Is it all undergraduate?
May 3rd, 2007 by David L. Woods. Popularity: 11%.Most of the writing on Lambda Chi Alpha celebrates the undergraduate institution. While this is logical, is it correct?
You also advised to write about CURRENT matters! Yet I wonder if the majority of members really have much CURRENT connection with our fraternity? And without an “occasional sojourn into the days of yore,” will any current connection ever develop?
Perhaps I am simply over-edcucated, in comparison to the average. But I read somewhere that today most college graduates wind up with at least two degrees.It seems to be that LAMBDA CHI ALPHA may be losing more than it is gainng by this total stress on undergraduate institutions and current fraternal events.
To begin with, are there not more former zetas than exsisting ones? What do we do with all those brothers from zetas now defunct? Like mine. Zeta Nu at San Jose State. While we existed only about 20 years, we still stand well in donations, names, etc. when periodically former as well as existing zetas are listed. But what is done with all the alumni from a former zeta? How do they gain or maintain a CURRENT franternal bond?
After graduation from SJS i moved on to Stanford University. I completed a two-year master’s degree in broadcasting. I was also a resident assistant for a wing & a half at Encina Hall a large, historical freshman dorm. I was also graduate mangager of Radio KZSU, contributor to the CHAPPARAL, actor in productions. I still hear from various Stanford outfits, & thus have become a life alumni member.
I spent twice as long at SJS, did more, but do not hear from SJS anywhere near as often as from Stanford. Maybe six little mag-aznes is it for the school — despite my having donated my historical materials on naval & military signals — which has come to be far less an event than was pre-advertised before I committed to it.
Later I joined the faculty at Lehigh University. I don’t recall the number, but I think something like a dozen of the new Lambda Chi Alpha pledges that year were from from my classes & the Univeristy Radio-TV Workshop I ran. So far as I know our chapter is still there, but I’ve never heard from them — despite helping provivde more than 30% of the membership over the next four years — during my one year on the faculty.
I would up at the Ohio State Univesity — where they were very kind & allowed me to complete my PhD in 1976 — despite my initial enrollment back in 1954. That is a long time to finish a degree, but it was all legal & done with care. At OSU, I lived in the Lambda Chi house. I probably could not have afforded my one required full-time year, had I not been granted that oppor- tunity. I was greatful, but have never been asked to show it.
Yet I never really felt like a chapter member. I was not asked to attend meetings. I did go to a few social functions. I even worked to set up a team to “manage & clean” the house for several special weekends — when money could be earned from outsiders for 80 beds plus food. I was not paid for this effort. And those women I got to come to make beds & clean were not paid either — although that had been promised by the fraternity before I recruited them. Indeed this dispute continued until the year’s end. Logically, I did not try to live at the house during subsequent shorter visits. I have never heard from any of my brothers at OSU since 1955. Was a good opportunity missed again?
A few years later, I worked for the Hughes Aircraft Co., and was offered free tuition for grad courses at USC. There was a Lamba Chi chapter there. I had brought a USC member back from the NY City convention a few years earlier in my car. While I visisted the house several times, it was clear there was no interst is a local non-USC alum, even though resident in the region.
By 1963, I was in Florida working for the Martin Company & began an evening MBA at the Crummer School of Rollins College. My class of 1965 may have been the first (or at least 2nd) to graduate. There is a Lambda Chi undergrade chapter at Rollins. But by now I had apparently leanred my lesson, & I never visited — nor was asked of my fraternal affiliation by Rollins. I do hear from the grad school with some frequncy. And in today’s CROSS & CRESCENT I read of another Lambda Chi who was prominent in that Rollins/Crummer program! Were he & I the only two? I doubt it.
I have attended a national convention in FL. I have given funds from time to time. I donated a Pushcart Relay purple green & gold WWI metal helmet from our SJS ZN’s annual pushcart relays (blatantly stolen from the Michigan State Chapter). I announced these for several years, & was even brought back as guest announcer from Stanford!
I lived near the University of MD for many years. I taught there a dozen part-time. I attempted to contact the chapter there, but could see the chapter wasn’t interested. Later after moving to West Virginia, I contacted the chapter at Shepherd College now Univeristy. They have a dorm section method of fraternal living.I taught there several years. Neither the teaching nor the fraternity came to much. I offered them a complete set of the CROSS & CRESCENTS from 1949 to about 1990. They didn’t want them and had no place. No on thought of asking the college library.
Conclusion: I knew Tozier Brown, Lew Fetterly, “Doc” Dighalli, George Spasyk, & Wayne Montgomgery (a ZN who became a traveling secretary). I have demonstrated leadership in academia (offices in professional associations), the Navy Depatment, the Navy Reserve (retired CAPT), several Fortune 500 firms, many years of active leadership in professional mlitary assication in the US, Canada, & NATO, held many offices (national president of the ROA 1985-86, another LXA came some years after me — Jim Hannagan of MI), & for more than 50 years as an adjunct professor — decade at MD, decade at U of VA, decade at George Washington U, & currently more than a decade at Marshall Univesity in WV. I’ve written many books & magazine articles on various subjects. Yet this is the first writing I’ve done for Lambda Chi Alpha since my ZN days as Cross & Cresent correspondant — virtually my first writing.
