[2564] in APO News
issue #6
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeffrey Scott Poore)
Thu May 1 11:38:06 1997
To: apoc-dist@MIT.EDU
From: Jeffrey Scott Poore <jeffreypu@MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: jefreypu@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 01 May 1997 11:29:05 EDT
APOcrypha
Volume 86, Issue 6
Wednesday, April 23, 1997
Spring 1997
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Letter from the Editor
Hi there brothers. This is yet another issue of the Apocrypha. There
aren't as many articles in this apoc, but that's ok, cause everyone is
hosed, and that's something we can all understand. Hopefully we will
see more articles in the next issue, since that issue will come out
during the elections meeting for this term. This of course means that
if you are considering running for an office for next term, you should
write an article, especially if you are unable to attend the meeting
(in other words, if you don't tell us that you want to run for an
office, you won't be considered, and the best way to do this is by
writing an article so that your reasons for running and backround info
are available for people to consider).
Until then, here is yet another issue of the infamous apocrypha.
YiLFS,
Jeffrey
PS: Yes, I wrote a few of the articles in this apoc, but then again,
it was time to write these articles. One of them I have been thinking
about writing for some time, and the candidate article was due since I
won't be around for nominations. This should set an example for others
to follow. Please submit candidate articles :)
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John Grossi on Conclave
Well I just got back from Conclave... and for those who could not
attend and the detail watchers (Fuzz, Randy, etc.) here's what
happened.
- University of New Hampshire - Theta Zeta Chapter hosted the
semesterly meeting of the chapters in New England and Quebec... and
did a great job.
- Mike Repeta retired as Section 96 Chair and Richard "Sparky" Donovan
(alumni of EZ) was elected to fill his job. I too was re-elected to a
fourth term as chair of Section 94.
- Fall 1997 Conclave is still up in the air... watch for details.
- Spring 1998 Conclave will be hosted by Phi Epsilon Chapter at Maine
Maritime Academy , Castine Maine, on March 20-22. Theme is "Conclave
our way, this ain't Burger King" Contacts are Mike Dow
<mdow@bell.mma.edu> and Steve Austin <saustin@bell.mma.edu>
- Roll Call was won by Alpha Gamma Pi Chapter at the University of
Maine at Farmington.
- Man Mile went to Phi Epsilon Chapter at Maine Maritime, 39
midshipmen came 200 miles to conference.
- Pledge Mile went to Delta Rho Chapter at Rutgers University - New
Brunswick.
- Dignitaries in attendance were: mrn, and Section 97 Chair Ben
Mitchell, as well as our illustrious though forever seperated from her
beloved chair Region Director Cheryl Smith.
High lights of the high jinks:
Songs, chants...and MAYDAY, MAYDAY... All the gavels were
stolen. (Highlight of that was Section 96 Staff attempting to immitate
Lee Correll to get the gavel back) Cheryl's chair took SEVERAL
walks... and I'm not even sure she knows where it is... and my car got
moved for me...
BTW MMA do you know where your flag is... *grin*
All in all the 247 attendees from 15 Chapters, 2 petitioning groups,
and 3 interest groups, as well as the staff foeggies had a great time
courtesy of Jen, Regan, and Theta Zeta.
- John Grossi
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Why I don't Want a DSK, by Jefreypu
Well, its come about that time again for us to select those members of
the chapter that are deserving of the DSK. For those that do not know
and have not heard, a DSK is the highest honor that our chapter can
bestow upon a brother. The reason why someone should be awarded a DSK
are a matter of debate that comes up almost every year, and sometimes
we are more lenient on what the meaning really is. This is therefore
the reason that I am here writing this article, and it is also the
reason that I hope you are also reading it. Of course, eventually, you
know I will explain why I don't want one, but that comes after my
thoughts on what I believe a DSK is for.
