Fraternity Rush at Kansas

[CrackerBarrel]

Originally Posted by Kedzman

Throwing big parties and breaking the rules isn't unique or difficult. Rather, it is common and easy. Thus, you are members of common, lethargic organizations. You are like dinosaurs marching toward extinction and you don't even realize it. You laugh at hard work and embrace folly.

No, we aren't. Even if you threw out the parties on our side and awards on yours, I would challenge that our chapters are still better than the others. The ideals which my fraternity was founded on weren't to include everyone or to make sure everyone felt welcome. It was to provide those with a common purpose a chance to have a brotherhood. You may argue that the "traditional" chapters are elitist and have lost sight of their purpose, but I think that's entirely untrue. Yes, we probably are somewhat elitist and very selective. So were our founders. No fraternity that I know of was founded and then went out to try to recruit as many men as possible. The purpose was to unite those who had a common purpose, and that role is best filled by the elite (or elitist, however you see it) chapters. When more value is placed upon how many members you can get, or how many philanthropies you won (again, no where does my fraternity's history mention community service hours) or how you do at intramurals or any of these other qualities that nationals gives awards for, I'm pretty sure it's your houses who have lost sight of the fraternity's purpose. The fraternities have decided to turn from what they used to be - a very effective (if somewhat elitist) training ground for future leaders - in an effort to be more politically correct. You gain a lot more in terms of character from a hard pledgeship, nationals looks down on it. You watch out for your house and keep brothers out of trouble by having a pledge driving program, nationals says it's hazing. You have a tighter brotherhood by having very strict standards before a bid is given, nationals thinks you're being discriminatory. National Fraternities have tried too much to keep up with the "changing times" and it's them that lost track of what a fraternity is.