After a semester long hiatus, the Delta Iota chapter of Alpha Sigma Phi at Longwood University will participate as an undergraduate chapter in the men’s Greek system.
The Delta Iota chapter, started at Longwood in 1980, halted undergraduate activity during the fall 2012 semester through intervention of Alpha Sigma Phi’s national headquarters. Kate Planow, associate director for Fraternity and Sorority Life, said that the national headquarters’ involvement began about a year ago.
“The national office reached out to us last spring and said that they were seeing a decline in general [chapter] operations across the board,” said Planow. “The national office had given them some checkpoints to hit last spring that we were in support of and they met them all in the spring, but in the fall they missed a couple, so we said, ‘Okay, let’s stop and give them a chance to do this internal reorganization.’ I think it is the best thing that could have happened to this organization.”
Planow elaborated on the idea of “general operations,” saying that the reorganization was geared to “get down some of that base level foundation work.” This foundation, according to Planow, included chapter issues such as, “how do you get the business done, pay your dues and recruit?”
When the chapter failed to meet these “checkpoints” set up by the national fraternity, the undergraduates of the Delta Iota chapter were moved to an “alumni” status by the national fraternity. This meant that the chapter never lost its charter, none of the brothers were disaffiliated and the chapter was still an existing organization. However, there was no actual activity taking place during the time period.
The next step for the chapter to make its way back to having an existing undergraduate presence was bringing in staff from the national offices to begin the recruitment phase of the reorganization.
Justin Ferreira, coordinator of Expansion and Growth for Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity, described the process. “Through my next four weeks of recruitment, we will find guys that make up that initial group ... then those guys who were considered alumni will have the opportunity to go through an interview process, and seeing that the new group welcomes them to come back, then they will be invited back.”
Ferreira went on to further describe the process, saying new member intake is a multi-step process, including two “waves” of new members. The first wave consisted of the 12 to 15 open bids extended to new members during a three day period in late January to set up a core group of future chapter leaders. From there, Ferreira worked as an equal member with the new group to find new men to join the fraternity during men’s walk on Feb. 1. The fraternity is continuing to acquire new men.
The 12 “alumni” brothers who were originally part of the chapter will now have the opportunity to sit down with Ferreira and the “new” Delta Iota chapter and discuss whether or not they wish to return to the chapter and if the chapter is willing to allow the alumni brothers back in.
When asked about the alumni response to how the re-entry process would take place, Planow had this to say: “I think that the older alumni, not the ones that were here, but the other alumni, when hearing that the call for help went out last spring and that there were some operational declines, were excited to step in [and help]. They actually have a fairly new and solid alumni board in place ... that is all very involved and very excited to help bring this group back to where it was in the ‘90s.”
“This should mean good things,” Planow continued. “They have already given out and had a handful of bids accepted and had a ceremony on Saturday [Jan. 26] that a lot of their older alumni came back for. I think if it leads to a stronger chapter, everyone is better for it.”
