Insurance for Multicultural Greeks

Philip Velez wrote a great article on insurance for fraternities and sororities. It should serve as a starting point to see what the main issues are. I would just like to expand on that and relate the experience of my organization and the road to getting insured.

It had been several years since my sorority expanded and we were held in high esteem by the administration of the schools were were present. Then, at one of the schools, there was a "changing of the guard" so to speak. The Greek Life office got a new director and suddenly every fraternity or sorority needed to be insured or would not be recognized.

Although we were not insured, my sorority agreed unanimously that we needed to obtain an insurance policy. We even suspended pledging until we could get insurance in place. At our upcoming conference, we were presented with a figure around $2,000 to get the insurance. Only later that year would we find out how "off" that amount was! Apparently this amount was what was being discussed around the Greek grapevine; and also this insurance was not general, but event specific.

However we soon found out that amount was way off. There were only two insurance companies we could find, MJ Insurance and Willis HRH that would insure a sorority. We went with Willis since they were able to get a quote to us much faster. The policy was > $5,000. Since we didn't just have that money laying around in a bank account, we needed to restructure our dues system in order to get the money by the next due date. However, we needed to deal with other costs as well; in addition to the bills we already had. That's when we decided to launch a campaign to get our alumna to become paying members again. Thankfully it worked, and we were able to obtain the insurance policy.

Being insured is a good thing for a fraternity or sorority. However it seems as if both the schools that require the insurance and the insurance industries are out of touch with the nature and needs of multicultural greeks. We operate on a smaller scale, we do not own real estate, and we do not have a hired staff of 20 or more people. Just as general liability policies can be easily secured for a business, a greek organization should also be able to go out there and have a wide variety of insurance products made available to them.

Another solution is that the schools can see to it that the members of it's multicultural greek council are insured. Of course in our case, this would not work in that not all of our chapters have a multicultural greek council. Then you have some sisters who would be covered and others who were not. There are other issues as well. But theoretically, it makes sense. If a university wishes to benefit from a comprehensive Greek life program, then they certainly should look into properly maintaining it.

In the meantime, we will keep doing what we are doing. And I think it is only fair to let people out there know that a good majority of the colleges and universities out there will not let you expand to their campus unless you can prove that you are insured. This alone, without a doubt, instantly stunts the growth of many multicultural fraternities and sororities.