Help for locals

[YinYangEXZ]

Greetings
I am a sister of Sigma Chi zeta at St Johns University and we have been around for 15 years. St Johns is not very local friendly and neither are a lot of school is the area it seems. We would love to start a new chapter, maybe even two at the same time. I know we must esttablish an alumni boarde which will guide the expansion, but I have no idea about insurance, and what schools accept locals on their campuses. We dont wnat to be national but rather a strong force in the northeast, keep the spirit of a local alive-being hands on and visible for all sisters. I just know that if we dont establish at other schools, the school will force us to go national. I have no problems with nationals( except the ones who keep trying to turn our history filled local into a colony to boast numbers) Schools dont seem to like locals and we are unfairly treated. They associate locals with hazing and abuse. This is far from the truth and we know it. If anyone has any resources please let me know. I contacted national Panhell for guidence( we are under panhell at St Johns) but they basically told me to consider a national. Any help will be appreaciated
******** KEEP LOCALS STRONG*********

[ZChi4Life]

Hi YinYangEXZ,
Sorry no one has gotten to your posts. This week was extremely busy for me as my sorority was celebrating it's 1 yr anniversary on campus! But anyway, I think the best thing for you and your sisters to do would be to ask the existing national sororities on campus about getting insurance and that kind of thing. Or you can go straight to your Greek Life office and they should be able to help you out with that or at least put you in the right direction.
As far as starting chapters, it's all a matter of going to the schools that are in your area and holding informational meetings or an open house there. My sorority is gonna be 10 years old this March and we have 5 chapters right now and 4 colonies. What we do is basically go to the campus we'd like to get a chapter started on and put up fliers about our sorority and that we'll be holding an informational meeting. You will want to get a room on that campus to hold the informational in and usually if you go the student union on campus, they should allow outside groups to reserve rooms or let you know somewhere on campus that will reserve rooms to outside groups. Then once that's all set, have the informational and pretty much breakdown your sorority to the ladies...tell them your history, your purpose, stuff like that. You may want to have some kind of sign up sheet for them to sign their names, year, email addresses, phone #'s, etc. You might also want to make up a profile sheet for them to fill in. This is so you get a good sense of what these women are about. Then, I would say it would be up to your sorority sisters to begin figuring out a means of how you want to go about beginning a new chapter. Some sororities do the colony thing and have the ladies work towards becoming a chapter. Or something to that effect. I would first do some research on other national sororities, particularly those that are smaller/just getting started. Sorry this is long. If you want, give me an email and we talk further.

Z-Chi4Life