[21163] in APO-L
Re: [APO-L] What is our Bread abd Butter?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Derek J. Cashman)
Tue Sep 12 14:38:30 2000
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Message-ID: <Pine.A41.4.10.10009121428330.42654-100000@comet.vcu.edu>
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 14:41:38 -0400
Reply-To: "Derek J. Cashman" <djcashma@VCU.EDU>
From: "Derek J. Cashman" <djcashma@VCU.EDU>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.20000912094343.0099ac40@cstrombe.pobox.stanford.edu>
> I will make one more point here, as it is related. Nearly every decision
> of importance is made at a National Convention by the delegates. something
> like 90% of these delegates are active members of chapters, not alumni, and
> not National Board members. There is no such thing as the national APO
> parenting us. Nearly every rule put into place is done by the active
> members of APO, not some nameless, faceless national ruling council. I
> know that it is sometimes easier or more convenient to try to blame all of
> our problems on this type of entity, but it does not exist. We (the
> actives) make the rules for this fraternity. We get a lot of input from
> alumni, and that is a good thing. They have been around long enough to see
> where changes need to be made. But, in the end, it is the actives who vote
> to pass legislation or not.
>
> Chris Stromberg
> Zeta Chapter
Yes, this is true. But often times the simple truth is not necessarily
what is actually going on. We still cannot ignore the fact that most of
this legislation that is technically passed and voted on by the ACTIVE
chapters/brothers, is still written by alumni/staff members. And
judging by the quantity of legislation submitted combined with the
little amount of time to go over everything, I would be curious to know
how much of this legislation is actually read thoroughly, completely,
and well understood by these active brothers. Granted, there are some
issues such as the toast song and BSA stuff that are read and understood
because they are very important to the chapters. But there is probably a
lot of smaller things that don't get more than a quick glossing over
because the voting delegates are in a meeting at 3:00 am that they
really want to end, so they pass it just to get it over with. Maybe if
there was less legislation, or maybe if it was organized more clearly,
the meetings wouldn't take nearly as long and the actives would take
more time to understand it?
Perhaps instead of having individual alumni and chapters submit
legislation, we should organize this on the regional or sectional level.
Have a sectional-type meeting (or a series of meetings) and discuss the
national by-laws and what the section likes about it and doesn't like
about it, and submit changes as a section or region. A lot of debate
could be done before the convention, leaving for less time to debate
about it at the convention, and more time to actually enjoy yourself
without having to go three days w/o sleep at nationals,...
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Derek J. Cashman (derek.cashman@vcu.edu)
Graduate Student; Medicinal Chemistry; MCV/VCU
Treasurer; Alpha Delta Iota Chapter (VCU); Alpha Phi Omega
Alumnus; Alpha Beta Omega Chapter (ODU)
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"A Drug is any substance which, when injected into a rat, produces a
publishable scientific paper."
