|
My previous response was a quick reaction/response to brother "grits"
posting. While I have great respect for his experience and background,
after further reflection, I believe I have to say that I totally
disagree with the whole concept that a "small chapter is a bad chapter,"
and that one can not have a "full" fraternal experience with only
a few brothers.
Quite the contraray, I think that in most cases, one would have
a BETTER fraternal experience in a chapter of 20 than in a chapter
of 100. Personally, given a choice of joining a chapter of 20 or
one of 100, I would choose the smaller, HANDS DOWN!
This is NOT a novel idea. If one looks at the policies of fraternities
in the 1800's, 20 (or close to that) was an UPPER limit on chapter
size. Many of the early fraternities would open two or even three
chapters on one campus. The first three chapters of Sigma Kappa were
on one campus. Why? If the size of the chapter grew too
large for a "close brotherly bond," usually around 20, another chapter
was needed.
How can one share a "close brotherly bond" with 100, or even 50, other
guys? With the busy schedules of today's undergraduates, this is
impossible. At best, one could say, "Yeah, I know a little about
that guy...he's one of my 75 fraternity 'brothers'."
I believe what this boils down to is the ever-evolving definition
of "What is a fraternity? (chapter)" I think today many speak of
"brotherhood" as some distant ideal, something every fraternity blabbers
about during rush, but not practiced as the PRIMARY PURPOSE
of a fraternity, as it was in the distant past. It seems today many fraternities,
especially Lambda Chi, want to define themselves in terms of the
programs they offer, and their "value added" benefits to the
undergraduate experience. BROTHERHOOD is being relegated to the
back seat. The belief that with high numbers, great programs, intramural
awards, and philanthropic events that make the newspapers, brotherhood will
naturally fall in there somewhere. I also believe that the movement in
this direction is motivated primarily by MONEY...a chapter is a "funds
generating entity." If they don't generate, close 'em down.
This sounds a bit harsh, and maybe impractical from a financial standpoint,
but it is the conclusion to which I've come afer some reflection and 20
years experience working with "struggling" and "successful" chapters.
Here are a few anecdotes.
While working with the colony at Vanderbilt 15 years ago, we were in
a seemingly precarious situation to begin with. Colony size ranged between
30 and 35 on a campus where the largest third of the chapters had
over 100 members. We were the only group on campus without a house,
having instead a "garage"...a small building with one large cinder-block
room, right next door to SAE. The colony suffered from the bad
reputation of the local that HQ absorbed, called Tri-Chi, with LX
often called "Lambda Tri-Chi Alpha" as an insult (XXX consisted of
about 15 "nerds" when accepted by LXA. Had it not been accepted by
LXA, it would have died in less than a year. Once accepted, the
remaining XXX's were "hidden" while LX's from HQ and nearby chapters
rushed a "new chapter")
At the time SAE was the largest and most popular frat on campus. They
had over 120 members, the nicest and oldest house on campus (the
chapter owned the magestic stone house for over 100 years), they
had the biggest parties and the hottest girls. They dominated intramurals,
and had a very good overall GPA. For most rushees, an
SAE bid was the most coveted. By Lambda Chi's current thinking, this
would probably be judged an "excellent" chapter had it been a LXA
zeta.
I befriended a fifth-year senior who was member of SAE. Sometimes he
kidded me with the "Lambda Tri-Chi" bit, though he knew I was actually
a transfer from another school and never knew the XXX's.
Surprisingly, or maybe not, he was very cynical about his chapter
after 4 1/2 years as an SAE. He said while they had over 120 members,
only about 20 of them really cared about the fraternity. The rest
were there for the parties and so they could wear the letters on campus.
He said he actually "envied" us, watching from the heights of their castle,
for our close-knit bunch of about 30 at the time. It is very safe to
say that the fraternal experience of the small group far exceeded that
of the "shining star" next door.
About 2 years later, SAE spent over $100,000 on renovating their house,
followed by $20,000 in damage at the first party in the renovated house.
A year later, their charter was revoked. The pot smoking on their back
basketball court, about 30 feet from the front of the LXA garage, probably
had alot to do with that, not to mention their heavy hazing.
Another, more recent, anecdote follows. I've described in previous posts
the "hard years" for our chapter when I was an active 20 years ago.
Since then, Kappa-Omega Zeta grew to over 80 active members in the
late 90's and has won the GHA award every year possible since 1993,
including 2005. Recently I had a conversation with one of the
elder actives, a brother who had just finished basic training and has
served in Iraq. He asked me about the "hard years," why they happened,
etc. After my story-telling, he commented, "Wow, you guys must have
been tight....wish it were still that way today." What? How could
someone from a "highly successful" LXA chapter think that a chapter
of 13-25 members on the "edge of survival" would have a better fraternal
experience? Maybe he was wrong, but that was his comment.
A final set of anecdotes, from LXA ELCs who visited Kappa-Omega. When
we had only 13-25 members, our parties weren't the greatest, we sucked
at intramurals, and our GPA left much to be desired. But there was
one area where this "faltering chapter" excelled....the RITUAL. It
was the one activity where, though most would say I am biased, I would
claim we had one of the best in the nation. We had a tradition of
training a High Phi for up to a year before he was elected. The position
was almost a monarchial dynasty, rather than an elected position, as
the current Phi would select the next at least a semester before elections.