Now the term DSK stands for ``Distinguished Service Key.'' I look at
the first word of this phrase, and that kind of indicates to me that a
DSK was originally intended for the kind of brother that doesn't just
meet the requirements to stay active but instead goes beyond and above
the requirements. This would mean working more than the usual number
of hours per month at service projects, comes to meetings and provides
valuable input, and perhaps this brother even doesn't restrict himself
to just what the chapter as a whole chooses to do but also strives to
do more than the chapter plans, maybe even going as far as to do
service not done directly by APO.
This to me just seems like the kind of thing that we have in mind for
a DSK. The superior service brother.
My only problem with this whole view is that no one person I know
always fits this description. We all get hosed at some period of time
during our stay here at MIT. Some of us disappear for a whole term at
a time, and we don't see them again until the following term. Some
people come to APO as freshmen when we believed that we had infinite
amounts of time, (And I'll be damned if some days it sure didn't feel
that way too :) but then we were on grades and discovered that we
actually couldn't put every night toward our extra curriculars.
But of course, its not just about being that super service person all
of the time. That of course is just too unreasonable for the reasons I
have stated above. I think instead that there are a variety of things
that we can look for that would characterize good candidates for a
DSK, simply because there are a lot of people with different strengths
in different things, and really, you want to award people for what
they do well, not look down upon them because there are things that
they don't do as well as others.
For instance, we have had people that although they don't go to lots
of projects and they don't necessarily come to meetings, when they say
that they will do something, they either do it or they give it to
someone else to do and then check back to make sure it was done. Some
people go to an amazing amount of projects, even though they get hosed
down by their classes, they still keep coming to projects and doing
service. Others take up the jobs that none of the rest of us want to
do, and even though it would be ok if they slacked off and didn't do
them, they still do those jobs and the rest of us reap the benefits.
So what it all comes down to is that a DSK, to me, is something you
award to someone cause when it came to being a part of our fraternity,
they did some of what they do best, even if this is just putting in so
much time towards service that it deserves a special recognition of
its own. It isn't a contest between brothers, but instead an
individual award that should be considered individually for each
person. There is no hard fast rule that says how many DSK's we can
give out in one year. If we have 10 outstanding brothers one term that
have all brought us extraordinary service, then really we should award
those brothers for what they have done.
But when it comes down to it, I don't really think of myself as the
distinguished type of brother. I go to many projects every term
(although my favorite kinds of projects tend to be on campus service
or chapter weekend type service), I have held a number of offices, I
have been a big brother four times and two of those littles have
littles of their own as well, and I have even served as a voting
delegate to conventions at the sectional and national level. And yet
while these things are impressive achievements to myself, they aren't
necessarily anything that has not been achieved before, and in this
way, I don't really feel distinguished.
And really, that's ok. I didn't come to MIT to be distinguished. I
believe deep down that I am my own unique person. I am quite certain
that I do lots of things differently from anyone else, but the world
doesn't have time to recognize every little thing that makes us
different from those around us. As for my role in APO, I would rather
have us be a large group of non distinguishable exceptional brothers
than a group of brothers where only a few people were really viewed as
being exceptional. I prefer to think that we are all working together
for the same cause, rather than working to see which of us can do the
job faster or better. And finally, I enjoy my times with APO because I
feel I am an integral part of a team, rather than a distinguished
member of a collective. I hope to be remembered as brother who worked
hard to do his fellow service to his community, rather than someone to
stand out in the face of service.
YiLFS,
Jeffrey
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Glenn back on a Soap Box
This article was originally written as advice for a potential MVP
candidate. It is as useful to any other candidate present or future,
so I'm presenting a slight varaition on it for publication. If the
candidate wants to identify himself, he can do so.
