[stufield]

James.

No, I have not seen the Champion Quest program, and don't know much about it. I gather that the "Champions of Recruitment" (individuals who recruit 5 pledges in a single semester) and "Masters of Recruitment" (individuals who recruit 15 pledges within one academic year) designations are part of the program.

The only other thing I know about the program is that it has a really goofy name, something right out of junior high school. The "Quest" part I can understand (pursuing Jackson's Dream). But the "Champion"???? Is a chapter a "champion" because it happens to recruit a large pledge class??? To the best of my knowledge, neither the Five Friends and Brothers nor Steven Alonzo Jackson ever used the word "champion" to desribe any of the Fraternity's goals and objectives or practices, and I don't think that recruiting more pledges than it did last year or than any other fraternity on its campus automatically makes a chapter a "champion". It's a really juvenile title, nowhere near as good as the "Most Wanted Man", "Brothers In Action", and "A Greater Cause" titles of some of the fraternity's other prominent current prgrams.

But whatever it is called, and whatever it involves, the program does indeed seem to be getting positive results at several (though by no means all) our chapters, which is the main thing.

As for the "50 men or largest fraternity on campus" thing, I understand that it is an SEC-mandated requirement for a colony to be eligible to receive its charter as a chapter. Of course, it is just one of several requirements. But it has been somewhat controversial, as it can prove extremely difficult for a new group on a campus to reach the 50-man minimum membership threshhold, or be the largest fraternity on a campus where all the fraternities have memberships of less than 50 men. There are dozens of Kappa Sig chapters that have prospered for years ... for decades ... on their respective campuses that never would have received their charters if they had been required to satisfy the "50 men or largest fraternity on campus" initial membership requirement.

On the other hand, and while I do not have any direct knowledge on the subject, I BELIEVE that the SEC is trying to avoid a repeat of the Fraternity's miserable expansionary experiences in the late 1990's or early 2000's when we chartered chapters with small initial memberships that were uncompetitive on their respective campuses and died out within two or three years of receiving their charters. Xi-Kappa at Florida International University, Xi-Nu at the University of Western Ontario, and Xi-Omicron at Eastern Michigan were three such short-lived chapters that were chartered, and then folded, within a year or two of each other. All had small memberships from the outset, never grew, and simply could not sustain themselves. Understandably, the Fraternity wants to avoid a reoccurrence of such failures, and the SEC evdently sees the "50 men or largest fraternity on campus" as one component of ensuring that its newest chapters are strong and competitive on their respective campuses.

Of course, just because a fraternity has 50 memebrs or happens to be the largest fraternity on its campus at the time it receives its charter is no guarantee of sustained success. But it MAY increase the chance of such success.

But another, perhaps more important consideration is the simple matter of the ability of any fraternity, regardless of its size, to sustain itself on a particular campus, i.e. of the attitude towards fraternities by the student body and theadministration of a particular school. I personally believe that of the Fraterniy's 22 present colonies, at least five and perhaps as many as seven of them are doomed to failure because they are at schools with no current Greek system or such an insignificant Greek system that even if the colony does progress to receiving its charter, the chapter will always struggle and will be lucky to survive five years. Of course, I will be happy to be proven wrong in each of those instances.