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While I can understand where you guys have been coming from, I think that there is something that should further be understood and looked at here. I definitely concur in the opinion that I do not want other chapters butting into my home chapter's business, nor do I necessarily feel the need to get involved in theirs. However, looking at things from a business perspective, each chapter is not its own business, each chapter is a member of the larger corporation. As such, members of the corporation should have the right to gain at least some knowledge into the inner workings.
Basically any time that you take a look at the GF website, you'll see that there are chapters reporting on various successes that they have had. But isn't it strange that there is virtually never a failure posted? Is it because every chapter is functioning so well that there are no massive failures worth reporting? Of course not, this is merely selective reporting of the news to create a particular image. There is barely a mention of when a chapter is closed, much less severely reprimanded. The entire process needs to become somewhat more transparent.
That having been said, I am no great fan of the AO staff in large part. While I am sure that the hearts and minds of these men are in the right place, they are working on a seriously misguided sense of action. It is not the job of the General Fraternity to step in constantly. We're closing chapters as quickly as we're opening them, that suggests to me that there is a problem. Now comes the question of what the problem actually is. The first possibility is that there are far too many irresponsible individuals, who are not living up to the Code, and basically disgraces to the name of the fraternity. The second possibility is that those individuals who sit on their high hill in Oxford have little understanding of what it takes to be successful on the undergraduate level, have forgotten what life was like when they themselves were undergrads, and are high and mighty enough to believe in their own superiority. As for me, I think it's the latter.
Here's one final thing to consider, and I can't believe it hasn't been brought up yet. Alpha won some awards at Convention last year, with the most important being the Knox and Sisson Awards. These are the absolute highest honors that a chapter can receive throughout the course of a year. They are the supposed mark of chapter excellence. Are we to believe that in a period of about 6 months (4-5 of which were actual academic months) that this chapter has devolved to a point where the entirety of the membership needs to be reviewed? Something is rotten in Oxford.
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