Quote:
Originally posted by Doc Phi
I see it like this...I had both nationals and locals on my campus and knew practically all of the members from each of these GLOs. However, when I was presented with the opportunity to become a founding brother of my fraternity's beta chapter I weighed the pros and cons of going national vs. local heavily. In the end I came to this conclusion:
"Going national would mean learning history of my organization and greek lettered organizations in general. Going local, and being there at the start would me creating or being part of history, and I liked the latter better."
with regards to history (which I had enough of from grammar school through high school): Why learn it when you can create it/be it...
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That's a specious argument. I'm part of a 152 year old fraternity, and we're still creating our history, and I'm a part of that. I was the first director for two different fraternity initiatives in Phi Psi, and I'm a re-charter member of my chapter. When the third volume of our history is released, covering 1953-2002, I'll have multiple citations.
I'm building on top of a foundation that is almost impossible for any local to even catch up with.
A very good friend of mine, and a fellow Phi Psi, works for a LGLO that was founded in the 80s. They are making great progress, but they are also playing catch up to where we were 70 years ago.
One of the great advantages of an established national organization is that there has been a collaborative effort, with pooled resources, for decades. This yields a level of chapter services that no local will ever, under any circumstance, be able to match. Not all chapters choose to take advantage of these resources, but those that do are so far advanced of any local out there.
Plainly put, locals need to constantly reinvent the wheel, and do so with very few people, who are very inexperienced, and with very little money. When aiming for true excellence, they just can't get their heads above the water.