Now that NGLA has finally come to an end, we were all asked
to sit down and think about all of the things that we have learned during our
time here. I want to take some time to share with you all some of the greatest
lessons I have learned in the last few days. To be honest, there are so many
things that I want to share but I feel like there are a few things that
particularly stood out to me. I am hoping that the entire Bridgewater Greek
Life Community can benefit from these small but incredibly valuable pieces of information.
After a lot of thought, I am going to try and explain this all as best as I
can! So here it goes!! :)
1. The first thing I learned has to do with recruitment. The
presenter gave us all a challenge. Yes, a challenge! She said that while
recruiting new members, "We need to stop selling what we do. Instead, we
need to sell who we are." At first, I couldn’t really see the difference
between the two. Isn’t what we do a huge part of who we are? The answer is yes
but I think we often get caught up on which part is really important. I never
really noticed the difference until it was explained during the session. During
our recruitments, we tend to recruit new members by telling them all of the
things that we do. We try to impress them with things like our commitment to
community service, our pride in our organization, our close bonds with one
another and the social events we host but although those things are all
important, they are all things that other Greek organizations do as well. I do
not know of a single Greek organization that does not hold those same values.
Those are all things that are expected from a Greek organization. That is their
purpose. We need to find the things that set us apart from everyone else and
what makes us unique. We need to stop selling what we do and find a way to sell
who we are. Everyone expects us to tell them about things like community
service and in all honesty, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that we
are social. We are called SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS!!! Yes, we need to inform them
about these types of things but more importantly we need to focus on what is
really important and on what makes each one of our organizations unique. That
is what we need to stress during recruitment. It would help us recruit a unique
group of members that truly embody our values and not just someone who is
interested in community service or attending socials. (They can get that no
matter what Greek organization they join) After attending this session, I will
now look at recruitment in a different light and try to figure out what makes people
want to join OUR Greek organization and not simply a Greek organization.
2. The other piece of information that I learned is equally
as important and it pertains to how we manage problems within our Greek
Community. The presenter led a conversation about how we need to hold ourselves
accountable for the issues that our community faces every single day. These are
not just issues within our individual chapters, but issues that Greek life faces
as a whole. Some of these issues include things like alcohol abuse and hazing
within our chapters. Now before I go on, I just want to say that I personally
feel that Bridgewater Greek Life has done an amazing job when it comes to
fighting off these stereotypes. But no matter how great we are, we must realize
that we are currently part of a culture that still has a long way to go. Issues
like hazing and alcohol abuse may not seem like a large issue for Greek life on
our campus, but unfortunately this is not true for Greek life across the board.
Unfortunately for many chapters across the country, these activities are
actually incredibly common on campus. And what is even more unfortunate is the fact those
are the types of activities that people choose to remember. Before NGLA, I did
not realize how many Greek organizations still took part in activities like
hazing and alcohol abuse and I personally found it sickening when I learned
just how many Greeks do not yet see the problem. I always thought that Greek
Life as a whole was constantly trying to fight the stereotypes and it saddens
me to think that many members are not willing to change their negative
behaviors. In the end, those behaviors affect us all whether we like it or not.
No matter how much we try to fight against the issues, we are still only as
strong as our weakest link. We continuously blame others for these problems and
often say that the issues are simply stereotypes that other people use to label
us. We tell ourselves that we are looked at in this way because others do not
understand us. In reality, we use the term stereotype as a way to place the
blame on others so that we simply do not have to confront the situation. This
is because we do not really consider it to be our problem. We must admit that
even if it is not a huge problem on our campus, it is still a problem that the
Greek community faces. That alone makes it our problem. As a member of this
Greek community, we have a responsibility to recognize that we are a part of
this negative image. That also makes us a part of the solution. Everything we
do is a choice. Everything we do is a choice that can either make us or break
us. At the end of the day these are the decisions that will determine the
future of Greek life.
3. The presenter then went on and talked about how we can
deal with problems like these. Her explanation sounded a little bit like this.
She explained that some people think that in order to fix a problem, they have
to step back and redefine the situation. In the beginning, this approach
sounded reasonable to me. It made sense that if a problem was found within the
organization, one must locate the source of the problem, eradicate it and
rebuild. The presenter said that many people in our society feel that Greek
life must be redefined in order to get rid of the issues that are imbedded
within it. In other words, some sort of radical change must occur. Up until
this moment, I completely agreed with everything. If there was a problem within
our chapters, shouldn’t we attempt to make radical changes? It made sense to me
and it seemed like a more than reasonable way to respond. Then she told us why
radical change was completely unnecessary and would do nothing but waste our time.
She explained that there was no reason to redefine our system in order to
create change. It is not a problem within our organizations themselves. It is a
problem with our members. She then used a quote that finally made it all make
sense. She said, "Organizations do not change but rather people change.
Everything we need to be successful has already been written out for us. Our
founders outlined the solution to these problems for us when they created our
organizations because if we constantly embodied the values that we swore to
uphold, these problems would fail to exist." I feel that within our own chapters,
we often feel that in order to fix problems within our organizations, we have
to redefine them or come up with some new policy that will make magically make everything
better. Sure it might work for a
semester or two, but changing the organization is not the long term solution.
We must change our own attitudes and simply remember the goals and values of
the organizations that we committed to during initiation.
These are just a few of the lessons that I learned
throughout my time spent at NGLA. I hope that we will be able to use some of
these lessons to improve Greek life on our campus. Spending the weekend at NGLA was an incredible
experience and I am so happy to have been given such an awesome opportunity. Thanks
NGLA!!! J
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