As far as the general system of pledging and elevation into Alpha
Chi goes -- I generally like it. Indeed, I was one of the three/four
people who designed the last two major revamps. (Three and four being
respective, recent to old, for the current system of interviews and
PTRMs, and moving membership retention responsibilities elsewhere, so
that the MVP could focus on a task that is large enough as it is.) Of
course, I still believe that the requirement for projects should be 7,
as that way pledges won't be elevated unless they have done at least
5; where the current rule of 6 (IMHO) too often results in the
elevation of pledges who have done only 4. But the chapter has fairly
firmly made up its mind, and I do not advocate reopening that old
debate.
It is my belief that the deciding characteristic which does the
most to determine the quality of the pledges elevated at the end of
the term is the quality of the service program. In my experience, how
good the SVP is has a much higher correlation with the quality of the
pledges than how good the MVP is. I know that it is wierd to tell a
prospective MVP this, but that has been my experience. (Of course, I
also believe that being SVP is the most important office you can hold
in the chapter -- more important than President.)
Of the purely MVP controlled aspects of the pledge program, I think
the big brother/little brother program is of highest importance. What
matters here is not the the matchings me perfect. A good matching at
the pledge ceremony has in my experience been far superior to the
optimal matching later. When I pledged, we were literally paired at
the pledge ceremony, and the person who pinned us was our big brother,
unless prior arrangements for another BB had been made. We did know
who our BBs would be before the pinning, they were also the person who
performed the act. In addition to the added beneficial effect this
has for the pledges, going back to that system might also encourage
better attendance at ceremonies.
The existing chapter pledge manual is a good document. Do not,
however, make the mistake of thinking that it matters all that much.
Participation matters more than reading, and the best way to learn
will always be by doing. My pledge class, which received only the
national pledge manual, had almost half of the class stay to the
bitter end of elections meetings, and three SVPs that I can remember
instantly. So don't run pledge meetings purely from the pledge
manual. MIT students are smart people, they can read it themselves.
Offer something more, something different, something better, or at
least the opportunity to actually do something. One idea I have
thought highly of is to have the pledges really run the pledge
project. Give them a date, and all the help they want, but have them
collectively find the project and make all the arrangements for
running it. Also, don't hold a meeting for the sake of holding a
meeting. You have better things to do, and so do they.
- Glenn
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey's Candidate Articles
Well, I wasn't sure if I wanted to run for any more offices, cause I
really thought that I had pretty much done the jobs that I wanted to
do, but in truth, there are still a few jobs out there that I really
still want to do. Thus, even though I have already written a sort of
long article for the apoc, I decided that I probably should write a
few candidate articles to let people know what offices that I have
seriously been considering. For the reader's consideration I will just
note here that I have previously held the offices of Historian,
Fellowship Chair, Administrative Vice President, and Apocrypha Editor,
which I am still doing right now as I type :)
President?
Well, I am kind of divided over whether I want to run for the office
of President. The first question that comes to mind is whether I
really want the job, and the answer would have to be yes. I have
really wanted to be President at some time for a lot of my time as a
brother. It was one of those offices that I mentioned when they asked
me as a pledge what offices that I thought I might eventually want to
run for.
Well, now that question is out of the way. Why do I want the job? (I
still haven't said I want to run :) Well, the office of President to
me has a kind of responsibility to it that I would really like to try
my hand at. Alpha Phi Omega already requires us to be leaders every
term in some way, as that is written directly into our brotherhood
expectations. But the president gets to serve as a guide for many of
the aspects of the chapter, where as being a pc is directly
controlling a small portion of the service program. Having gone to
Nationals, I have learned a great deal about what being a leader of an
organization such as our can take, especially when dealing with really
deep issues such as the Gentleman's Agreement (should chapters be
allowed to prevent women from being allowed into Alpha Phi Omega if
they choose to remain all male?) or the different wording of the Toast
Song. Of course I also have my own ideas about how a meeting should be
run, based on my experience at having been a brother in our chapter
through many terms and having seen many things which did work and many
which did not.
