Hey Brad thank you for responding. ITs nice to see A National Officer (unpaid) responding intellegently to general concerns.
I want to keep the tone positive as I respond with some ideas, concerns, and suggestions so let me begin with writing that I believe that probably all the people passionately arguing on the listserv probably have the best of intentions in their involvement with Kappa Sigma.
I believe that beyond whatever value that they personally derive from being an alumni volunteer, most likely everyone has an idea of giving good service. In fact they probably want to give the best service they are capable of within the limitations they impose upon themselves involving their personal lives, employment, and the major one: experience and access to leadership information.
I also believe that they are probably nice people. Most people practice their entire lives creating a nice personality (personality as a method of communication). In fact I can say that everyone I have met in the fraternity has been kind of cool to hang out with within the limitations of my acquaintance with them.
What I find strange is that most people I have met don't differentiate between nice personality, good intentions, and knowledge and competence.
They are different. You can be very effective at task completion and not be nice or have good intentions towards others and you can be a virtual saint and not be able to find your ass with two hands a flashlight and an instructional video.
Somebody can be your best friend and not someone you would make VP of your company in a position that matters, and someone could be not pleasant and you would know that the job would definitely get done.
When people confuse these things it makes it more difficult to argue positions because it seems to imply that we are attacking the person rather than the action or concept.
Suggestion number 1: We should make a concerted effort to teach this differentiation and how to set up Criteria to evaluate decisions, ideas, performance and people as part of our overall leadership program. I'd be glad to write it up for everyone
What I believe we have been expressing here is our dissapointment with the character assassination we have seen on the listserv. It seems, and this mostly applies to the people against the sale of IMH, that when they are confronted with a point that is difficult to argue they fall back on the age old tried and true method of destroying the credibility of the messenger.
ITs a great tactic and it works. Destroy someone's repuation or cast doubts on their motives and you can destroy the validity of their message.
The people that are doing it unconsciously I tend to respect less: it just shows poor emotional control. But I have to feel a faint admiration for the people that set out to destroy the others person's standings within the Fraternity Community. Such a tenacious desire to win their point at any cost is noteworthy.
However, for those of us more removed from the problem it weakens the argument, especially if we don't tend to use that tactic ourselves. To us, the issue isn't whether this or that Brother is Satan's spawn, we are just trying to evaluate the point being made. And if the point is avoided and someone resorts to character attacks . . . it makes us wonder.
With Tau, we don't have access to what actually happened, but common sense tells us that certainly the whole chapter isn't likely to be evil. And when they are writing that they just want a fair process and many others are are just writing attacks on their character, it builds a certain degree of sympathy.
Although I do agree with you Brad, if you do it, own up to it, and live up to it.
I agree that the CBR doesn't provide for a strict process, but I am not sure it doesn't not provide for it. Documents such as the CBR tend to be and can't cover every situation. And usually the intent behind them is that we act with "good will". So just because the CBR doesn't have an explicit due process doesn't mean we couldn't have given one. Tau's request wasn't unreasonable and the attourney's present were Tau alumni . . . I know we don't like lawyers in general but we shouldn't discriminate against alumni just because they took up such an inherently evil occupation
.
Also 40 eyewitnesses guarentee 40 DIFFERENT versions.
I don't want to beat the Tau horse to death because I, and probably no one posting here, is really a Tau partisan per se, but its easy to sympathize with a group that keeps getting blasted, especially when many of their arguments were at least on the surface, reasonable.
Also, it bothers me fundamentally to know that members of a fraternity might go in with the idea upfront that they might not be given a fair chance based on likes/dislikes and the negative portrayal of their actions, motives, and history. And the responses of many on the listserv has done nothing to dispell the idea that their assumption may have been correct: That the process may have been tampered with before they ever got to the hearing based on people's personal opinions. I think we are all enough students of human nature to know this happens.
Leadership is about minimizing this . . .
Coming back full circle to intentions vs. competencies . . .
A first rule for alumni leaders, and once you interfere you are a leader in its most basic capacity: an agent for change . . . would be to do no harm. I have no problem with people messing up themselves, but its a crime to diminish the experience or educational value for others, especially when you volunteer for it. Unacceptable and inexcusable.
My next suggestion is more a holisitic approach: we need to stop pussyfooting around and complete the trend Greek Organizations seem to be heading towards, which is to design a Kappa Sigma all inclusive leadership program, that more than deals with just pledging, and goes beyond basic disjointed chapter operations.
I know we have BIA now, which is based on Sig Ep's Balanced Man, which is a much more mature version of SAE's LEading Edge program. I have both of those programs but haven't seen the completed BIA program . . . so haven't been able to evaluate it.
And the leadership needs to flow as much from the top down as anything, we need to develop and then train the alumni volunteers in it. There shoould be basic consistent Kappa Sigma LEadership responses to most situations and they should be based on sound theory . . .
I would love to enter a serious dialouge about this kind of stuff.
Got to cut this short
bye for now.
Semper
James
I know how Tau feels
Linear Mode
