offline
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Originally Posted by ASTalumna06 View Post
You think that every member of every organization is a strong-willed person who's willing to buck the system and move forward on their own without the support of their friends? Hm...
I didn't say every member of every organization.
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  #37  
Old 09-23-2020, 07:30 PM
PersistentDST PersistentDST is offline
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I have been thinking about this since the summer and of course, I’m coming from an outsiders perspective.

For those members who are disappointed in their national leadership and a lack of response about racism and justice, I wonder if they are barking up the wrong tree to begin with.

Sure, I’ve seen individuals (and some chapters) from IFC and NPC support social justice initiatives and I think that’s great. My alma mater has had a ton of racist instances in the news over the past month and the NPC ladies have been active and supportive. But are the national organizations, who haven’t historically been anywhere near the forefront combatting racism or fighting for social justice, equip to make those type of changes on a larger scale? Is it realistic to expect that to suddenly happen after (in some cases) well over 100 years of existence? How many members would want to buy in? How many PNM’s care about that when they participate in recruitment?

I wonder if some members are being realistic with those type of expectations when they join? Maybe they need to get the brotherhood/sisterhood, philanthropy and leadership experiences from their fraternity/sorority and fill the social action void with other organizations on campus.

With the news this week, frankly, I can imagine it would be rough for some chapters to make changes, because they can’t stop some of their members from being actively racist. If you can’t agree on that, it’s hard to move forward.
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  #38  
Old 09-23-2020, 08:23 PM
33girl 33girl is offline
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Considering most NPC members are told not to discuss politics during rush - which of course is a privileged outlook to begin with - I’m not sure how you get from there to the kinds of reforms some students want.

Something that I think would help would be if sororities bagged their national philanthropies and each chapter chose their own to work with. It would help the town/gown relationships if students were supporting a local cause, and most likely would create more buy in from the members if the philanthropy was chosen for a reason. And yes, I know you can have more than one, but that’s not always feasible programming wise.
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  #39  
Old 09-23-2020, 08:25 PM
PhilTau PhilTau is offline
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According to Wikipedia, AU has about 8500 undergraduates and is about 51 percent white. Most importantly, it is a top five feeder school to the U.S. Foreign Service, Congressional staff, and other governmental agencies.

It also has a substantial number of undergraduates already working for various government agencies in some capacity or are involved in some type of work/study with a federal agency. So I would expect recruiting for fraternities to be extremely difficult. I would caution us from drawing too many assumptions regarding the motives or reasons behind the AU undergraduates' decision to close their chapter.

For what it's worth, when I was with the government, I knew dozens of AU and George Mason graduates and not one was a member of a fraternity or sorority.
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  #40  
Old 09-24-2020, 03:18 AM
33girl 33girl is offline
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AU has had sororities since the 1930s and fraternities I would assume for even longer. They’ve had ample time to adjust their programming to work around the fact that a large amount of the students have highly demanding jobs and recruit accordingly. So no, I really doubt that “the students are too busy for Greek life” is a factor.
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  #41  
Old 09-24-2020, 05:18 PM
OhSoDetermined OhSoDetermined is offline
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Greek Life as you know it has value.
These younger members disagree.
You can either say “good riddance”
Or you can try to connect.

Though the alumni/ae members’ may be viewed as out of touch, they have institutional knowledge that may be critical in enacting change.

Though the younger members’ approach may be wrong, they are not entirely wrong in the desire to see change in something they (once?) loved.

But I fully expect this to be a blip on the radar for both sides, and for both to keep moving forward how they see fit.
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  #42  
Old 09-24-2020, 08:42 PM
PhilTau PhilTau is offline
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Originally Posted by 33girl View Post
AU has had sororities since the 1930s and fraternities I would assume for even longer. They’ve had ample time to adjust their programming to work around the fact that a large amount of the students have highly demanding jobs and recruit accordingly. So no, I really doubt that “the students are too busy for Greek life” is a factor.
I agree, they have had time to adjust their programing. My point is that many of AU's students are already committed to their agency "sponsors" and don't have time or need for fraternities.

Here are the demographic facts:

AU has approximately 8500 undergrads.

37.4 percent are male resulting in 3179 undergraduate males.

Only 53.3 percent are 18 - 21 which equals about 1694 undergraduate males (assume 847 freshmen/sophomore students) in the typical pool of possible fraternity members. Of these 847, a big percentage already have government career paths laid out for them.

AU says it has 14 IFC fraternities plus 3 NPHC fraternities, which seems like a lot for the size of possible new member pool. To me, these don't look like very good numbers under the best of circumstances.

Also, AU is considered a very diverse campus. I don't know what was wrong with the chapter choosing to close, but, on a campus like AU (or really any 21st century campus), any organization that is not diverse (or working hard toward being diverse) might as well close its doors.
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  #43  
Old 09-25-2020, 09:53 PM
Cheerio Cheerio is offline
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I say go back to the days of initiating after grades have been determined. It gives women more time to know their new sisters, and understand the important history of the sorority system as well as the strengths and purposes of their personal group.
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  #44  
Old 09-26-2020, 10:20 AM
carnation carnation is offline
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Yes! How did that end up being called hazing?
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  #45  
Old 09-26-2020, 10:40 AM
ASTalumna06 ASTalumna06 is offline
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Yes! How did that end up being called hazing?
Was that considered hazing, or was the idea to prevent hazing with a shorter new member period?

I don't really understand the logic behind the latter, but that's what I always understood to be the reasoning. But maybe not?
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