I also however do not want the job of President for some reasons, and
I will be quite open and up front about these reasons. One reason is
that there seems to be this vague idea of what kind of person you have
to be to serve as President, and sometimes I just think that I am not
really that kind of person. I am not very forceful about things, often
indecisive (although I usually end up consulting others and then
deciding), and my I believe sometimes that my words don't necessarily
carry as much weight as do others, and in this way I have been often
felt discouraged from running for the offices of President, MVP, and
SVP. I have never even been nominated before for the offices of
President or SVP, and this kind of seems to indicate that I don't seem
like the kind of person people want as President. Well, I can live
with that. Still I figured that I would write this article anyway and
at least announce that I had thought about it and that really, I have
wanted the job before.
SVP?
Well, I don't really want the job of SVP. I want to at least write
here though that I did give it consideration. However, I think the
reason that I don't really want the job comes down to the fact that I
really prefer to PC projects and to do the work it requires to make a
project happen rather than to find the projects for a term and then
help others to work on them. Maybe I will think about this one again
later on.
MVP?
Well, I actually didn't really want to be MVP before. I don't really
know why I didn't want the job before. Maybe its because I like being
a big brother (I have a cool family tree to back me up there :). Maybe
its because I have seen the success of the MVP vary a lot from term to
term.
But when I think back to the job that was done by my mommie, Barbara,
I keep thinking that this is a job that I could do, and since I think
she did a quite remarkable job at it, I think that I can follow in her
footsteps and achieve quite a lot of success. One of the things about
her term that inspired me the most was her preparedness for meetings,
including the open meetings and pledge meetings. It was very clear to
me that she had seriously thought out the term beforehand and had
planned out things that she wanted to do so that as the term
progressed, she knew where she was and what was left to do.
I also think to the job done by Ari, which in my opinion turned out to
be quite a successful term. Many of the pledges that came into our
chapter that term have turned out to be some of the brothers I like
most in our chapter. I also really admired the time and energy he
spent toward the job, much at cost to him in various other ways. His
ideas for a successful rush turned out to be quite fruitful, and it is
my hope that we can do what we did before and have as much if not more
luck than we did last year.
The job of MVP to me is a really important one. We are only active
brothers here so long, and its important that we find new members to
take on the responsibilities that we ourselves will one day no longer
be able to keep. We must also pass on the knowledge we have gained as
brothers so that they too one day can pass it along to others. In this
way our pledge program is more than just an induction into our
chapter, its a learning period that gives prospectives a chance to
experience what being a part of our chapter is like, and I really want
a chance to be a part of that program.
One of the things I really want to work on is having an organized
membership program that will be planned out ahead of time (since we
usually plan a lot of dates of things in advance anyhow). I think it
would be kind of nifty to have pledge meetings that had topics planned
out so that all major areas of being in our fraternity were
covered. Furthermore, I would really like these meetings to be
something that I worked on before hand so that I know what I would
like to cover, rather than just meeting with pledges and just asking
them what things they would like to know more about (the problem is
not that we aren't covering what's interesting to them, the problem as
I see it is that sometimes we never teach them something that they
never knew to ask about in the first place). For this kind of
organization and planning, I would really like to use Memcomm to
gather ideas and input from the chapter about what kind of things the
brotherhood believes should be covered, how well things are going,
etc.
I would also like to ensure that pledges get big brothers sooner in
the term. If the pledges find someone they want to be their big
brother, great. If they don't, they probably don't know many of us,
and really its better to match them up with someone rather than
waiting until they get to know us better, since the big brother is
more a source of info for the pledge and also a closer connection to
the chapter.
Finally, I would really like to be MVP because I think that it would
be a really enjoying job. I think that I would enjoy planning out
meeting where I get to talk about how to do the things around the
office, around the institute, around Boston, and around Massachusetts
that I have learned through APO. In other words, that passing on of
ideas and information that will turn our pledges into active brothers.
AVP, Treasurer, Fellowship Chair, Apoc Ed?
