Day 2, Wow

Day number 2 at NGLA! So today was honestly overwhelming because of all of the information that I attained from the sessions I went to. The day started with off with the keynote speaker Dr. Richard Decapua the Associate Dean of Students and Adjunct Faculty at Boston College. His presentation was titled Dynamic Influence and had to do a lot with the history of Greek life in the United States and how it is our actions that define who we are. The largest point that he made was that we as Greek's tend to have a Rhetoric and a Reality and in the past they have not been reflective of each other. His challenge to us was that we must make our reality be our rhetoric, or otherwise we are hypocrites.

Although the sessions that I attended today were informational, the must influential one was the Creating an Effective and Meaningful Judicial process for your IFC. Daniel Greenebaum is the Coordinator of IFC Services for the North- American Interfraternity Conference, and he presented on how your IFC judicial board can better understand their purpose, appropriate sanctions, and how to be an effective entity. Daniel was able to break down the process of starting a judicial case into, Has policy been broken, writing a letter of summary of the given complaint that was presented to the board, and the investigation process of the case against a group/individuals, holding an Informal Hearing, follow up, and then Call a formal Hearing, Giving sanctions, and Creating a Final Statement. The best thing that Daniel discussed was when conduction all of the different sections of the judicial process, reaching out to professionals on your campus that do those types of things every day. (Ex: reaching out to the Conduct Office to see what type of sanctions that are given to the students ans how they are worded.)

At the end of today we went out for dinner and then came back to the hotel and got to go dancing. This was such an awesome experience for me. Getting to meet people from different Multicultural Greek organizations and getting to see their different "calls" and "strolls/walks" was eye opening.Their "calls" are different ways of identifying if there is a member of your organization near by you. The "strolls/walks" are different dances that are used to show off who your organization is and how good you are at dancing. What was interesting to see is how people from different councils are not allowed to make their own strolls or calls because it is seen as disrespecting the MCG organizations.

Here is hoping that Day three is as good as day one.