Mandatory socials/mixers?

VT Tri-D · #1 05-30-2002, 11:01 PM

Hi guys...

I was wondering if any of your chapters make mixers (or socials, as we call them) mandatory? Not ALL of them obviously, but are you required to go to, say 25% of all of the socials on your calendar? I was wondering, because I think we need a way to get our girls out for more socials with the frats that we schedule with that may not be considered "the big 5" on our campus. Some girls in my chapter arent interested in going to the socials that are with smaller fraternities, etc. We schedule socials with all types of frats because we want to be fair and give everyone a chance, but we have a bad habit of not showing up to the ones that we think wont be as fun. I think if we were required to at least make an appearance at half of our socials (even if it is just long enough to check in with the social chair), then we would have a much better turn-out at these types of socials. (Keep in mind that we typically have anywhere from 2-3 socials scheduled per week). Does anybody do this? Do you like it? Not like it? What are the advantages? Disadvantages? Guys-- can you tell if a sorority is making an event mandatory?-- if so what are your typical feelings about it? Does it irritate you? Does it make you feel unimportant? etc, etc,etc!!!!! I appreciate any help or feedback I can get from both sororities and fraternities!

33girl · #2 05-31-2002, 07:41 AM

Keep in mind this was a LOOOOONG time ago.

When I pledged it was mandatory to attend the mixer for at least an hour unless you submitted an excuse. Then we were told that nothing that involved alcohol could be made mandatory. With the alcohol free mixers rule now, I would think you COULD make them mandatory, unless it's at a third party event of course. so who knows?

One thing we did say was don't vote yes for the benefit of other sisters - vote based on whether YOU are able/willing to attend. This came about because there were a lot of people thinking "well, I can't go but I don't want to deny everyone else that mix." Mixer time rolled around and only half the sorority was there. IMO it's better to not have the mixer at all than show up half assed. It makes you look really bad in front of the fraternity.

But I can soooooo relate to sisters only wanting to go to mixers with certain groups - we had an older group of sisters that if it wasn't with one of 2 certain groups, they wanted nothing to do with it.

aephi alum · #3 05-31-2002, 08:49 AM

My chapter was quite small, so we made it mandatory to attend 50% of social events, barring illness - but we counted semiformals and formals as two events. We always had trouble getting people to mixers, especially if they had boyfriends or fiances who weren't in the fraternity in question... giving formals more weight was a concession to this group. (I did have to give my GDI fiance the "yes, I'm going to a mixer, no, I'm not going to hook up with some frat [sic] boy" speech more than once

)

Events involving alcohol could not be mandatory, but I do remember one mixer where we sat around, chatted, did our icebreaker activities, then our social chair got up and loudly announced "The formal part of the mixer is now over, you can stay or not as you choose" and out came the beer.

PhiSigFly · #4 06-03-2002, 01:02 PM

We have some trouble with that too. Our greek system isn't very large and there are only 2 big frats at my school, the other 5 have about 20 members each, if that. Often, the girls only want to attend the events with the 2 big ones. To attempt to solve this problem, we plan actual activities to do with the smaller fraternities, bowling, mini-golf, ice skating, etc. They have small enough numbers to where it isn't a problem finding a place to hold all of us and the sisters go to hang out and have fun doing whatever event we have planned. Usually, we all wind up bonding with the guys and then want to go to the after party. Its just convincing the sisters to go that is the problem. Also, our social chair will make a "dinner date" with a smaller fraternity and we'll meet them for dinner after our meetings. This way, the sisters will make friends with some of the guys and will want to go to the actual social later on in the semester or in the year.

chideltjen · #5 07-26-2002, 08:18 PM

To start: I am part of a local organization so the drinking rule at mixers doesn't apply to us. However, we don't allow EVERYONE to drink at mixers. Only those that are 21 (which consists of about 3% of our house) is allowed to drink at the actual mixer... everyone else preparties.
And we used to have mixers every single weekend. (I looked at a calendar from like 1997 and we mixed with everyone.) Now we just have about 2 and those are mandatory. We have had "informal" mixers before and those aren't mandatory. But since they aren't... not too many people show up to them.
Realize that people have school and jobs to attend to. And not everyone joined a GLO to go to an organized social every weekend. I say keep the mandatory mixers to a minimum and then have non mandatory ones as well.

tau1819 · #6 07-26-2002, 09:03 PM

tell your president, you don't have to go, you'll do as you please

ChiOqt · #7 07-28-2002, 05:27 PM

I think that sisters should want to go to the mixers, no matter who they are with. Even if we mix with smaller fraternities we always have fun...besides, we're in the company of other sisters! VT Tri-D~ I imagine it's not as easy said as done down there though. When I went to Tech I did notice the difference between the smaller and larger, weaker/stronger chapters and so on!

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