Diversity is a Beautiful Thing

Day 2 of NGLA has unfortunately come to an end. At first, I did not know what to expect; I thought it was going to be the same conference like the one I went on for SGA (which, by the way, was not fun at all. Sorry Kaitlyn ;) ). But, just on the second day, I have already learned so much and am excited to bring this knowledge back to my fraternal organization, Phi Kappa Theta. For example, two of the sessions I went to were about how to recruit quality over quantity brothers/sisters and scholarship programs. To be completely honest, Phi Kappa Theta would greatly benefit from these tips on how to prepare our own members to ask the real questions to our potential new members and setup a new system so brothers who are falling behind scholastically will be able to reach a hand up and not constantly be criticized.

However, what really was the icing on the cake was seeing different multi-cultured fraternities/sororities at a dance tonight. Unfortunately, as far as Greek organizations, one of the things we can definitely improve on is making minorities and other races feel more included in Greek Life. In my opinion, I feel as if a majority of students at BSU still hold a stigma that being Greek is bad and not good. However, if we accepted multi-cultured groups to be charted on campus, then I feel as if that stigma would change completely. But, what amazed me about this was the way they were dancing and made it into a ritual. When Jake Bolarinho was speaking to one of the members from the multi-cultured organization, he spoke about the whole dancing ritual of the organizations and said if an outsider tried to dance with them it would be considered disrespectful due to the fact they see it as their ritual. As a Latino man (well half since I also am Portuguese) I really felt this sense of connection as they were playing the music I enjoy dancing to which is Spanish/Brazilian. It was just really interesting to finally see something we do not ever see on campus and to see the differences we have with multi-cultured organizations. I definitely would love to do something to include them in our Greek community.

Here is a little clip of what I am talking about: