Last Post!

One thing I would like to see change in Greek Life before I graduate would be the betterment of relations between fraternities. In the last few years, there have been many acts of animosity between chapters that is getting a little out of control in my opinion. By doing more events with other chapters and actually begin to get rid of the us v. them mentality, we can progress and create a more positive Greek community.

Behind the podium

Being in an exec position, I can relate to some of the problems that author faced. There are times when I feel like I am the only one caring about what is going on and am the only one left to plan events. When I get to feeling like that, I fall into an apathetic mood and really just want to stop caring.  I would tell the author to try and not let the little stuff get to him. Those brothers just don't understand what it's like being in charge and put too much blame on you.

Looking back...

Since I have been in office, my chapter has accomplished a lot, but the thing that I am most proud of would have to be our participation in Dance Marathon. This event was completely new to us and without any prior experience, we decided to participate and get involved. In doing so, we had most of our chapter donate $25 and over half attended the event. In doing this, I feel that we are becoming more involved with Ball State and in the community. Even if I'm not in office next year, I would still like to see our involvement with Dance Marathon continue and improve.

Oh Women........

I absolutely think women influence the behavior of men. The only reason we have parties are to meet girls and everything we do revolves around getting women to like us. I think if the women changed the way they reacted to how men behaved, the men would quickly change how they acted.
Three biggest effects on guys:

• Following risk management policy
• women not attending degrading parties
• girlfriend asking if you would haze your child

Three things guys could care less about:

• The girl confronting you about trying to hook up with her friend
• The kind of shirt they wear
• the "degrading" serenade 

 The one thing that a girl could do to affect the behavior of a guy would be to tell him he's being stupid or insensitive, and actually mean what they are saying. Far too often, girls tell a guy he's being an idiot one night and the next day act like that behavior was okay because he was drunk. If they were true to their belief, then the guys might just change their behavior.

Brotherhood

Throughout my time at Sigma Phi Epsilon, I have grown to appreciate brotherhood and friendship at a deeper level. Before joining, I had my friends that I would regularly hang out with and considered them my best friends. While I am still close with these friends, I feel that I am not on the same level of friendship and as close as I am with my brothers. Being in a fraternity creates a bond between men in that we are all in the organization for a common purpose. After spending all of our time together, sharing the good times and bad times, and by participating in our ritual, we are unified in a way that an "independent" really couldn't understand.

3 Challenges

1) The biggest challenge I've faced in my position so far has been dealing with the lack of moral in the house. Whenever I plan a brotherhood event or an event in general, people just whine and complain about having to go. It really is frustrating to see most of the brothers not get excited about anything.

2) Another challenge has been developing a New Member development plan. When looking back to my education, it was done so poorly that I feel like I need to create a better one. It has been harder with out a base to develop upon, but it I feel that I'm beginning to get there.

3) Lastly, having to keep track of the chapters academics have been relatively challenging. There are several members who have grades below our GPA standard and I have been working with them to do better in school. Working with these members has been a bit frustrating but I enjoy striving to get our chapter where it needs to be.

Organization Values

Virtue
Diligence
Brotherly Love

Virtue- When looking at virtue, I have been in many situations where I have had to decide whether or not a certain action coincided with my moral beliefs. One of these situations occurred over Christmas break when some friends wanted me to ditch out of spending time with my family and lie to them. I didn't really feel comfortable doing this and my friends surprisingly didn't really pressure me into doing it.

Diligence- A fine example of my diligence can be seen on March 14th when I needed to finish a homework assignment while the weather was perfect. I struggled internally on whether or not I should skip the assignment and have fun, but I decided to be diligent with my studies instead.

Brotherly Love- Recently, one of my brothers and I had a disagreement that turned into a large argument. Instead of being mad at him for a long time, I understood that we were brothers and could talk our problems out in a mature and civilized manner. He agreed and through our brotherly love, we worked out our problem.

Three questions to the Greek Life Advisor

1.What do you feel would happen to Ball State Greek life if all of the chapters went dry?
2. Where do you see my chapter, Sigma Phi Epsilon, going in the next three years?
3. What do we have to do to get information to incoming freshman regarding Greek Life?

CRAZY

I do feel that my fraternity falls into the comfortable category a lot, but not necessarily the mediocre category. We are always at or near the top for grades, intramurals, and membership, which tends to make members feel complacent. When you are at the top for so long, you begin to feel that you will stay there no matter what you do and come to feel invulnerable. As a leader and a member, I feel this complacency is the worst thing that can happen to any organization. One thing I would do is to constantly remind members that their actions are crucial to our being successful, whether it be participation or by doing well in school. As leaders, we can set the nudge members along in order to keep them developing and not becoming complacent.

Resolutions

I feel the initial resolutions were crossed out for either not being specific or relevant enough. Sure you can read your fraternity ritual, but that doesn't mean anything if you don't act on it. The revised resolutions are better for they allow you to actually have a clear goal with clear and measurable outcomes, such as contributing over parting.
1. Be a stronger leader.  I haven't been as active and portraying a good example as I could have, so I resolve to be stronger.
2. Be productive. I find my self laying around a lot when I could be studying, working out, or doing something for the fraternity.
3.Call mom more often.  It seems that I'm never the one to call my mom lately and I really feel bad that I can't take time out of my day to call her when she does that for me. 
4. Just listen more.  People have the need to talk out what is going on in their head and I know I always appreciate when people listen to me.
5.Live my fraternity ritual.  The values in my fraternity ritual are the values that every good person should strive for.

Fraternal Thoughts Replly

I thought this article was very interesting due to the fact that I was asking the same questions when I came to college. I feel like it addresses the concerns that many people have regarding greek organizations and their actual functions. I definitely agree that fraternities should be invested and involved in society, whether it be through community service or philanthropy. I also agree with the idea that we shouldn't be labeled solely on our flaws, but also by our accomplishments. Unfortunately, bad events always seem to overpower the good events in most aspects of life. I honestly don't really disagree with anything in this article. I believe that the concepts in this article CAN be true, but it depends upon whether or not the individuals in the fraternities have the ambition and the belief to change the world. I believe fraternity is an organization that can better the individual and society around the individual. Ideally, I want those in fraternities to be the best citizens in society, but the ideals we teach do provide the means to be those citizens.

Future Generations...

In the future, I would hope greek members would view our generation as a good balance of business and fun. Looking at how we operate, the BSU greek community does great work in improving its members, the school, and the community. With the variety of philanthropies and programs that we put on, future generations can't help but see how we care about the improvement and betterment of Ball State. In addition, we also have fun with paired events and social outings. I could see us maybe working more with the school and the non greek members to do more to improve our wonderful campus.