News, Info, & Updates

If you serve on a house corporation, don’t buy into the notation that brothers don’t steal from brothers. It happens more often than you think. While fidelity insurance coverage can cover some of the loss, if the theft is large, the house corporation will be left holding the bag.

As a landlord or property manager, you rely on timely rent payments to operate your business. As you well know, however, life happens, and your tenants may not always make paying you their highest priority. 

There are various methods landlords and property managers use to handle rent collection and ensure stable cash flow. What systems should you put in place to make sure your tenants pay rent on time? 

Jessica Scull had just been accepted to Columbia University as a transfer student when she met the companion who would become a crucial source of strength in her life: a gray and white cat named Smokey.

Scull, who had recently been diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, and major depression when she adopted him, in May 2021, says the effect on her mental health was immediate — so much so, she couldn’t bear the idea of moving to Columbia without him.

When selective living is phased out at the end of the 2022-23 academic year, it will have been nearly a century since the practice began—a tradition older than Duke.

Fraternities first received housing in fall 1924, a few months before Trinity College became Duke University that December. This was much earlier than sororities and notably did not include multicultural Greek organizations.

Good communication is essential for a good outcome. Yet, as it plays out between house corps and active chapters, it’s often not so good. To quote a famous line from the movie Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

Many house corp members are old school in how they communicate (sometimes really old school). Take the email style that is written in ALL CAPS. This style is typically only used to emphasize something IMPORTANT. So, how is an email to be interpreted that has every word IN CAPS? On the active chapter side of communication is Millennial Shorthand: LOL, BTW, OMG, WTF and hundreds of emoticons. What’s to be made of this? This is the fraternity equivalent of Mars and Venus.

As any nonprofit leader knows, a strong board of directors is critical to an organization’s success and long-term resilience. 

Beyond fulfilling a legal requirement, an effective nonprofit board also plays an important role in an organization’s governance – for example, by overseeing CEO evaluations and succession planning, providing financial oversight and recruiting new board members – and can help guide strategy, contribute to fundraising efforts and much more. 

Some house corporations may face a time when the active chapter charter is suspended by the general fraternity. This event leaves the house corporation with assets that must be managed without an active chapter to pay the carrying costs. There are typically both funds and real estate to deal with.