Saturday morning, October 2nd, 2010 I awoke to one my brothers slinging my door wide open to drag me out of bed before we headed off to our regional conclave. I had been planning on going for a week, but a little after-hours recreation left me running a little behind schedule for the fraternal event 90 minutes away.
There is a conversation that happens a couple of times every day. A group of friends are together and they ask each other “what do you want to do?” Or, they ask “what do you want to eat?” Inevitably, the group ends up doing the same thing they have done a hundred times.
A lot of fraternity houses are going alcohol free. There are a few compelling reasons why this decision has been made. This is a controversial subject to many fraternity brothers, because there are some negative results form this policy. Below are my thoughts on both sides.
1) Wear your Greek letters proudly. This is the easiest, and one of the best, PR moves your fraternity can make. If you are a high-speed individual, and you wear your letters, then others will assume your fraternity is pretty high-speed because of your association.
Staying in touch with alumni is a challenge. Let’s be honest, it is a pain in the butt to write newsletters and make sure they get read. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to stay in touch with alumni with minimal effort?
Every fraternity should honor a girl as their fraternity sweetheart. It costs nothing to do, and will create a ton of goodwill for the fraternity.
As Greeks, we all love to boast about how much we donate to our national philanthropy each year. If your school is anything like mine, your chapter has some kind of event (probably a sports tournament) where fraternities (or sororities if you’re a girl) all compete in it and pay some kind of entry fee.
Most fraternity brothers have an ‘us vs them’ attitude with the fraternity’s national headquarters. This mindset couldn’t be further from wrong. The staff of the fraternity always has your best interest at heart, and they can be a strong ally if you let them.
I am a big fan of challenge coins. As frequent readers of the site know, I was in the military for five years. Challenge coins are a tradition that runs deep in the military, and has recently started becoming a great fraternity tradition as well.
I just stumbled on a great article a few days ago, and thought I would share. It is an article about Skull and Bones, a Yale Secret Society. This is a lot different than fraternities, as their members are sworn to secrecy.
