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.