founding father

[alphapeak]

I am a founding father. We started in spring 2000 and have 13 members, all but one are freshmen. We plan to get a house spring or fall 2001. I could really use any advice on:

-rushing and pledging without a house
-making ourselves known across campus
-ideas for events that we could do without a house

any personal accounts of certain things to do or avoid by other other founding fathers would be invaluble.

thanks

[SilverTurtle]

Fist of all, let me congratulate you on being a founder! That's quite an accomplishment!

Second, to answer your questions...


Let me ask one of my own:

Do you have a room or other facility available on campus. Is it exclusively for your chapter's use, or are other people using it as well?

(At my school, none of the chapters had houses, but the universities provided chapter rooms in a couple of the residence halls, and these rooms were exclusively for chapter use.)

I'm going to wait on your response before I answer your questions about pledging, rush, or other events.

As far as getting your name out there..

• One of the easiest and best ways to do this is to wear your letters. A lot. And you might want to pick a day of the week for everyone to wear them.
• Contact the editor or other member of the campus paper and ask them to do a special interest story or student life story about your new chapter. Or you might want to have a brother write an article and submit it.
• If there are any published events calendars (ours was in the weekly campus paper, actually) contact whomever is in charge and ask to have your events added
• Signs and banners. In the student union, up around dorms, on kiosks, anywhere and everywhere you can think to put them (although you will want to check with the university to make sure you're allowed to post them in certain places)
• I've seen people post tons of really ambigous signs, that are interesting, and then a week later post something that gives you a little more of an idea of what it's about, and so on, for 3 or 4 weeks. And then you finally post the signs about your chapter. This helps to get people talking (and you know how rumors spread at college!)
• If there are a lot of sidewalks on campus and/or your fraternity row, etc. get a bucket of sidewalk chalk and go to it.. write your chapter's name, announce upcoming events, etc.

Um, that's all I can think of right now. Like I said, if you can tell me a bit more about your current situation, I'll be more than happy to help with ideas for rush, pledging, etc. Or go ahead and email me if you want!


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SilverTurtle@greekchat.com
Phi Beta Fraternity
Phi chapter

[alphapeak]

Wow,thanks a lot, that was some great advice, i will share it with my brothers. We do not have a specific room for our sole use. I expect that we will use rooms in academic buildings or residence halls but not the same one all the time. We will also probably be able to do certain things in brother's dorm rooms/suites.

[SilverTurtle]

alphapeak- thanks. I was PR for my GLO my junior year, so that's where a lot of those ideas come from!

As far as the rush, pledging etc. goes:

Here are some suggestions for rush or other events:

• Is there a "freshman" dorm? You'll want to make sure to get the word out about rush there, as well as all of campus. Most dorms have some kind of lobby/study area. If any of these are large enough, you can check into using them for some rush events. (We usually just had to check with the Resident Director of the particular dorm, and we could actually reserve them for private use). I know that one of the fraternity chapters actually got permission to hold a smoker in the freshman dorm's lobby every spring. And my chapter usually had our first or second rush party in one of the freshman dorms also.
  
• The student center probably has places you can meet, too. Ours had a couple of rooms that you had to reserve, as well as a huge lobby that was almost always free.
  
• Depending on where you live and the time of year, the outdoors can be fun! If there is a big quad or other area like that, you might be able to use if for cook-outs and the like.
  (Which would be a rad rush party IMO).
  
• If your school has a rec center, you can use that for rush or other activities
  
• Obviously you're a pretty small chapter, since you just started. If there are any other small and/or new chapters, particularly sororities , on campus, see if they would be interested in doing any joint events (and probably using their house to host said event(s)!)
  
• The local GLOs on my campus used to hold parties at near-by bars and clubs. A few of the places actually worked out a deal with them so that part of the cover would go to the sorority or fraternity (usually the $ went to community service stuff, but sometimes they used this as a fundraiser for the chapter as well)
  
• Be as active as possible in your campus events: Homecoming, Greek Week, etc. and get involved in any appropriate Greek councils (our university had a Greek council for all of us, but there was also a Pan-Hel for the sororities, etc.)

As for pledging activities:

This is going to be difficult without anyplace to call your "home" for awhile. But be creative! Check with the resident director and/or greek life advisor to see if there are any rooms available for the chapter to use (preferable free of charge) or rent, at least for the duration of the school term. All of our chapter rooms were just big rooms in the basements of 2 of the residence halls (I don't know what they were originally intended for, but they might have been storage areas).

If you can't secure a permanent room, you should still be able to reserve rooms around campus for your use (in the student center, the dorms, or even classrooms). And as you said, you may be able to use brothers dorm rooms. (Of course, you'll need to be aware of the # of people you'll have crammed in there, what they'll be doing, and any roommated issues).

And you may or may not have pledging events off-campus as well. So you can use brothers' apartments (if they're willing )
or other appropriate facilities.


Well, I hope I have been of some help! Best of luck in your endeavors. And by the way, what is the name of your fraternity?



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SilverTurtle@greekchat.com
Phi Beta Fraternity
Phi chapter

[alphapeak]

thanks a lot for the good advice, it will come in handy.

AEPi at Syracuse