Status of all-male chapters

[KAPital PHINUst]

Originally Posted by emb021

A tangental commment on this.

One thing that really annoys me with some Brothers is their rigid attitude toward change. I heard a lot of this in regards to recent proposals to change the Toast Song. The worse of this attitudes would be "I want APO to remain just the way it was when Frank Reed Horton founded it". This is just such a stupid attitude.

I love and respect history, and I love and respect the history of APO. But if there is ONE thing I've learned in my studies of our history is HOW MUCH WE HAVE CHANGED. I do not feel that these changes have altered our fundamental principles (tho there have, IMO, been attempts to do so). But there have been changes. Sadly, since so few Brothers have a decent understanding of our history, this attitude prevails. The history given in our Pledge Manual is just a high-level basics. And many chapters, IMO, emphasis their chapter history over national history such that their members have an even poorer understanding of it.

For instance. Our Toast Song did not come around until after H. Roe Bartle was our National President. How many realize this?

This is why I've been working on a series of presentations on APO history that I finally hope to present as a workshop at our next National Convention. Hopefully it will happen.

Speaking for myself only (though I am sure a number of brothers with these "rigid attitudes towards change" would agree with me to one extent or another), the reason why I am so resistant to all these changes is because it is turning APO from a service fraternity to a Circle K-ish greek letter service club. I didn't pledge a club, I pledged a fraternity.

And FWIW, being part of an all-male chapter intrinsically brought with it certain elements and traditions that gave APO the appearance, both in form and in substance of being a true-to-form fraternity rather than just a fraternity in structure, but a service club in form.

These changes IMHO are undermining the very essence of what Alpha Phi Omega was founded to do: to serve in a FRATERNAL bond. And I resent the notion that for this reason, my attitude is a so-called "stupid" one.