The role of the Social chair or Social Engagement Coordinator, or what ever your chapter has decided to call the person in charge of your social life, is in my opinion one of the most important. This person is almost single handedly in charge of keeping your chapter happy, as well as connected to the community you belong to. There are five very important areas that the social chair over sees, or at least should. In my experience this position has been severely limited to planning two different types of events, social activities with a sorority, and planning formal. While these are important they should also be planning activities with other greeks, events involving the surrounding community, and social events for the chapter. Some chapters have broken this role up in to different positions, such as brotherhood and public relations. If this is true, they all should be part of the Activities committee. In the following pages I will break down the role of the Activities Committee into the three phases of Committed to Lives of Excellence, as well as give some new ideas to make this a more important position within your chapter.
Phase 1: Committed: While in the original program there is a call for a social probation, that does not mean your job as social chair has also been suspended. Just like the Alumni Relations position there is a lot of ground work that is needed to be done during this phase. The first step of this program is removing the focus on external social activities. Like mentioned in the first edition of CLE the removal of external social events forces the brothers to interact with one another. How does this effect your position? If you have a proper activities committee in place, the brother in charge of brotherhood events will be part of this, and will be looking for your advice. If you do not have an activities committee in place it is time to set it up. The basic set up for an activities committee should include the following positions. Social Chair, Brotherhood Chair, the Director of Risk Management, Community Service Chair, and if you have one your Public Relations Chair. These positions might already have a committee designed, so it might be easier just to pool your resources together, and make one committee. No one is in charge per se of the Activities Committee, as each one of you all use the committee for help for your positions. Once you have this in place you can start helping the other members of this committee complete their obligations to the CLE plan. Also during this phase it is up to you to start laying the foundation of information for the next phase of the plan.
First step: You need a binder, or a flash drive to store all your information on, so you can properly pass it on to your successor when it is time for you to step down. Also a copy of all of this information should be given to either your Live In advisor or your Chapter advisor, in case the original is lost. If this is not possible, or you feel there is need for a third copy find a place in the house, or chapter room where you can store a copy. For example where does your chapter store things like treasurer notes, account information and correspondences with Nationals? If your chapter does not have something like this, it is time for your chapter to invest in a filing cabinet. One of the most important things you can do in this phase is to create a plan for the long term. You need to make sure all of your hard work is not in vain, just because it is lost a few years down the road.
Now you have a committee in place, and you have a place to store all the information you have collected. It is time to get to work. First you need to collect a large amount of information so you can properly understand what your chapter will have to do once you can socialize with other groups again. To gather this information there are a couple of steps. The first being contact both your school’s greek advisor, and Nationals. Ask both of these groups to give you information about social policies, rules and regulations etc. These will become the most important rules to follow. Secondly contact all of the sorority social chairs, or what ever they decide to call them. If you are comfortable with the idea, set up a meeting. If not ask for information via email. What you are going to need from every sorority is something many do not write down. You are going to need both their official and the unofficial rules they have for social events. This will include things like alcohol limits, themes they can and can not do, as well as logistics of social events. Some chapters require the sisters to all leave the place at 12am, and change before they can return. Others require a sister to be in an established relationship before she is allowed to stay after a social event. All of this will be a huge advantage to you in the next step of this plan.
Once you have all of this information, it is time to process all of the data. This could take awhile, and a lot of it will be redundant but important. Once you have an idea of what each sorority requires, it is time to consult your DRM and the MRG. Once you sit down with the DRM the two of you can start to formulate the formal, and informal policies that will dictate your future social activities. I have included a mock up example of social policies in the appendix.
The next thing you need to start on is working completely optional, but it will make a large difference in how you are viewed on campus later on. This is a program called Sweetheart.
“The Sweetheart position is the highest position within the fraternity for a female. It is a position of honor and respect, the woman picked for sweetheart will be the female face of Delta Tau Delta to the rest of the school community. She must be of good moral behavior, well known in the brotherhood, be of good academic standing as well as comfortable representing the fraternity.”
This will not be put into place until the third and final stage of the program, but it is a really good idea to start working on this early on, so you can work out all of the kinks well before it is time to actually appoint a sweetheart. See the appendix for what I created for the Sweetheart program, as an example. Be sure to check early on with your campus to make sure that this is okay with your school. Some schools do not allow fraternities to appoint a sweetheart, for the fear that it is more of a “Little Sister” idea, instead of an honor.
The last thing you as social chair needs to work on during the first stage of CSLE is formal. I preface this with a formal is meant to be an award to your chapter who has done well working towards their goals. If there is no improvement do not worry about a formal. If there has been improvement, using formal as a reward with make people work harder to keep on improving.
Basic formal, that is what you are looking for. Do not go crazy for this, remember it is meant to be a reward, but you still need to keep the bar low, so later formals will be even better! This will make people continue striving to become better. Basic logistics you need to think about. You need a venue, most college towns have a lot of options, such as bars, night clubs, conference centers, hotels and country clubs. Find a venue that includes a cash bar in the price, this will make it much easier on you to plan. The second thing you need is transportation. Some schools will offer scholarships towards safe transportation for fraternities, and it is worth looking into. The third thing you need is music. a DJ is one of the easiest ways to do this, check with your venue and see if they have a list of local DJs, or even if they have one on staff. Remember keep it basic, and make sure you pick a venue that fits your chapter. Do not get a huge ballroom if your chapter is 15 men, also do not get a small conference room for a 60 man chapter. The last thing to keep in mind when planing a formal is behavior contracts. Anytime you plan an event outside of your house, or chapter room you need to remind your brothers that they represent a national fraternity, as well as your school. They need to behave in a some what appropriate manor when in the public. Talk to your DRM for ways to create a Behavior contract for the brothers. If you do not think this is necessary, just think worst case scenario. What are you going to do if a brother is peeing in the potted plants?(trust me it happens) Or what are you going to do if a brother gets upset and breaks something? How bad is that going to make your chapter look? Also where are going to do formal next year if you burned the bridge with your venue?
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