The overwhelming majority of fraternities elect their e-boards for year-long terms. However, it is not uncommon for fraternities to change e-boards every semester. I actually believe changing e-boards every semester is a better system for four reasons.
First, it ensures the fraternity leadership doesn’t become stale. Fraternity leaders often burnout before their term is over. Shorter terms will ensure that fraternity leaders remain dedicated and focused on their job.
Two, it gives the fraternity the opportunity to remove leaders in a tactful way. Anyone who has ever been in a fraternity has seen a brother get elected by mistake. The elected brother ends up doing a terrible job.
The fraternity is often stuck with two choices. They can try to impeach the brother. This leads to hard feelings and will get very ugly. Or the fraternity can suffer through his term of poor performance. I don’t have to explain how this hurts the fraternity.
By having elections every semester, you have the ability to remove a poor leader in a tactful way.
Third, it gives more brothers the opportunity to lead. Most undergraduates are in school at most five years. You are typically a new member during your first year. That means you only have four opportunities to be on the executive board. By changing e-board elections to every semester, you double those opportunities for your brotherhood to gain valuable leadership experience.
Four, it helps brothers with their academic scheduling. Often e-board performance and dedication will go down if a brother has a particularly hard class load that semester. By moving elections to every semester, the brother will better be able to pick the time which is best for him to take a leadership role.
Having e-board elections every semester has a lot of positives for the fraternity. Those who don’t believe in this setup will say that it hurts with continuity in leadership roles. This isn’t true because a good leader will be able to participate in the next election. If the brotherhood thinks he is doing a good enough job, then he will get elected again eliminating continuity problems.