Living the Creed
December 13th, 2005 by Tim Reuter. Popularity: 6%.As the Holiday season gets into full swing and things slowly begin to wind down at Headquarters (if they ever really wind down), I have had a moment or two to think about the fall and what I learned as a brother and a member of the General Fraternity staff.
At HQ, we have seen good (positive culture change in the office, charters granted, etc.) and the not so good (closed chapters, risk management incidents, membership reviews, etc.). When things are going well, working for HQ is the best job in the world, for we know we are doing great things to make our young brothers better men and leaders by offering them the most unique of Fraternity experiences. The job gets rough when we get into the uglies of working for the Fraternity we all hold dear.
For me, there are two situations I will never wish another brother to experience: a membership review and the closing of a chapter. Closing a chapter is difficult, obviously, because you have to look brothers in the face and tell them that their undergraduate experience has been cut short. It could be their fault they are closed, or, it could date back some time, and these were the guys that couldn’t salvage the effort. Walking out of a chapter house with a charter and ritual equipment is one of the saddest experiences I will ever have, but, as with many things in our great Fraternity, we look to the future with hope. And we can do this because there is a chance we will be back on the campus again. Also, despite the fact that the chapter is closed, the brothers will always be members of the bond, and that can never be taken away.
A membership review, however, is the hardest aspect of working for HQ. In a review, HQ is usually the heavy, coming in to assist the alumni in the review process, and, as the alumni will be the mainstay for operations, they can’t lose the trust of the undergraduates. In turn, we are the ones looked upon as the bad guys. So with all this going on, in a review, we have to look brothers in the face, hand them a letter, and sometimes those letters say expulsion. Usually, these members know they are going, and the look in their eyes does hurt, for, unless their appeal is upheld, their membership is gone. No matter what the situation or dynamics that led up to the point of a review, it hurts.
Back to my reflection on the fall, wondering how it falls under the Creed…let me try to sum it up:
What reduces Lambda Chi Alpha’s ability to be great is its constituencies, whether they be staff, members, undergraduates or alumni brothers. The blessing and curse of free will provides a vehicle to live up to, or ignore, the standard set almost a century ago, and many times we forget the principles of our fraternity. Granted, the ritual is a complex body of work, and to understand it is completely different than to appreciate it or semi-annually bask in its entirety. Ideally, brothers and staff living up to the principles and oaths of our ritual would make Lambda Chi Alpha great, for an existence paralleling those very principles inherently facilitates distinguished fraternalism.
In order to make Lambda Chi Alpha great, we first have to understand what will make our stakeholders better, and there are four specific words that can facilitate the process: service, sacrifice, suffering, and humiliation. Coming from the Creed of Lambda Chi Alpha, these four words break down all that is our Fraternity to a bare-bones perspective. A personal belief and value system rooted in these four words applies not only to Lambda Chi Alpha, but the exoteric experience as well.
Thousands of brothers repeat these memorized words every week at meetings, yet the interpretation is skewed. For example, service is an Associate Member going on a Taco Bell run for his drunken brother at 3:00 am. Studying is sacrificed to go to the bar, suffering follows the next morning when a hung-over brother does not go to class, and humiliation finally comes when grades are released at the end of the term.
Granted, as we work for the Fraternity, staff has a better grasp of these principles, but we do not always truly understand what they mean. It is our job and lifeblood to embody these four words, and if we do not live up to these principles, what kind of example are we setting for our brothers?
We do not work for Lambda Chi Alpha; we service the continued growth and existence of our great Fraternity. We sacrifice personal time, higher paying jobs, and relationships for the betterment of our organization. We suffer through countless hours of travel, long weekends, and days, weeks, and months away from loved ones. We endure humility when we see other Greek organizations operating at a higher level, and that is when the cycle begins again, for we will serve, sacrifice, and suffer to be the best.
Lambda Chi Alpha is already great, but understanding our existence as stakeholders in something bigger than a job or participants in an organization allows for greatness. Faith, Hope, and Love, yes, this is where it begins, but personal service, sacrifice, suffering, and humiliation, endured in achieving these ideals reduces the if factor and makes greatness a reality.