The Spring 2007 Update
 

Happy Founders Day everyone! Perhaps I write the following in the spirit of Jack Mason.

Today I received a copy of the Spring 2007 "Update - A Lambda Chi Alpha Educational Foundation Publication." I was very happy to see a section called "Current Chapter Stats", listing all chapters, current (#of) undergraduates, and total initiates. Very good!

Then I started looking at the numbers.

- I've known Sigma-Chi 407 for years. He graduated from Alabama-Birmingham then spent a couple years at UPenn in grad school, and is now back in Alabama going to law school. The problem is, the "current stats" show his chapter as having only 382 total initiates.

- Trey, aren't you Pi-Iota 47? NC A&T is shown as having 25 initiates.

- In November 2003 I presented Beta-Nu 641 with a nice badge upon his initiation. Strangely, Beta-Nu has only 608 at last count.

All these figures are listed "as of 2/1/07."

Why - in this age of spreadsheets and computerized record keeping - are these so-called current stats so out of date? Even the figures in the 2003 Paedagogus are more up-to-date. Can anyone explain why this happened?

The title "Update" is really a misnomer, and what I thought was a great resource is so unreliable as to be essentially useless.

C'mon guys. Can't we do better than this?

ZAX,
Jono

PS - Tom, before you even ask, Pitt State supposedly has a total of 552.

Interesting question Jono about the unreliable numbers.

I guess we have to determine if the fault lies with:

1. the chapter, for not sending HQ the correct numbers, or any numbers at all.

2. HQ, for not keeping records properly or recording them up to date.

3. mixture of both.

I'm willing to venture that it is mostly #1.

"Why, in my day..." said the grumpy old man...
 

I don't know how they do it now, but in the early 90's when I was an undergrad, Zeta numbers were assigned by IHQ. Our Gamma sent in a list of brothers initiated on a certain date, and based on number of credits, then alphabetically by last name, we were given our numbers.

For example, there were 10 in my class. 6 upper-classmen and 4 freshmen. As a freshman with a last name starting with "B," I was seventh, followed by a "G," an "H," and a "Y."

We had to wait until the following semester to order our (stunning black satin disco-style) jackets because we hadn't received our Zeta numbers yet.

Well why would it be number one's fault.......IHQ gets an entire list of every initiate candidate and then has to approve the list......and then everybody gets a little plastic card and initiation certificate from HQ.....so they obviously have the records and are most likely just not filing them right....or keeping up with well....and not to mention the Paeds being more up to date than Jono's magazine (???).......so I'm blaming the Writers/Researchers of the article for not doing some better research.

And yes I am 47.......and as a matter of fact we never ended on 25...we had 12, 20, 37, 53, 61........so i don't even know where 25 would have gotten pulled from :confused:

Good point Trey.

I would like to change my answer to #2.

Jono,

First off, you are correct, we are at 658 at the moment.


I too as you wonder with all of the high tech available that there is no better update. I will be looking in the mail for this peice of litature to peruse.:)

GammaZeta, I opt for # 3.

It does work both ways.

Not to belabor the point, but my guess is that each alumnus who receives this publication is going to do what I did, and go right to own chapter's listing to see what number they're up to. He's going to be disappointed that either the chapter's not doing so well, or recognize that a mistake has been made and no one caught it.

Some of the data are three or four years out of date. Tom, since you know the actual current stats at Pitt State, I looked back in a few editions of the Paedagogus and found the following:

1997, 47th edition, 546
2000, 48th edition, 564
2003, 49th edition, 595

The "current" number of 552, therefore, seems to go back almost ten years.

Staff has volunteer proof readers (I'm one of them) who would have picked up on these mistakes in a second. I know because I did.

The Educational Foundation should also take advantage of the free resources available to them, because when you're asking for money, people are more likely to donate when they know you're paying attention to detail and care enough about each chapter (and each reader) to get everything right.

Anything less sends the opposite message.

No, Brother Jono, Belabor away because you have points well taken.

I have gotten an update from IHQ of Alums of LX Z and Brother Pete Cole is in the process of ciphering them out!

The last update I had was # 549 before this last one sent to me by Brother Jason Pearce.

He also asked that that any updates be done via automatic email with the update program which I continually place on LX Z Alumni emails.

I also directed him to this Site to maybe give us more information on what, and how it needs to be done and how it will be done.

Yes, it is important for us as Alumni to be able to contact our Brothers and they should be the center of information. But, of course, it also depends on the information that is input to them and if they get it done in a timely manner.

Times or important for us and all of the Brothers to keep updated in more ways than one!

Thank you for bringing this up in the first place!

Greetings from beautiful Normal, IL, home of Illinois State University and Beta-Omicron. I'm here for the Founders Day festivities. RE: the idea that IHQ gets information from the chapters, that's mostly true.

However, there was a period in the 90's when our reporting was lousy. In fact, this came to a head when we initiated B-O 1000 about 3-1/2 years ago. It turned out that there were 4 men who hadn't gotten their paperwork in to IHQ (a.k.a. the Gamma didn't do it for them).

We took all sorts of photos w/B-O #1 and the guy we thought was B-O 1,000. By our count, he was the 1,000th initiate. If you spoke to someone in Indy, he was #996.

At any rate, it took us about a month of back-and-forth e-mails between the alumni president and IHQ to finally get things corrected. Garbage in, garbage out, right?

As I've heard, "Communism works in theory. In practice, however..."--

In ZAX,
BF

Brotehr Bill, you are to funny!:)

Now, I guess the point is how does the "Most Current Update" get updated?

What is infuriating, is the Zetas get charged for what is listed via IHQ for membership and the money had better soon be sent to IHQ as this is a portion of the life blood for LXA and there is a heafty fine. If IHQ is not keeping this updated, how much more often are other things missed and Zetas are being charged for members who have either graduated or dropped out of school?

As I said, it is a two way street. If information is sent in in a timely manner then why is it not so placed in the records the same way?

I know LX Z has had to call the question many times for this. Zetas normally are scratching for finances as is IHQ.

BOZ,

Thanks for the story. Have a great time at Founders Day! I hope it's a good one. Will catch up with you later.

ZAX,
Jono

There's definitely some investigation needed on this issue. I was having an animated discussion w/one of my "century grandsons", BOZ 1030, during the Founders Day open house on Saturday.

Imagine my surprise when I got home, found the Update in my pile of mail and discovered that Beta-Omicron has only initiated 964 men. Whaaa????? The #1,000 discrepancy was taken care of back in 2004.

I realize that I was a Communications major and that cipherin' and cogitatin' weren't really part of the curriculum, but it seems to me that something's wrong here...

Illegals
 

Brothers,

Anybody have any thoughts about how "illegals," or men who were initiated by a local Zeta without the knowledge of IHQ, might factor into this situation?

Yours in ZAX,

Mike Raymond,
Z-U Zeta

Mike,

I'm sure unapproved initiations take place more often than we'd like to think, but as Trey pointed out, those brothers are going to want their membership cards and certificates.

What's unusual in this case, however, is these numbers are lower than those previously published by IHQ.

So why did they go DOWN?

ZAX,
Jono

I Don't Know, But Zeta-Upsilon Numbers Don't Match!
 

Brother Jono,

Thanks for your reply.

We Initiated six new members Friday night. The highest Zeta number we now show is 1247. The 2007 Update has us at 1207! That is a huge difference in my mind....

I'll vote for #3.

Yours in ZAX,

Mike Raymond