Unfortunately that tradition doesn't exist today, though they still
do a decent job (I've seen ritual at over a dozen other chapters, to
which I can compare).
However I also have some external support for my boast. After ELC visits,
including one where I was Phi, the ELCs would send "green Phi's" from
nearby chapters to us for training. Why to the dinky 20-member chapter,
instead of the mighty 80-member chapter just 12 miles away (UKy)?
The ELCs must have seen something good there, though at the time
we thought it nothing special...we saw it as our duty to do the best
job possible with ritual.
Again while I was an active in a dinky chapter, another ELC was so
impressed with our brotherhood that he came back to visit at least
twice, on his own time (we're only a 3 hour drive from Indy). He
went to our formal, and went rock climbing with us at least once.
Finally, a letter from about 5 years ago from an ELC. He stated that
he had been an ELC for 2 years, had visited many chapters, and
Kappa-Omega would be his last. He thought he had seen it all, and
expected nothing new. However he was so impressed with what he found
there, he wrote a letter expressing his feelings about our brotherhood.
Though his visit was well after our "great rebound," I know the same
spirit he found in the early 2000's existed during the "dinky chapter
years."
I have to apologize for boasting on my chapter so much, but the point
is that a small chapter CAN have a very meaningful fraternal experience.
There may be no leadership training programs, future international
business connections, or even intra-mural championships or kick-a**
parties.
But for some of us, fraternity is more than racking up good stats and
receiving the praise and recognition of others. It is about a close
brotherly bond between those who are growing and learning together
during the struggles of their college years, and beyond. That's not
to say I think such activities are bad or worthless...just the
opposite, they are great. But when it comes to "judging" a chapter,
I believe BROTHERHOOD should be the most important factor.
So as a democratic organization, Lambda Chi has to decide what it
wants to be. Made up of chapters with the best programs, large
groups of guys (who may not know each other well, but with get great stats),
and recognized excellence, or an organization which places brotherhood
above all, hopefully including all the above as fringe benefits.
Brotherhood is hard to measure....something difficult to make a
flowchart of using Microsoft Excel. But, as is often said with the
more intangible and important things in life...
YOU KNOW IT WHEN YOU SEE IT.
I truly hope that as HQ evaluates the "struggling chapters", they
don't close one with a strong brotherhood just because they've averaged
only 20 members for the past few years. I'd rather they closed the
chapter with 120 actives, a top house, the best parties, but with
little or no brotherhood, like the Vandy SAE chapter described
earlier. The cynic in me fears that money will be the deciding
factor, however, and brotherhood the looser.
Ok, I've done a lot of complaining, some might say. One who criticizes
should offer an alternative solution. Since the early 90's, LXA leaders
have been expressing the idea that "the fraternity must change; we
must offer something new compared to what we have been in the past
three decades." Most, including me, would agree. If fraternities remain
"party houses," they are doomed to extinction. As a college professor,
I have seen the evolving student body of today's campuses. No more
do 18-21 year-old white Christians looking-for-a-good-time dominate
the male university-student demographic.
Our direction in the past 15 years seems to have been to become a
"value added" attribute to the undergraduate experience. Here too
I can mostly agree. Leadership training, business-like seminars, etc.
can be very helpful. But this vision has been corrupted by financial
problems. Maintaining training seminars, etc., while beneficial, is
expensive. At some point we'll have to decide what is more important...
the "value added" approach with its expense, or perhaps something
else?
Is there another direction, another path of evolution, that fraternities
can follow? I think so. I'd call it "Back to the Basics: BROTHERHOOD
Over All." Besides the changing racial, age, and religious demographics
of today's college student, there is another growing aspect where I
believe fraternities can fill a need. The need for a close family
relationship.
Many undergraduates come to our universities today from fragile or
broken families. Some may have never experienced a close familial bond.
This is where the fraternity can fill a great need, a need that no
other type of organization can, with the possible exception of religious
groups. Honoraries, professional societies, and community service
organizations can and do offer many of the same "value added" activities
that fraternities are trying to offer. Many of these have leadersip
seminars, ELC visits, etc. With them we must compete, if we stay on
our current course.
But BROTHERHOOD, a close familial bond, is the one thing that a social
fraternity can offer, if it so chooses, that these others simply can
not. Such a change would be revolutionary in many aspects, instead
of evolutionary as our current efforts are. Today we boast of
our "value added" activities while many of our chapters still languish
in the greek culture of the 1980's: we have parties AND leadership
training AND parties AND community service....and oh, did I mention
PARTIES?
There's certainly nothing wrong with parties (at least most of them);
I've attended a few myself! But if we could promote ourselves as
FAMILIES, that just so happen to party, just so happen to have
leadership training and other "value added" attributes, the college
fraternity could rebound while at the same time returning to its
roots and filling an increasingly-dire need on college campuses.
If anyone actually read all of this, well...thanks....but you must
have been really bored! OK, off the soapbox.
|