The Fraternity Advisor

How do I instill pride into my pledges?

My fraternity consistently has struggled the past two years to initiate a high percentage of the men we recruit. Typically, we recruit around 20 men, but initiate somewhere around 12-14.

My fraternity initiation is on Sunday and I’m not sure if I should go through with it. I love all my brothers but I’m afraid to be honest with them. They are so open with me and willing to help and I feel I might not be up to their standards. What should I do?

My fraternity has done the same thing year after year during our pledge period. The brothers have stopped attending pledge nights because the entire pledge program is stagnant. Can you give advice on some good events we can have that will get the brothers interested?

I joined a fraternity this fall because they stood for being different from other fraternities, and not just being a stereotype. Unfortunately, my experiences with them have proved otherwise, and I am losing interest.

This is a heck of a lot of work, so don’t try this unless you’re really prepared to do it right, but it’s an amazing new member event if you can pull it off.

I need ideas on our pledge process. I need ideas on how to make pledges do something that has an underlying meaning behind it.

First off my fraternity only initiates a pledge after his grades are out and receives a 2.75 GPA and 2.5 cumulative, but our current fraternity president is keeping guys around off the books several semesters later and charging them dues but never fully initiating them or recognizing them nationally.

I was up at my chapter today, and a new member said something that pissed me off. I wanted to take a minute to share my reaction because I think it might be helpful to others.

Nobody had a better big brother than I did. My big brother lived across the hall from me in the dorm for my freshman and sophomore years. He took his role as big brother seriously when I was a pledge. He always looked out for me in private, but appeared to be hard on me in public. He took the time to explain to me what fraternity meant to him, and took the time to answer any questions I had.