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Remember the joy of bringing home a great report card?
One of the rituals of January for fraternity and sorority communities is the appearance of the Fall grade reports. Some chapters stay virtually the same, some rise, some fall. Some are grinning like the kid in the picture, and some are not.
We (meaning advisor types) all carefully look at where the "all men's" or "all women's" averages fall in comparison to the chapter and council scores.
In case you're new to this, dear student leader, here's what you don't want: you don't want your chapter to be below the all men's or women's average. If it does, it means that your members, on average, are doing more poorly than the rest of campus, and it means you need to get busy emphasizing academic performance in your members whose priorities are out of whack. It also means that you need to immediately begin recruiting new members with better grades.
You also don't want your "all fraternity average" to be below your "all men's average" (or all sorority lower than all women's). Why? Because that indicates that your community is either recruiting from the lower end of the academic brain pool or that when a young man or woman joins your Greek community, he or she gets dumber.
This isn't a good thing, because the faculty pay close attention to these numbers. They begin thinking that Greeks are more likely to be academic under-performers, and they treat you that way. It means you don't wear your letters when you go to office hours because you don't want to be labeled a dumb-ass Greek when you walk in the door.
It's also important to pay attention to the new member class grade averages. The quickest way to spot a hazing chapter is to note the gap between the active member GPA ranking and the new member class ranking. If a particular fraternity ranks third among fraternities for GPA, but their new member class ranks 10th, something is going on. Maybe it's not hazing, but at the very least, that chapter's new member program is too intense and distracting, and it's killing the academic standard of its new members. That's not OK.
If your academic ranking depresses you, there are some things you can do:
First, look at everyone below a 2.0 for the past semester AND who have a cumulative GPA that is lower than your chapter's standard (whatever that is). These folks can't hold any offices. They need to be focusing on grades. They also need to be warned that if they don't bring things up this semester, they will be removed from active membership. It's that simple.
Second, take a highlighter and draw lines to mark the top third, middle third, and bottom third of your academic performers. Post it. Then, work on the middle third. They are the ones most likely to make changes and boost their GPAs.
Third, next chapter meeting, buy a box of those "Hello, My Name Is..." nametags. But instead of names, put everyone's GPA on the nametags and challenge people to wear them during the meeting. That will really piss some people off. When people won't wear their GPA's ask them, "Why not?" I'm all for a little shame. Tell them that GPA's will also be listed on all future nametags at recruitment events as well.
Fourth. If your new member GPA isn't equal or higher than your active GPA, call an immediate meeting of your new member and recruitment committees (you have those, right?) and make some radical changes to fix this. Begin by reducing the amount of time new members have to spend at activities. They need more time to be students, and less time to be fraternity members. Set higher standards for recruitment, assign big brothers/sisters only to those members with higher than average GPAs. You get the idea.
Fifth. If you're the Greek Advisor on campus, take out an ad in the student newspaper and publish the grades of the chapters on campus. Let everyone see who cares and who doesn't. Oh, and tell your chapter leaders that starting in 2009, this report will be made available to all men and women joining fraternities and sororities. Really, nothing works better to boost grades than positive peer pressure.
Fraternity men and women are supposed to represent something better. If your Greek grade reports don't reflect that, then you've got a problem.
If your Greek grades were good this past semester: CONGRATS! Thanks for making Greek Life something worth respecting at your campus.
If your personal grades were awesome, THANK YOU for making the rest of us look good.
And now the shameless plug. If your Greek community is really seeing a downturn in scholarship and you think a good speaker might help, check out Mark Hartley. His program, SNAFU: Greeks and Grades, has been getting great reviews for our agency. I think very highly of Mark and his program, and recommend that you give it a look.
