The Fraternity Advisor

A lot of readers share interesting articles with me regarding fraternity life. Here are a few that I have received recently that I think are worth your time:

My fraternity has many people who smoke weed. The problem is that it can be detrimental to academics and distract others from work. While smoking is illegal, no one is going to evict a brother for smoking.

Cathy Dubyak, the executive director of C.A.R.D.D.S, read my story about fraternity alcohol poisoning. Through that article, we realized that we both are trying to spread the same message. She offered to share her story – and it is posted below.

We found out our Fraternity Advisor’s “wife” is really a “husband”. They’ve been “married” for a number of years and he never acknowledged this. He always had an excuse about why his “wife” couldn’t attend formal functions – now it makes sense. How should we approach this? I know it “shouldn’t matter” his sexual preference, but it is definitely going to make the chapter uneasy. Advice on the situation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

My local fraternity has recently merged with a national Fraternity, Alpha Phi Delta. Now, as a new alumnus, I am on board with the change as well as 60 other alumni from our 15 years of existence. After this weekend we are becoming a Colony of theirs and there will be a waiting period of about a year before we became a chapter.

I have a backlog of questions right now that I need to answer. To make sure I am as timely as possible I decided to combine a bunch in this post. These questions were submitted by our readers. If you have a question you want me to answer go here to submit it: Fraternity Advice.

Below are a list of the top fraternity websites out there. Each is a treasure trove of information that will help any fraternity leader. If there is one that I don’t know about, please recognize it in the comments section below the article.

I am part of a local fraternity and as such our alumni base is limited and focused to this one chapter, as we only exist at our school. This is both a blessing, due to their loyalty the fraternity, and a curse, when more recent graduates decide to take advantage of our hospitality.

I’m currently an undergraduate student at William and Mary, and I’m writing a column about changes in Greek housing. To give you a bit of background, W&M is transitioning its fraternity housing from the units, a complex of over a dozen, split-level dorms with 36 beds spread over 2.5 floors, to a new Greek Complex in 2013-14.

We were recently voted on by IFC to become a recognized fraternity of our University. Unfortunately, they voted no. In my opinion, I think the voting went this way because they did not want to compete with us on campus. We have more members as a colony than the recognized fraternities, we have great philanthropy and we are good guys.