Bigs and retention revisted August 21, 2007
Posted by Oats in Fraternal Families, Kappa Kappa Psi, Membership Education, Retention & Attrition.add a comment
Hi everyone!
first off – glad to be here, long time reader, first time poster…uh. umm…hmm, that doesn’t seem right.
second – holy cow! it takes me like 4 days to catch up, so bear with me.
The speed at which our bloggidy blog is moving is almost downright torrential and I find it hard to find time to comment – so I’d like to revisit the bigs and retention discussion that may have passed by.
Following Euclid and Jennai here…(and I promise this’ll be a quick post – and might touch points that have been mentioned that I just haven’t caught up with yet).
I’m having a hard time with the idea of the responsibility for retention resting on the VP and the President’s shoulders. I mean, I’m not a firm believer in the mentality that the chapter is as strong as it’s executive leadership. In some instances and chapters, that may be the case, but I’ve never been a part of that.
Retention really, in my opinion, relies on a few aspects: Membership (quality), education (pre- and post), and I suppose an argument could be made in the realm of executive branch.
Membership: It’s pretty simple really – you get those that really soak in the brotherhood, what it means to serve, enjoy themselves, wear their letters with pride. And you get those (as I believe it was mentioned) “pin and runners.” The one’s that put effort into the brotherhood are usually the ones that stick around. The brother’s that half-ass it through everything, will probably find something better (be it schoolwork, sports, significant other) to take their time away from the chapter. I won’t even talk about those that barely make it into the education process…The point I’m trying to make is, you find people that want to be there and part of the group (not just a part of something) and the retention will happen…it doesn’t mean though, you don’t have to do anything – which leads me to
education: Your pre-membership and post-membership education programs, (and I’m going to lump this in there as well) along with your rituals MUST be not only informative (duh) but interactive, fun, and most of all, I believe, (re)affirming. I don’t want to spend a great amount of time on it, but these ideals we’re taught and have been taught and are being taught over and over and over again are the reasons we decided to join, one of the reasons we decided to stay, and one of the reasons we’re still talking about it today.
Now, if you’re President and your VP are responsible for the membership and education (yes, most VP’s from what I can remember are), then okay, maybe it is imperative you have strong brothers in place. But if it is your chapters responsibility, then maybe a brother’s decision to stay is decided by what the chapter as a whole does.
Speaking from a personal note here: in my years of involvement with my chapter, I don’t think we always had the strongest brother leading. Sometimes, and more often than not, our strongest brothers were not officers – but they did participate. I think we were able to recognize, in some ways, what would be best for our chapter in the sense that, in some years, the face in office was better than the person in office.
shifting gears…(boy i hope all that made some kind of sense)
bigs/littles/family trees…
As long as you’re doing it, and as long as it works for your chapter – continue whichever method is being used. Arguements can be made for revealing early, arguements can be made for later – personally, i’m a fan of right after 2nd degree…for no other reason than that’s when I was told and that’s when I told my little’s…well, I didn’t tell them, but they found out then.
i go for now – I’ll return to the cupboard for now and try to catch up…
losing prospectives August 17, 2007
Posted by Jennai Ell in Kappa Kappa Psi, Membership Education, Recruitment, Retention & Attrition.add a comment
I think we’ll all figure out the identities eventually…I’m fairly certain I know who Euclid’s Dog is (and Turf Herder, of course)
As for losing prospectives…no chapter ever loses *many* that I’ve heard about, and I can’t say that the chapters ask for much “official” explanation for their leaving. When they do have to bow out, it sounds like it’s usually for time commitment things – classloads are too heavy, they have to do things for scholarships, churches, parents get sick, etc. Some decide that the fraternity wasn’t something that they were really serious about (which is better than them figuring it out after initiation), sometimes they run into a money crunch. A few (for the chapters that either voted twice on prospectives (once when they became a prospective and again before they were initiated) or voted upon only before 3rd) would fail the final vote.
I think of all the stories I’ve heard from around the country, I’ve only heard of a couple prospectives who decided that the fraternity wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and stepped away from the program, DURING the program. It’s bad when it happens, and usually related to something not involving actual education.
Then there are the “pin n runs” as someone once called them. Those who’d be initiated and then fall off the face of the planet. Most of these are sad, but don’t come back to bite a chapter in the ass. However, there was a horror story about a brother who was initiated, and then immediately started telling people that which they’d learned in third degree.
Although, I knew a brother from another district who figured out most of TBSigma’s secrets just from paying attention, so it’s not impossible that it wouldn’t happen the other way around.
Getting Things Started August 14, 2007
Posted by Turf Herder in Kappa Kappa Psi, Membership Education, Recruitment.add a comment
Howdy, Internets!
Starting something like this is always the hardest part. Once a conversation like this gets rolling, there’s no shutting it up – but there’s always a little bit of awkwardness at the beginning as people filter in and make themselves comfortable.
To try to get the ball rolling a bit, I present the following “make believe” scenario. You can use it as a jumping-off point, or completely ignore it… up to you. Please post responses in a new post!
We’re all just hanging out, a bunch of alums lazing about in comfy chairs, our feet on the table, happy to be together and doubly happy not to be stuck in a caucus. Suddenly one of these young kids walks in, someone we vaguely recognize as being a vice president of one of the chapters. She sees an empty seat among us and sits down on the edge, not quite sure if she’s welcome.
“I’m going to be VP next year,” she tells us, “and my chapter has had a few bad years lately in the whole recruitment and education department. It seems like we don’t recruit the right people, and the ones we get seem to all get discouraged and drop out before Third Degree. I don’t want to be like that – I want to be a good VP, but I don’t know what to do differently. How were you guys recruited? What made you stick with it so long? What can you tell me that would help me be a better VP than the people who have come before me?”
