NGLA Day 1

Today I had the pleasure of listening to some extremely inspiring speakers at NGLA. In the morning we heard from keynote speaker Kim Novak. Kim's presentation delivered a strong message on how Greeks must go about representing their Values Based Organizations and how we must own and combat the stereotypes we face. Our organizations are supposed must work to dispel these stereotypes by avoiding risky behavior like the plague and emphasizing the positive in what we do as Greeks. We have to take a good hard look at what our values are and how our actions reflect those values. Greeks have to then utilize these values to transcend the expectations society has set for us. Later during our group sessions our facilitators worked with us on identifying, prioritizing, and discussing the issues that face our individual communities. Issues over scholarship emerged in our group sessions as a major  difficulty for many of chapters and communities. Together we shared a number of ideas for improving scholarship in a community, namely stronger systems of rewards for successful students, stricter repercussions for failing to meet academic standards and greater community support for scholarship through the organized facilitation of community study hours. In my next session Buy In or Get Out, David Stollman, a Campus Speak presenter echoed the words of Kim Novak in his challenge for Greeks to identify the changes that need to be made in our organizations and possessing the strength to make them realities. He emphasized that the oaths sworn  by Greek men and women are the only true traditions that should ever be upheld by our organizations as details in how our organizations must change as necessity demands but our oaths are the essential core of our organizations which we need to embody or leave our organizations altogether. David stated that we earn our letters when we live up to them and the ideals they stand for. Our organizations need to earn back the respect they once held and eliminate the behaviors that leave us labeled as partiers and hazers. Next I attended Flip Your Organization, a workshop focused on getting apathetic members of our organizations more involved in our work and as a result increasing the productivity and efficacy of our time as actives within our organizations. The main ways in which the presenter suggested that Greeks accomplished these goals were to establish small, quantifiable goals through which members can work towards accomplishing overarching major goals, to establish connections between these goals and our mission statements, and to give measures of responsibility to members with underwhelming involvement while encouraging their involvement through praise and direct engagement from chapter leadership in a one on one basis. The final session I attended was one focused on developing alumni contacts as mentors for junior and senior active members in their preparation for entrance into the workforce. This type of program would pair actives with alumni in the career field of interest to help guide them in their efforts to break into a particular field. The presenter suggested that actives work on developing alumni databases and work with their school's career services offices to find and professionally access alumni resources. Throughout the day I learned a lot about how to confront and fix various issues that face not only my own organization but the community as a whole, especially when it comes to apathy and indifference.