Am I truly at fault here? Or is Lambda Chi pretty well limited to our 330 existing chapters — & essentially the undergrad period at each?
Is it simply too hard to make Lambda Chi Alpha a truly lifetime experience for more of us? Including those who’s chapter has failed. Would it be worth the effort, if we tried?
David L. “Navy Dave” Woods, CAPT, USNR (Ret.), AB, MA, MBA, PhD, listed in Who’s Who in America past seveal decades
May 4th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Captain Woods, you bring up some very pertinent and difficult questions. Many of us have for years worked to try to encourage more invovement of alumni both in service to our various chapters and also as recipients of affiliation and benefits from chapters. Your mention of Wayne Montgomery is particularly apt for he, like Tozier, Doc, and the others you mention, remained deeply inolved for years after the chapter at SJS had closed. You are one of the few who consistently volunteer to help no matter where you are located but with your background in academia, I’m sure you know how hard it is to get undergraduate students to seek or even accept help from their elders, especially if they do not know them well. The good news is that the True Brother Program to be launched this summer at the Leadership Semiar in Memphis is, in part, designed to do just what you suggest: That is to create a continuum of personal development and age appropriate involvment begining in the initial recruitment period, throughout the undergraduate years and on into the postgraduate alumni years with touchstones and self evaluation all along the way.
May 5th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Bro. CPT Woods:
FIRST, may I point out that I, who received my bachelor’s in 1976 and my last graduate degree in 1988, have contributed comments to numerous articles of the electronic “Cross & Crescent”. Most recently I’ve commenced a blog on “Voices” (in addition to my own personal “Glen Alan’s San Antonio” blog). And my reading of C & C is that several alumni types contribute. Yes there is greater emphasis on the undergraduate Zetas, but then THERE is where the LCA experience commences. And I’m confident that the motto “not for four years but for life” is alive and well in our Brotherhood!
But keep reading! My response some decades ago would not have been so positive and sanguine. Upon graduation from Idaho in ‘76 I moved to Fort Worth, Texas, and TCU to obtain a seminary degree so that I could follow a calling to become an Army chaplain. Immediately I visited the TCU Zeta, which was housed in the wing of a dormitory building (shared with a Phi Delt chapter). I got very active in assiting the Brothers with rush. And then I got told by a couple fo the High Zeta that they didn’t think I should be active with them. I was crushed! I blamed my rejection on not ahving a dad with a six-figure income as they all did. But to express brotehrly love, looking back, I can see that perhaps the Iota-Pi Zeta brothers considered that for my own good I needed to concentrate on my seminary education and leave aside the fraternity life (which admittedly doesn’t exactly fit with the life of a budding clergyman).
Anyhow, I’ve forgiven the Iota-Pi brothers, and indeed have a warm friendship with my own Councilman here in San Antonio, “Chip” Haass, who was at TCU and in Iota-Pi Zeta many years after the above incident.
In the late 1990s, while working as adjunct faculty at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, I got involved in a new colony effort at that school. The brothers and associate members at APSU were a mixed bunch age-wise, but they ALL were delighted the first time I showed up at a Zeta meeting, and all but begged me to be a faculty advisor. Once the colony had a house just off campus in which to meet, I found myself going there often (it had a great front porch with swing, and I loved to just go and sit and swing and chat). They always greeted my with smiles and open arms of brotherhood. I helped out with their second initiation ritual, and when one of the associates died suddenly the brothers asked me to preside at his funeral.
Alas! personality conflicts took over (in defiance of our teachings) and the colony got shut down by National. Rightly so.
My most recent involvement with Lambda Chi Alpha, commenced in early March of 2006, when the San Antonio Alumni Association sent me an invitation to the Founders Day barbecue. It involved all three local Zetas — each with a distinctive tee-shirt — as well as alumni of not only theose Zetas but from Zetas all over the USA. Since Brother Ed Leonard gave a great report on this (”Deep in the Heart of Texas”), I’ll say no more.
But this year at the Founders Day barbecue I found out about 1) the plans for the first-ever Tri-Zeta White Rose Gala (again incorporating the local Alumni Association) and 2) that the Phi-Upsilon Zeta brothers at UTSA were going to have formal Zeta in just a few days, and I was invited. Now I’ve actually been to two of Phi-Upsilon’s formal Zeta meetings, as well as the Ritual work of the Saint Mary’s U. brothers (Sigma-Beta Zeta). At each meeting I felt very welcome, indeed appreciated. In fact, I felt so “at home” that I’ve had to remind myself that I’m as old as their fathers and should therefore act as such (and not like I’m a 20-year-old undergrad again).
So, Bro. Captain, I have to say that I understand where you’re coming from, because I’ve been there. But I walso want to emphasize that I now know from recent experience (and some not-so-recent) that LCA alumni can be and are involved in the Brotherhood. There ARE possibilities and opportunities for us to truly live the LCA experience “not for four years but for life”!
In ZAX,
Glen Alan Graham
EG 540