Alum/Chapter Relations

Yes, It’s Another Greek Life Post

Morning, Belles & Beaus,

I know that my non-Greek life readers dread these posts. My regularly scheduled mumblings about things will be back tomorrow if you’d like to click out now. However, I found that this is an extremely important point to discuss on my blog for those that are of Greek affiliation.

If you are like me and you love your organization, then you want to be able to attend things to support your respective Greek organization. With Alum chapters this is easy as the calendar is set at the first meeting of the year and things rarely change. If they do, then usually it’s a time or location change. Those are usually easy to work with.

But when you want to attend things for your collegiate chapter, then you usually run into some issues. One of the biggest is one that I heard my chapter complain about almost every single chapter meeting. “We want more alums to come to things! Why won’t they come?!”

We do not come because we are not given enough notice of when events take place.

There. You have it. The cold harsh truth of the adult world. Sorry, kids, we’re adults. Who work 30-40 hours a week at jobs that pay our bills. We cannot just take off at the drop of the hat to show up to collegiate activities that you would really like us to attend. Don’t get me wrong! At my old job if I knew a month in advance – because certain people wanted me to be there and told me – then I would be able to work it out with my boss to be there because I worked weekends at that job.

But that isn’t always the case! Not everyone gets that lucky! Another thing is that if we don’t know about an events at minimum a month in advance, then we are going to have other plans and not be able to come or not want to come. Then we get to hear about how we are horrible people for not coming when we were told about things.

Well here’s the truth:

You cannot tell us about an event the DAY OF and expect us to come. It’s not possible.

I don’t know about other alums, but even as much as I love my organization and want to support the collegiates of my initiating chapter, I’m not going to cancel plans with say my high school friend that I barely get to see as it is just to come to an event that you, the collegiates, didn’t have the decency to send me a notice a month in advance of. That is not how this works.

To put it bluntly: you cannot blame the alums for never showing up when the officer in charge of communicating events to them NEVER tells them with enough notice.

You want them at the all Greek Formal that they have to pay $25 per person to get into? Tell them a month in advance of when their money is due.

Want them to attend the chapter formal/founder’s day that’s going to require them to pay? Tell them a month in advance of when the money is due.

Want them at initiation/help with recruitment workshops/or just there for some fun tailgating event at a football game? Tell them a month in advance so they don’t make plans and can actually come!

Do you happen to see the pattern that I’m painting here?

If you are looking for somewhere to place the blame, then please look to your own officers before you start assuming that we as alums do not care about you as collegiates. We care. That’s why we volunteer our time as AAC members and higher to help you all with issues that might crop up.

But you cannot assume that we can just make it to things at the drop of a hat. It’s not possible. It’s not going to happen. This is how you alienate your alums so that they do not want to attend things. We stop showing up because you don’t appreciate that we take time to come and be with you all. We don’t have to. We choose to.