5 Year Sentence

Just a mere two weeks ago, Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity was banned from Yale University’s campus for the next five years. This is the punishment for pledge’s of the fraternity chanting inappropriate and demining things about women in public.  Of course this isn’t the first year this fraternity has done this, in fact as the Alpha chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon, the Yale chapter has been on campus for over 150 years, so why are they being punished now?  Last October 16 complaints were filled to the University, claiming the University was not protecting its students and eliminating sexual harassment towards all women.   The article ended with showing the positive reactions from the student body, feeling pleased that Yale finally took action.

I personally feel this article is extremely anti-Greek.  Do I think these boys should have been chanting these things? No, probably not.  Do I think it’s ok to just sit back and say “boys will be boys”, absolutely not. At the same time, are these boys the only people on Yale’s campus chanting these sorts of statements?  Probably not.   I agree with non-Greek students on Yale’s campus, that the university should have done something.  No university should ignore the complaints of their students, however a 5 year ban from campus? Seems a little steep if you ask me, especially when it was only the pledges and not the entire fraternity.

My view is that even if there are a few true fraternity men, in a chapter the chapter should not be shut down.  Maybe their nationals need to clean house and find the members that they truly want to keep in the chapter, but in the end that isn’t Yale’s place to decide the fate of an entire chapter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/education/18yale.html

Not for Four Years, But For Life

An oath, is more than just a promise. An oath is something one can only make with their entire self and future involved.  An oath, by definition, is “a solemn appeal to a deity, or to some revered person or thing, to witness one's determination to speak the truth, to keep a promise, etc.: to testify upon oath.” But when taking into consideration what an oath means to a group of college students fighting to remain true to the mission and values of their fraternity or sorority, an oath can bear a much more heavy meaning to those individuals.

When I was 12 years old, after 7 months of learning what exactly I was doing within my Catholic faith, and what declaring myself as an adult in the Catholic Church would entail, I was confirmed into the Catholic Church.   I took an oath promising my entire self to be devoted to the Catholic Church and my God.   While I was well aware of the oath I took that morning, it didn’t seem like a heavy responsibility, maybe it was because I was confident in my decision, maybe it was just because everyone else in my class was also getting confirmed, but most importantly I was surrounded by people who support my decision.  I was in Catholic school and from a pretty Catholic family; no one in my life was making the same oath I had. 

When I came to The Ohio State University and joined Delta Zeta, I spent 8 weeks learning all about the oath I was about to take, about the values and mission of Delta Zeta, that I was expected to uphold as well as standards I would be held to.  The funny thing is, as much as our New Member Educator and older members of the sorority explained countless times to us what our responsibilities would be as actives of Delta Zeta, no one ever used the word ‘oath’, or even ‘promise’.  The night of my initiation, and even at our follow up meeting a week or so after to explain the ritual we had gone through, I still didn’t understand what had happened to me. Part of this, I believe, is truly understandable, as most individuals don’t remember what was said and done during the ceremony.  

Later in the spring Jeff Pelletier, came to our chapter house to and presented his “Living Your Ritual” speech.  If you have ever listen to it, you should know where the rest of this blog is going.  If you haven’t, stop reading this blog and e-mail Jeff about having it presented to your chapter.  The summary of Jeff’s talk is that no matter how different you think your chapter’s our, the basic idea of how we run ourselves and how we run our rituals are more or less identical.  The only real difference is found in the oaths we take, in the words our founders wrote done that determine the values and missions of our chapters.  So when we get caught up in the little things like social probation, or recruitment, or putting members of probation for poor academic conduct, it’s really important to reflect and remember that our oath is what matters and what we should be looking at when trying to decide if we are succeeding as a chapter or failing.

To me, my oath I took when I was initiated into Delta Zeta was a promise I made to  all of my sisters that I would work to the best of my abilities to better our chapter and our sorority as a whole, to the best of my abilities uphold the standards by which my chapter lives upon, to improve myself and work to improve the lives of the people I touch, and most importantly to recognize that I am not a Delta Zeta for four years, but for life. 

Dual Citizenship

In the grand scheme of things, I want very little from my life.  I want to be happy and I want leave the people I knew and the place I was, better than when I found them. I want to be remembered when I die for what I left behind, and the hearts I touched.

