The Fraternity Advisor

Has this ever happened at one of your fraternity meetings?

An excited brother has a great idea. It could be the fraternity president or a brother in crowd – it really doesn’t matter.

My fraternity is struggling financially, we can’t get more than half the brothers to actually come to chapter, and our house is falling apart to the point where it is almost unlivable and to top it off our alumni are completely useless. Our chapter is on the brink of collapse and I have no idea what to do about it, any thoughts?

I am a new advisor to a national fraternity! The guys are great, but could be a bit more brotherly. Do you have any brotherhood retreat ideas?

I just started my second year of school. Last winter i had gone through pledging, and got initiated into an IFC fraternity during spring term. At a party there was an alleged rape, that the guy was eventually acquitted of. This gave our campus a red flag in which they did an investigation.

We were disaffiliated, and are now unrecognized by both nationals and campus based on excessive alcohol charges. All of these chargers were brought the day after my pledge class had gotten initiated. Leaving the Greek system is not an option for me. Transferring schools is highly unlikely. What options do i have to stay in the IFC Greek system?

I have done a lot for my fraternity since my freshman year. I have held several positions, including executive currently. I am respected for my work amongst our nationals, but the chapter sees me as an outsider, or a goody-two shoes, who is there just for a resume boost. I love my fraternity, but I don’t know how to express that to them without listing my achievements and sounding arrogant? What should I do?

As a president of a fraternity I understand that motivating members can be a hard challenge. After all, one reason officers take the challenge is too better their members for the rest of their lives. That may seem like an impossible task, but I have a bit of a solution to this leadership problem.

I am the president of my fraternity. I just got an email from our formal chairman saying that he has to step down from his position because of ‘health issues’ I am not questioning his health concerns, but from his email it seems like he realizes he has not done anything to plan for formal and realizes he has a huge work load ahead of him.

I know a lot of chapters illegally initiate new members into their fraternity from time to time. These chapters don’t think it is a big deal to not report these new brothers, and they really like being able to pocket the couple hundred bucks in fees that are supposed to go to the national headquarters. This is a very, very bad practice for many reasons.

Those of you that are frequent readers of thefraternityadvisor.com realize that I am a veteran. I served for 5 years in the military, which included two deployments to the Middle East.

I am currently the fraternity president. At the moment the fraternity seems to be ripping itself apart. We are the smallest we have ever been and we have some very strong personalities in the fraternity who think they are right and everyone else is wrong.