I know I spoke briefly at the beginning of the semester on being part of a social fraternity that was forced to engage in changes to how we operate our house, specifically the whole aspect of pledgeship. This year I served on the executive board for my fraternity and our House Corp. were very straight forward with us, we either go away with pledgeship and implement an online approach to learning about the ideals and values of the fraternity or we simply cannot be apart of their house and would be forced to move out. The source of the problem resulted from our clashing views between the executive board and House Corp., we did not want to succumb to their rules and allow them to rid of our pledgeship and let the new guys to just walk in and not "earn" their spot. Of course, the concept of earning something and the whole idea of pledgeship is highly argued, is it right? Probably not, but from our perspective we chose to pledge our fraternity and nobody ever forced me to do anything I was not comfortable with. Our pledgeship is highly constructive and while there may be certain parts that are unnecessary, if we voluntarily did it and nothing went wrong, why is it wrong? The problem is the insurance policies on fraternities are extraordinary and it is extremely hard to insure a fraternity in general because nobody wants to be responsible for 100 18-22 year old men. I understand House Corp.'s perspective on the issue, they do not want us doing something irresponsible that could cause us to get kicked off campus, which results in them losing money. They have invested in this house and they do not want to see it go down, at the same time, we believed it would ultimately ruin the quality and bond of our brotherhood. I know some people may not understand that, but pledgeship brought me closer to all my pledge brothers because we shared a common conflict that we all overcame and in that sense there's an aspect of respect.
Now I believed certain changes would benefit us as a whole because I remember pledging and thinking a couple times, why would they make us do this? I was never hard on the idea of not changing pledgeship at all, I believe anything can be improved. The rest of the active members were very disappointed when we presented the dilemma to them. They shared the same views as the executive board and were very upset over this. Certain seniors and older guys will not view the new guys in the same light due to their love for the house. I do not have that same passion, but understand where they come from. Our chapter advisor sympathized with us about losing our peldgeship because he had too at one point, but the reality was these are the times we live in and told us we would have to eventually give in. The problem is there is a large disconnect between us and those in control of our chapter house. They were all active members at one point in their lives at this fraternity here at UIUC and went through even worse things than we did, but as I mentioned they have made an investment and I understand that. Older alumni have already reached out and expressed they will no longer donate to the house without a real pledgeship. Currently we are still in the mist of this conflict. We still operate our normal pledgeship routine, but have implemented nationals pledgeship program. At this time, we are on the notion that we will continue to use this system until we simply get caught. That will be the true breaking point, it won't happen now, but eventually it will and whether the fraternity goes under is up Interfraternity Council and our nationals.
Of course this would not be an issue had pledgeship never developed in the first place. The reality is we work hard to reach the top for anything in our lives. Pledgeship was created to establish discipline and authority. It is ridiculous if you take a step back and think about how this sort of system developed and not one that would be more professional/educational. At the end of the day, I do not think this could be avoided. People like to have power and when you are pledging you are powerless, you are essentially irrelevant. Eventually fraternities will probably fall off completely, I won't be surprised when they do. This also could not be avoided because our nationals come to our initiation week every year and monitor what goes on. It was only until last year when they decided to do-away with pledgeship.
Let's unpack some of your argument. (I also encourage you to reread what you wrote, just for the typos and poor word choice. A little bit of proofreading can go a long way.) Here I want to note a few things that you kind of brushed over.
ReplyDeleteLiability risk is different from accident risk, especially the sort of accident where there is property damage. If you get sued for liability, there is no upside for the amount of damages. This means that if there is any likelihood of facing such a lawsuit when it is not frivolous but has merit because there was gross negligence, will either be entirely uninsurable or will have insurance premiums that are incredibly expensive.
That there was no such bad experience when you went through pledging is not close to being sufficient to establish that there is no liability risk. There have been enough incidents reported in the press nationally to create the impression that the liability risk is real.
That is the precondition here. The question then is what can be done to get the liability risk down to a manageable level.
Now opposed to this are those who have been through pledging, either having enjoyed the experience in its own right, or if not that then are proud of having endured it. So they don't want the system to change.
Thus, you certainly have the underlying conditions for a post that is addressing the prompt for this week. But the part that you didn't discuss at all is any interaction between the two groups and how that plays out. You mentioned a chapter advisor. I wasn't quite sure who that person was. It sounded like a former student who works for the national organization. Was there actually conflict with him? It didn't seem so.
For this post to work you need to discuss situation where actual people are in conflict with one another - openly disagreeing, arguing, something along those lines. I got the sense that there is a lot of venting. But I didn't see where there is conflict.
The conflict is stemming from the issue of pledgeship and how we are in a dilemma if we should conform or not. We have chosen not to and understand the risks, obviously if we are caught there will be consequences. We disagree with nationals that pledgeship is not necessary in order to initiate new members into our house.
DeleteI was not venting, I was expressing the concerns of the fraternity and the conflicts that the chapter is dealing with between House Corp and nationals themselves. If we are caught, we will be kicked off campus and the chapter will be taken away. Nationals/House Corp. do not want that to happen for obvious reasons, but we rather be kicked off than see our chapter become a house where we allow anybody to walk in and take an internet course and become a member.
I would also like to note - I am on my way out and while I love my house, if it goes down or not is not of my concern any longer. This argument was more of the house vs. Nationals/House Corp.
DeleteIt seems to me that the conflict most appropriately lies between the chapter house and the national advisers that determine the rules and guidelines of the fraternity. It is certainly fair to recognize that most current members of the fraternity would take pride in the fact that they endured a pledgeship period that was demanding and difficult. I would assume the older individuals expect that those who wish to become members of the fraternity should have to go through the same hardship they have.
ReplyDeleteAs you mentioned, the amount of money required to insure a fraternity has drastically gone up. Especially with the scandals at universities like Indian and Oklahoma, it is understandable that the fraternity would want to prevent itself from future risk. Perhaps there was an open dialogue between the Housing Corporation and the Executive Board about the changes taking place? I would be interested to hear if the Housing corporation came down hard at first or if they were willing to allow for an adjustment period as the members of the fraternity got adjusted.