By Michael Friedlander
State University of New York at Buffalo

For years, the Zeta Theta Chapter has promoted an active membership by requiring members to participate in a certain percentage of each type of event. For example, members, in order to remain in "good standing", needed to attend 60% of all technicals, 3 community service activities, 50% of general business meetings and one Adopt-A-Highway per semester. In addition, members needed to either serve on a committee or participate in the Chapter's tutoring program.

Although this has proven successful for our Chapter as we have achieved Superior Status over 17 years of existence, it has often been difficult for certain members to attend the required events in order to be considered active. All it would take is for someone not to be available for one of the two Adopt-A-Highway dates or fall short one technical and that member would not be considered to be in "good standing".

The system described above did not provide the membership with the necessary flexibility to choose what events would best suit a particular member. Further, it was too subjective and often confusing. For example, when a member needs to attend 60% of technicals and the Chapter only hosts nine, how many does the member need to attend? Do we round up or down? In such situations, it often ended up being an Executive Committee decision as to whether or not a member made "good standing".

It is because of such technicalities that the membership has welcomed the proposed point system. Members may now pick and choose, to some extent, the events that they wish to attend and still reach the "good standing" status.

The system is designed to award points to members in a similar manner that the Chapter receives points from Nationals. In other words, members would receive a lot of points for attending events that the Chapter receives a lot of points for, such as major service activities.

A certain number of technicals and business meetings are still considered required, but the number is drastically lower and more easily attained. Once baseline is accomplished, members may attend any combination of events to achieve the required number of points to reach "good standing". For any given semester, the points required to reach "good standing" may be adjusted to compensate for any differing number of events. Currently, members are required to accumulate 55 points in addition to the baseline activities (one community service activity, two technicals, one organizatinal meeting, resume submission and payment of dues). In addition to "good standing", there is "superior status". Members who achieve this are separately recognized at Chapter functions and in Chapter publications as a means of rewarding those who go "above and beyond" the standard requirements.

The proposed system offers the flexibility that the previous system lacked in addition to being much more "user friendly". By promoting flexibility and recognizing those members who are highly active, we are hoping that the already active membership becomes even more active.

For more information on the specifics of the point system, you can access our website at:
http://www.mgt.buffalo.edu/students/clubs/Beta_Alpha_Psi