Well, I am only going to write a little more here. I don't really want
to be treasurer at all, simply because money has never really been an
important thing to me. I am a pretty generous guy and I probably would
end up donating a lot of our money away or something silly, but don't
worry, I really don't want the job :)
AVP and Fellowship Chair were jobs I enjoyed a lot while doing it, but
I don't think I want to be elected to them again, simply because I
know of others that want the job much more than I do, and I know which
offices I really want more (although I would actually consider AVP if
I was actually nominated).
Apoc Ed, though is an office I would also be willing to consider for a
second round. This is because I have actually enjoyed putting the
Apocrypha together a lot, and maybe I can try a few different things
next term. I think I made a few campaign promises last term that I
didn't really keep, but at the beginning of this term I made a serious
goal to produce apocs regularly, which I have, and also to try to
produce 9 apocs this term, of which this is 6, so I am not too far
away from finishing that goal. (I may have to do an extra one during
an exec comm week to squeeze all 9 in if the last one comes out at I
Banquet :) And for this reason, I wouldn't mind another term where I
try to do what I did before and then of course add another goal on
top, just to keep life exciting :)
Misc Info
Ok, so now you know what I want to run for and why. But you are
probably just wondering what my life is going to be like next term and
whether I really can do these jobs. Well, As usual, I will only be
taking 3 classes. Two of these classes will be course 6, but I have
found this term that it hasn't been so bad, and I actually have had a
lot of time to devote to other things. I played with the pit in Next
Act every sunday, I still put in two hours on Mondays and Wednesdays
with the Concert Band, I went to Carnival Meetings and helped see that
things got done, I came to most chapter meetings (I didn't come to
execcomms as much, but there really wasn't a reason why I couldn't
have), I went on dinner trips, I went on projects, I worked a metric
buttload of big screw shifts, I published the apocrypha every two
weeks, and I think I am still passing all my classes fairly well (not
amazingly well, but I can't do that even if all I do is tool :).
What I am trying to say through all that is that I probably won't be
hosed anywhere nearly enough that I won't be able to do a job if
elected to one. The only other thing to consider is that I am
currently tour manager of the Concert Band, but in truth, this will
not require tons of work all the time, especially since we don't have
much of a budget in the band and so our tour probably won't be
terribly huge or hosing.
So, that should be about it for the whole officer election thing that
should be coming up. Of course if anyone wants to ask me anything, all
you have to do is write, call, bug me, whatever :)
YiLFS,
Jeffrey
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Quotes!!!
Ryan: Chocolate covered Lizzie?
Lizzie: That has an entirely different connotation.
This is much more fun to just watch than to participate in. But then
that tends to be true about a lot of things. I'm just a spectator kind
of guy. Hey you learn something new every day. (Jeffrey)
Ari: Did you use my advice?
Michael: Well, yes. But I wish I'd used it more.
I don't know, because I haven't been going on project, but it seems
the attendance has been fairly low. (Brian of the West)
If you can stick your hand in there you can design a mechanical device
to do it better. (Charley)
We'll have every other person do every other person. (Ryan)
So have you ever had four go down in front of you? (Gina)
I fell like someone's removing my shirt! (Keather)
It would cost 173 for me to do it for a weekend. (Susama)
Its really hard to learn how to make unix system calls with you doing
that on me. (Ari)
With a sufficicent amount of duct tape I guess a cat would do most
anything. (Melissa)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ APO is sponsoring an on-campus carnival. Register +
+ your student activity/living group by sending mail +
+ to carnival@mit.edu or visit the Carnival homepage +
+ at http://web.mit.edu/orod/www/Carnival/ +
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jeffrey Scott Poore Home Phone: (617)225-8868
500 Memorial Drive #518 APO Office: (617)253-3788
Cambridge, MA 02139 My Pager #: (617)675-7258
jefreypu@mit.edu http://the-dark-side.mit.edu/
Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Brother and Editor of the Newsletter of the Alpha Chi
Chapter of Alpha Phi Omega, the National Service Fraternity
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
