Recolonizing

[DRoy]

All out there,

We are recolonizing here at East Carolina University and as President, would love any feedback in our efforts or in general on what has been successful for you. I understand that what may work for you may not work for us, however it would give us a starting point.

Any advice?

Take care,

Daniel Roy
"Thank God I'm A Beta!"

[ZZ-kai-]

The only thing I can think of, off the top of my head, is recruit good quality guys. Don't throw off campus keggers to "get around" dry rush.

After a few years of rushing the quality guys, your numbers will be up, grades will be up and then people will be knocking on your door to join.

Also, get sororities involved with your rush. That always works. The best impression on a freshman 4.0 football player, is when the Alpha Phi's say, "You should be a Beta".

Lastly, I came from a chapter that was just a colony when I joined. I kick myself everytime I think about keeping a documented history of our chapter. We have no bound minutes, a bunch of half-a$$ed picture books, a few old copied petitions laying around...etc. 50 years from now, we won't have our founding information. Make sure you guys keep good documentation of what you do, because in the years to come, you may want to look back at it.

PS, get me your e-mail address (you can PM it to me via greekchat.com - this website). I have a guy I want to talk with you. He is a founder of our chapter and is out at Ft. Bragg, and I am sure he'd make a trip to your place to talk Beta. He's the shit.

-kai bro, good luck.

[JerzeeBoy26]

My suggestions would be:

1)recruit the right guys. the MOP initiative is a great sell for some but you also have to show that you have a good time(we are a social fraternity are we not?) Look for guys who have a good balance between their partying and grades.

2)girls are key. I assume since you are a recolonized chapter that you have a decent number of sophomores and maybe even juniors or seniors. usre your contacts to get girls at events

3)have a mixture of wet and dry events. you dont want to "recruit through alcohol" but I dont think having a few responsibly run, well managed wet events is a bad thing. at the same time, these should be invite only and never involve alcohol when you are meeting a potential rushee for the first time. Once you befriend them, then its okay to have a beer or whatever.


btw, how may refounding fathers do you all have and how are things going so far?

keep us posted

___kai___

Mk

[Betarulz!]

I'm in a completely different situation, as my chapter entered its 114th year this past September. However, you and all the guys that are expanding our good and great fraternity are doing an awesome job and you have more of my respect than you will ever know. I don't know if I could be doing what your doing.

ZZ and Jerzee have hit on some good points already.

I think the important thing is to make sure that the guys you have already are operating at the highest level possible. As Willis Robb said: "The future will copy fair our past" so sucessful chapters usually remain successful chapters. You become a successful chapter you'll lure men who are going to keep it that way. So kick ass at everything you can and send a message to ECU that Betas are for real.

I'm up in the air about dry rush and it's merits. At Nebraska, our Greek Affairs office is very strict about enforcement of dry rush. Houses must submit schedules of when their rush events will be, and where, with the possibility of random visits from University staff, (which with summer rush would seem to make you think that this was an empty threat but I've heard stories from other houses). Being so strict dry rush doesn't hurt us. But I do understand that at other universities dry rush is a death knell for your social reputation b/c you won't get the guys who will let loose on the weekend. If wet rush is engrained into the culture at ECU then you have to go with that to level the playing field.

Other things...
Recruitment through Scholarship is a really good thing for our chapter. Granted we've won the Virginia Tech award for the highest GPA in all of Beta for the past 3 years so we draw the brightest but there have been a couple of really smart guys that we've gotten into our house b/c of that extra incentive, who otherwise wouldn't have considered us long enough to see what we were like.

I don't know how you guys rush, but one of the biggest things taht we always get from guys in talking about why they signed is the fact that at rush parties they end up talking to all the brothers and not just the rush chairs. I know at most of the houses I looked at the same type of thing happened...I'd talk to the rush chairs for awhile, there'd be 50 other guys from the chapter and I might talk to just two of them. Meanwhile I go to a Beta event and actaully talked to nearly every single Beta member. That made such an impact on my decision.

Hope this helps...respond back to this and let us knwo if this is the type of feedback you were looking for.

__Kai__

Geoff Mickells
Alpha Tau 2063
University of Nebraska