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Thank you Firehouse for your concern and warm welcome.
I would hope that aspiring to be a flagship chapter is a goal of all chapters of Pi Kappa Alpha. Believe me its one of mine for ours. I believe it is more of an ultimate goal for me in the future and I would like to start to lay the foundation now so that after I graduate I can support my chapter. I do not think we can be a flagship chapter in the next three semesters (my remaining time) and maintain any kind of sustainability (I could be wrong, my experience in a fraternity is limited to this chapter.) Although it deserves to be mentioned that I do believe that, with a firm kick in the ass, we can win a few nationally recognized awards.
So my immediate goal is to get all the wheels in our chapter running smoothly and in sync. The only chair that consistently has something to mention in chapter is the social. Our chapter is quick; the past couple of months after fall rush was over I can estimate chapter runs about 25 - 35 minutes on average. I believe this is something that shouldn't happen to a fully functional chapter with upward momentum. I believe we should be spending three times that amount of time planning on how we are going to grow and developing a plan of attack so that the pikes that come after us do not have to do as much work and can devote their time to growing other aspects of the fraternity.
The reason I brought up Ingress in my first post is because I believe that Pledge (New Member, whatever) Education is one of the most important aspects of a fraternity. I feel it should, in addition to growing the pledge mentally and scholastically, set a precedent for what to expect as a Pike. Our pledge education as of right now doesn't consist of a lot, we make them do the basic bitch work (clean after parties) because we all had to do it. We also make them attend study tables 2 hours a night during the week, we developed a scavenger hunt that has them looking all over campus for stuff together, a pledge project (usually ends up being a beer pong table, go figure). What I am looking for is program material to flush out pledgeship. I want everything they do in pledgeship to be pushing them further towards fulfilling our mantra of S.L.A.G. I believe that our fraternity will be better off in the long-run for it.
Pledge Ed is just the tip of the proverbial iceburg. I know it won't be a cure all. It's not going to solve all of our problems, but its a start; and it's a good place to start with the new members having their first impression being huge involvement and commitment. But by doing this I feel that once they get initiated they will be so excited to have earned the right to be brothers that they will pick up a position and own it, they will make it theirs.
I know this is extremely optimistic, but thats all I am running on nowadays. Our chapter is performing not like a Pike chapter on a campus like ours should be. We are very content paying dues for parties and an occasional semiformal. We are stagnant.
Opie
PostScript: I may be wrong. This might actually be a fraternity. My only experience is this; and, no sir, I don't like it.
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