[Brother Joseph]

Though I've been out of school a few years I still feel that I can add to this question.

When I was chapter president we had many people who joined APO since they either did not deisire to join a social fraternity or they were rejected from a social Greek organization. This gave APO the reputation as a society of Greek rejects. It became a place where people could pretend to be Greek without having all the stereotypes of Greek life. I'm glad that APO was available at my campus to fulfill that role for students who needed it.

The problem becomes that when we distance ourselves from Social Greek organizations I've found we often distance ourselves from everything that might onnect us to them. By downplaying the term fraternity (with all its negative conotations) we see a change in our organization from a true brotherhood into a simple community service group, much like Circle K.

So yes, we must emphasize weare not a social Greek society but we cannot allow ourselves to seperate ourselves from them to such a degree that we forget we are a fraternity. I think too often people, even people in APO, associate fraterinty with Greek social orgs and relegate us to something less, which hurts us more than it helps.