[17959] in APO-L
service programs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Amy C. Masters)
Sat Dec 13 17:44:31 1997
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 17:42:49 -0500
Reply-To: "Amy C. Masters" <acmast01@HOMER.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
From: "Amy C. Masters" <acmast01@HOMER.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
I have a question (that, thankfully, has nothing to do with gender). A
bit of background first:
My chapter has experienced SERIOUS growing pains in the last year or so.
We didn't recognize them at first, or at least didn't deal with them
properly, and we're down to a smaller membership than I've seen in three
years of membership. The general opinion in the chapter is that the last
EC went on a power trip and made our bylaws and policies too strict,
particularly those pertaining to our service program. This year's EC is
looking at ways to revamp our service program, in hopes of "fixing
whatever's broken."
My school (University of Louisville) is mostly a commuter school-- over
80% of the students live off campus. The majority of students are
nontraditional, with the average age of a student somewhere around 26 or
27. Most of us work full-time or close to that.
Part of the problem, IMHO, has been that people pledge while they live
on-campus, then move into an apartment, and don't have the ability to make
the same time commitment to APO.
As things stand now, we have a requirement of 20 hours per semester for
pledges and actives, a minimum of 5 of which must be fundraising, and
pledge requirements to sit on a committee (service, fellowship, internet,
rules and regs, membership...), as well as organize as a class at least
one service, fellowship, and fundraising project. What we're considering
now are contractual agreements between individual brothers and the chapter
for service, by hours, committee involvement, or whatever else they can
do.
I'd like some feedback on all of this, particularly from either people who
were involved with chapters at similar schools to mine, or who had similar
service contracts. Tell me if they were great, awful, unenforceable,
saved your collective hides, or whatever. Also, if you have some other
very novel setup in your program that you think would work for us, I'd
like to hear about those as well. Thanks--
YiLFS, Amy Masters
Sectional Rep, Delta Theta
