[20147] in APO-L
Re: APO and campus perception
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Hobbs, Victoria Lee)
Wed Feb 10 10:23:40 1999
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1999 10:13:31 -0500
Reply-To: "Hobbs, Victoria Lee" <vhobbs@ROANOKE.EDU>
From: "Hobbs, Victoria Lee" <vhobbs@ROANOKE.EDU>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Albie,
No offense; I definitely agree with you that "a brother is a brother,"
and I can see what you are saying and agree. We shouldn't allow
ourselves to discriminate because we fear what the campus will perceive
us to be. But this is a bad choice of words:
"Here is my take on the campus perception of it now; who cares what the
campus thinks of the chapter."
Our campus is a community which we serve and also the well from which we
draw pledges and new brothers. If any of our pledges had not had a
favorable opinion of our chapter/fraternity throughout their pledge
period, we would not have had a successful past three pledge semesters.
Once pledges enter the pledging process, their impressions are usually
favorable; however, they first must be drawn to Alpha Phi Omega and
decide to pledge. That is why we care what the campus thinks; we want
them to have a positive impression of us, or rather of what we stand
for.
As to changing impressions... well, I have to concur with Brothers
Risner and Janison, and their suggestions. Remember that "service is
what we do" (from Brother Mackenzie's Nationals 1998 speech), and we
need to reflect that on campus, to counteract such impressions. Alpha
Phi Omega is about a group of people tied together by the cardinal
principles which we all know and love, and about making the world a
better place. That is the message that needs to go out on campus. Once
that message is out, ideally people will look past any biases they had
about the fraternity and see the larger purpose and ideals we hold dear.
Question: (in 2 parts.) 1. How many chapters represented on this list
regularly hold open service projects throughout the year? (I define this
as projects which are sponsored by the fraternity, but in which non
brothers can perform in the same roles as brothers, e.g. a cleanup of a
trashed complex for a trouble center - if you have other definitions let
me know...) 2. Does this tend to help your reputations on campus, when
the population (faculty and students) can see what you do? (E-mail
responses back to sleeper375@geocities.com, please - that's my other
account, this one is getting a tad full.) That's an idea we're
experimenting with,
and I wanted to get some feedback from an experienced, captiv- um,
wider audience. :-)
I know that this sounds simplistically naive. Problems like homophobia,
racism, etc. are quite a bit larger than we are, and we aren't easily
going to be free of them, if ever. Still, if we allow people to see us
on campus as a "(insert epithet here) frat," we aren't going to promote
the cardinal principles, and we aren't going to help people become free
of said problems. We have to do what we can, instead of just fearing
it.
Ok, I'm off of the soapbox (not that I could give any kind of speech
right now anyway...). Any comments to me individually can be directed
to sleeper375@geocities.com ; as I said before, my college account is
getting full to an absurd extent...
Disclaimer: This post reflects my opinions alone, which are not
necessarily the same as the opinions of Alpha Beta Psi, Section 81, or
Region III as a whole. (Hey, I've only been on ABPsi exec and that for
just three weeks, give me some time.... that's a joke, by the way :-)
Good night, um, morning to all of you.
Yours in Friendship, Leadership, and Service,
Vicki
~~~~~
Victoria Lee Hobbs
ABPsi Secretary
AIM: sleeper375
(540) 375-5518
http://students.roanoke.edu/v/vhobbs/
"It is when you are most fortunate that you are also the most
unfortunate, for when you are fortunate you cannot imagine what
suffering is."
~from Sundiata.
(PS - I meant to send this last night around 2:30 AM but in my
sleepiness I hit a wrong button :-( Hopefully, this will not have
duplicates...)
