Well, it’s been a while since my last post… Not much new on the Alumni Relations front; another successful newsletter in progress (just waiting for the final copy), sent out about a bajillion invites to our chapter’s banquet this fall, and am trying to get a poker tourney set up before school starts… but as you may have guessed from the title, that’s not what this post is about…

I just returned from the 2007 Stead Leadership Seminar where they unveiled the True Brotherhood initiative (and if you haven’t yet, I would seriously recommend you going to the C&C article about True Brother and reading it… it’s cool stuff…) The big thing that I’m personally worried about is that I was the sole brother from my chapter to attend and while I’m ready to dive headfirst into True Brotherhood, I think my chapter will take quite a bit more persuading. First, I think that my passion for the fraternity as a whole and my overly anal ways will benefit me in that I honestly think I got as much out of the seminar as is humanly possible (having met most of the Grand High Zeta, numerous HQ staff members, and my upcoming ELC)… however, I may also have been the worst person from my chapter to send because due to my ever-increasing idealism, I’ve been that one brother who’s constantly the buzzkill mentioning things like “ideals” and “practice what you preach”… therefore, I’m afraid that when I go back, I’m going to be confronted with the same brick walls I’ve always been; a bunch of beer monkeys (and if you don’t know that term, ask somebody who went to the conference… Biff coined it, and it’ll be on urbandictionary.com by the time i leave my computer!) who think i’m preaching like usual and will squeek loud enough to drone out the message…

nonetheless, I’m optimistic, if for no other reason than that my idealist personality prevents me from being otherwise… here’s my plan of attack for conquering the beer monkeys (i don’t have to worry about them stumbling upon this b/c i’m pretty sure they can’t read, and even if they can, a blog site that continuously talks about ideals, values, and bettering the fraternity isn’t where they would spend their time!)… my president and I are of very like minds, though he’s more of a practical person than i am (which makes me REALLY wish he had gone to the conference too!) so i’m going to sit down with him before school begins and go through every single minute of the conference, literally… he’s going to ask me as many questions as he can think of, and then we’re going to plan out a way to propose it to the chapter… Having him on my side will be like Joan of Arc having Napoleon to lead her into battle… we’ll be unstoppable!…

seriously, though… after talking through it with el presidente, we’re going to sit down and talk through it (in MUCH less detail) with each officer to whom the conference pertained; namely, the Kappa (educator), Delta (recruitment), and Phi (ritualist)… hopefully, if all goes according to plan (which in my head ends with a giant parade of cheering brothers… not really) we’ll be able to implement the True Brother program, much to my chapter’s benefit, by the beginning/middle of this first semester…

ironically, the best thing i can say about my chapter’s current operations is that they really don’t make any sense; which should make resistance to implementing a sweeping change less convincing (crosses fingers)…

In the end, i’m psyched, that’s all there is to it… i’ve started thinking about all sorts of things i never really have before like, “what if this works and the greek system as a whole is actually able to shed the Animal House stereotype?!” and “holy crap! this is how we recruit good brothers, focus on values rather than parties!”…

as a parting thought, if this stream-of-consciousness offended anybody… i’m really not sorry, because THIS is MY fraternity… THIS (True Brotherhood) is why i joined 3 years ago… THIS opportunity to finally be part of something larger than myself that is trying to make a positive difference in this world… forget beer monkeys, forget they exist, forget their nay-saying and their roots in archaic “traditions” that make no sense like their own meaningless squeeking… VIVA LA RESISTANCE! (”resistance” in this scenario referring to the French Revolutionary idea of overthrowing the monarchy, i.e. the beer monkeys!)

three deep breaths…

In ZAX,

Jon Wood EY1392

High Rho

Epsilon-Upsilon Zeta

University of Tulsa

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Conferences, General Fraternity, Leadership . 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.