I think the biggest key component of citizenship to consider, when looking at the three questions posed, is the idea that as a citizen of any community it is your responsibility to have a positive effect on that community.  As a citizen, you should contribute enough of yourself that you leave the society better than when you joined it.

How are you (individually) displaying citizenship within the fraternity/sorority community?

This seems like a particularly easy question to answer for me, and maybe it is simply because of the position I was elected into.  As New Member Educator, I know that I have created thirty new members that are better prepared and more fully committed to Delta Zeta’s future than my new member class was the previous year.  Through initiating a few new programs for the new member class such as: the new member service project, new member retreat, and the parent project.  All of these combined with other new ways of teaching the lessons and ways of showing the new members what it takes to be a fully initiated member!

In this way I have already bettered my sorority and it’s future, therefore displaying my citizenship as a member of Delta Zeta Sorority, but citizenship does not end once you have made an impact. With that being said I am well aware I need to keep working to better Delta Zeta in these next two next. Delta Zeta has come a long way since I joined, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t room for massive improvements!

How does your chapter display citizenship within the fraternity/sorority community? What does this look like?

Citizenship within just the Greek community, especially at The Ohio State University is rather hard to define if you ask me.  I think it’s about being open to getting to know a chapter. In a Greek community that is extremely small compare to the size of our campus and undergraduate student population, Greeks really do live in a small word.  This makes it very easy for us to meet one person, or a small group of people from one chapter and based off of our first impression assume that is how their entire chapter acts.

Coming from a chapter that is very different from what it was two years ago, I personally know how hard it is to introduce myself to other Greeks and have them instantly judge me because one of my sisters who is older than me and represented a very different chapter than what we are today.  I also think it’s extremely sad that members of our Greek community chose and allow themselves to judge entire chapters based on one individual or a single incident. This is something I believe every individual in the Greek Community should reflect on.

On a positive note, I think my chapter is pretty good at keeping an open mind when we meet new chapters.  After being paired with a few smaller fraternities for Greek Week 2011, I saw my sisters being excited about forming new friendship based off of a common Greek Life interest, rather than being upset and bitter that we were not paired with a ‘big’ fraternity. Even though we don’t always do the best job with branching out on our own time and terms, when the opportunity presents itself to the chapter, our chapter always delivers with an open mind!  With that being sad I think Delta Zeta is a good citizen within our Greek Community, but again we are definitely not the best and there is always room for improvement.

How does the fraternity/sorority community display citizenship within the greater university community?

After being involved with Greek Life for over a year, I decided to join another student organization.  After being involved with Student-Alumni Council for now a mere four months I have become good friends with a lot of great student leaders on this campus, many people whom I have immense respect for, I was disappointed to discover some of the them are ‘greek-life haters’. Not only did this make me scared, it alarmed me that some of our campus’ most highly recognized leaders didn’t think Greek Life was worth anything to the betterment of The Ohio State University community as a whole.

Are they right? I wondered to myself with great fear only to discover…. In a way they are right.  The general student population hates our Greek Community on so often that we decide to isolate ourselves and enjoy being Greek without including any non-Greeks.  Our philanthropy events we advertize to each other, our socials are only with each other, we all live relatively close to each other, off campus. Greeks keep to themselves, we look at ourselves as our own community and The Ohio State University as another community, the question is how do we fix this?  How do we connect ourselves as student leaders and not solely Greeks?  It’s something I feel the Greek community needs to evaluate as a whole and a goal to set for our future. 

Something Surprising

What are sororities and fraternities spending their time on at The Ohio State University?  This is a question I am sure a ton of individuals would love to know the answer to.   Many individuals, both in the Greek community and outside of the Greek community would probably agree on a few things: socials, dealing with internal issues, perhaps community service.

However, after last class’ activity I found out one thing I truly did not expect.  While some sorority women and fraternity men felt that one of their chapters top three activities were: philanthropy, or community service, or in some cases, Ritual, no chapter seemed to agree, except the three young men of FIJI.  The three young men from this chapter all agreed on their Chapter’s number one activity without even knowing the other two’s answer. They all answered rivalry run.  I pasted below the website for the annual philanthropy event,

http://osuphigam.org/rrac

To me this was by far the most interesting thing I learned through our class assignment, because it was inspiring.  It is an amazing things not only to see the Brothers of this fraternity so united behind a single cause, but that they enjoy and look forward to their annual philanthropy event, and it is definitely something every chapter should work towards finding themselves.