[21174] in APO-L
[APO-L] Bring Alpha Phi Omega into the 21st century
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Freak Boy)
Wed Sep 13 16:52:47 2000
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Message-Id: <39BFE70B.19B0AEA1@oneonta.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 16:43:55 -0400
Reply-To: Freak Boy <brotjr40@SNYONEVA.CC.ONEONTA.EDU>
From: Freak Boy <brotjr40@SNYONEVA.CC.ONEONTA.EDU>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Let me begin by saying Alpha Phi Omega is a great organization for
students at college. Frank Reed Horton created a great and noble
organization for the advancement of fraternity and service.
However, it is time to bring Alpha Phi omega into the 21st century.
Currently APO is facing many problems. These obstacles are both within
itself and outside the fraternity. Currently these problems have not
reached a crisis point, but if they are not faced and at least discussed
then they could cause serious predicaments for the fraternity.
Currently the idea of Greek organizations within the United States has
changed. Greek organizations are not considered as helpful to the
college, as a whole, as they once were. Other Greek organizations have
tainted the idea of Greek life from death of pledges to criminal
proceedings stemming from certain Greek organization pledging programs.
High school students who are looking towards college life are dissuaded
from joining Greek organizations for many reasons like some stated
above. They have been hit by the TV news about pledges dying from a
harsh hazing accident.
A new attitude within the past couple of college generations (this also
may have been going on for far longer), is that joining a Greek
Organization is like buy your friends. I was talking with a new
freshman about unrelated information when she saw my APO hat I was
wearing. I said that I was a brother of this fraternity and that we
were rushing. I invited her to come to a rush to see what APO was all
about, but she replied back that she didn't want to join because she did
not want to buy her friends.
Despite APO not hazing its pledges and its commitment to service, we are
lumped into the same category as the other Greek organizations in the
college student eyes as an organization.
Plus each Greek organization, including us, is experiencing a slow
decrease in membership due to the problems stated above.
We need to change our image. I don't mean drop our fraternal side
totally, but increase the public knowledge of APO and when it has done
and will continue to do for the community at large.
Plus, we need to help show the college students the reasons its better
to do service with APO then with the volunteering organizations that are
based within each campus or other Greek organizations that are based
solely on service like us.
We need to combat each point I brought up and bring the ideas of Frank
Reed Horton into the 21st century.
But we can stop there. We also need to work on our interior problems
too. I believe we need to incorporate more technology into how we run
the fraternity. We need: better inter chapter communications, better
intra chapter communications, and better communication with the main
office and the officers from the sectional staff, to national staff.
We cannot continue to wait to decide important topics at sectionals,
regional, and nationals. New topics should be brought up and decided on
a semester by semester and even a weekly basis. We shouldn't have to
wait two years to bring up important national ideas and problems.
With that in mind some ideas I had was that we create a better chat
room. The IRC channel is nice to have, but it is hard to get to by some
students. Plus, lots of the new brothers do not know of the IRC
channel. We should set up a chat room like the ones on Yahoo where all
brothers know about and can connect to easily without using an IRC
program to communicate on.
We also need to increase the brothers knowledge of both the APO-L list,
but the APOSOC list too. There should be regional and sectional lists
set up to for better communication. Plus, all these lists should be
sent to each chapter at the beginning of the year so that all the
brothers will know about the lists.
Another area we need to work on is about major fraternal topics. In the
past we sent out the topics and discussions before each national
convention. We need to now send them out each semester and have a
discussion on a semester basis.
One last topic is that the national staff should be more accessible to
the brothers. Them being on the new chat rooms at certain times can
facilitate this. This would allow them to be able to discuss major
problems and hear form the brothers.
All these are my thoughts on Alpha Phi Omega today. They may not
represent all those in my chapter and they are mainly my ideas. Also,
thank you for taking the time to read my letter.
YiLFS
Jonathan Brothers
"Freak Boy"
M.V.P.
Xi Rho
Spring 97 "Black Sheep" pledge class
*Cry havoc and lets slip the dogs of war!*
