The fall semester is always an interesting time. As the students gather on campus, we alumni begin to recollect our undergraduate days as well. The “joys” of moving all our stuff back on campus, up countless flights of stairs (you youngsters have it easy with elevators!), and settling in to new ‘digs.’ Of course, some of us were lucky enough to live in the chapter house during the summer, so there wan’t much moving to do. Our task was to help our brothers move in and/or help move the new guys into the dorm (hopefully to help many of them move out 2 weeks later and into our chapter house).

Now, as a new High Pi, I find myself dealing with other issues, many of them completely unexpected. For example, in the past couple of weeks, I’ve fielded countless emails from a handful of “concerned” brothers who are threatening to “disaffiliate” because they don’t like the idea of having to pay a slightly higher dues rate, believe that the officers are “lying” to them, or simply don’t like the idea that the chapter is changing from what it was 2-3-5 years ago. So, I have to explain, as nicely as possible, how there is no way to “disafffiliate” from the chapter without having something bad happen (like suspension), how the officers are speaking truthfully, even if the “concerned” brothers don’t want to believe it, and that there really is a thing called inflation.

All of these concerns are easily overcome by a little bit of education and a lot of brotherly love. I am learning that there hasn’t been a lot of education in the past in our chapter–and I’ll bet others–regarding the basic things we take for granted: how to run a meeting, how to plan an event, how to create a budget, etc. Add to that too little attention to brotherhood-building and too much attention on rush and social events (which are brotherhood-building, too), and we have the receipe for discord and not harmony.

So, my work is cut out for me. Advise, teach, counsel, support, cheerlead, encourage, admonish, love, share. We shall see how the year progresses, eh?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 at 9:16 am and is filed under Campus Involvment, Chapter, Obligations . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.