Day One: Will Day Two Top It?

Today started out with the repetition of my alarm alternating between my two snoozes of an Indian pop song and a parody rap song, and the eventual waking up. Waking up and getting out of my bed was probably the hardest part of today.

After we got up, and down to the area for our morning keynote speaker, Nick Boyle and I realized we matched, and then we decided to do the Cha Cha Slide, in our chairs. Later in the day, I had people come up to me and say "I love how you guys did the Cha Cha Slide this morning, it brightened up our day". At the speaker though, David Stollman introduced me to a new term: Sororitutes, as well as the concept of Pilgrims and NavaHoes. That said, in addition to many funny anectdotal things he also provided a lot of insight into the way that the FSL community is portrayed within society, by pulling up a video by CollegeHumor, which often parodies Greek Life. The video he pulled up was that of Frat Dad. Other examples include the Brohemian Rhapsody, and many other examples. He, near the end, did pull up a great powerpoint of positive things that greeks have done. There were two in particular that stood out to me, though I don't rememeber their names nor school/chapter, the two examples were how one chapter helped raise $30,000 toward a brothers medical bills for his cancer treatments, and he is now cancer free, and the chapter where a brother donated a kidney to help save one of his brothers lives. I'm hoping to be hearing the name David Stollman much more in the future, be it through Bridgewater State, or just on Twitter, which we are both following each other now.

The recurring theme of seeing people today who I would like to see come to campus was strong today. However before we could get into sessions, we met in our small groups. I found a lot out during our session. Mostly the apparent disconnect between many schools and their greek organizations. We split into groups of 5, and we drew what an accurate representation of our chapter was, where we wanted it to be, and what is standing in the way of that. I was very concerned to see alcohol and drugs as a hinderance and a reality in many organizations, as well as house issues. One chapter I was talking to told of how his chapter just regained status on their campus, and were handed the keys to a multi-million dollar mansion, without having to do work, so the motivation wasn't really there for them to do much to earn it. I liked how he was genuinely concerned by that. On top of that, an issue I saw was grades. One chapter I was talking to flat out didn't have a gpa policy in place. The member flat out said that their organization had 2 members of under a 1.0 gpa, and 15 under a 2.0, the only regulation they have is they need a 2.5 to be on their executive board. It really puts any problem BSU greek life has (for the most part) into perspective. We may have some shortcomings, but on the larger whole, we have less issues than other organizations. Once that exchange ended, we began discussing the tri-circle mentality: things you have absolute control over, some control over, and no control over. The amount of people who said that they had no control over a lot of school-rendered decisions shows how closeminded many schools are toward greek life. A direct quote I took was "A fraternity or sorority could raise $5 million dollars for the philanthropic events we do, and we wouldn't even be recognized, we did more community service than the community service club, and we didn't get any recognition and the community service club did". Granted, greek life is not about the 'thank you's' it's about the 'you're welcomes', but it's still nice to get a pat on the back now and then.

After that ended, and we had our lunch, we were off to sessions. The first session that I went to was one that I looked in the book at, and thought; well, I have interest in the title of it, and after reading it, felt it would be an interesting thing to learn about, titled: Diversity According to 'South Park' and 'Family Guy', by Matt Glowacki.

Matt Glowacki and I after the session ended

He was waiting outside the room, with jelly beans. Of course, me, loving jelly beans got immediately excited when I introduced myself at the inclusion of jelly beans. Three of my favorite things in the same place, Family Guy, South Park, and jelly beans, I could do this every day. The jelly beans themselves were the first step of the program. Each little bag came with a card that has his website on them, as well as the fact that Jelly Belly jelly beans that aren't the perfect jelly bean they get discarded due to being 'defective', while Matt classifies them as 'unique' and as a symbol of diversity. The end of the card reads a quote that I really liked: "As with people, the outer packaging may not always be the accepted norm, but what is inside can still be good."

He rolled into the packed room and introduced himself with the passion that I thought was very telling of what he would be telling about later. He opened up with a few laughs, and then transitioned into the first clipshow, of the episode of Family Guy that Chris and Peter experiment with liposuction, and Peter goes for it and he changes his entire personality due to the changes in his physical appearance, and defined the concept of Lookism. He transitioned that into the style of runway models being endangered due to the perception of needing to be skinny, and cited the death of a runway model in Madrid, though Madrid was the only place to institute a policy to have a minimum BMI (Body Mass Index) which he also explained as being an out of date system to begin with, and then talked about the Dove Self Esteem Fund, the fact that male eating disorders went up from 2% to 10% in a year, and said one of the truest quotes I've heard in "The most attractive part of someone is self confidence".

After that, we began talking about race issues, by watching the infamous episode of South Park when Randy Marsh is on an episode of Wheel of Fortune and has the letters N_GGERS and the prompt is 'people who annoy you'. The answer was NAGGERS, however that was not what he said, which raises the question: When is it okay to use the N word. We learned the history behind some of the terms which we have somewhat tabooed. Colored was invented by the NAACP in 1909, Black was invented during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, and in the 1970s, the more accepted African American came to be. We also spoke on the topic of why Reverend Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson are able to 'accept the apology for the race' when something that is not politically correct happens, as the two have been known bigots of the Jewish community.

What is really telling, is that the fact that Matt made over $200 dollars over the last two Christmas seasons...just by shopping at the mall and people giving him charity. He told the story of a girl from Eastern Kentucky who came up to him after a performance and flat out told him "I'd rather be you than me, people see you at the mall and give you money, when they see me, they just think I'm going to shoplift", and it's quotes like that that make me saddened by the country we live in.

Flat out, this speech was going to be hard to top.

After the session ended, I grabbed another business card and took the picture above, and was off to my next session, titled: The Power of WE: Building Stronger Teams through Social Styles, by Justin Jones-Fasu. It started out as a giant room, and he warned us about the difference between classifying a speech by enthusiasm and by practicality. A speech could be the most enthusiastic thing ever but if you get no pertinent information out of it, then it's not a good speech.

We then got split into groups based off our personality squares. There are four types of personality: analytical, driver, expressive and amiable. I was an amiable. What we had to do, was in our groups, we had to determine what qualities we saw as what our trait was; then choose words to describe our opposite (negatively). Expressive vs Analyitical, and Driver vs Amiable. After saying what we hated (or as the Amiables 'strongly disliked') we had to compile 5 things we liked about the other personality. What I took out of that is that sometimes you have to be able to multitask and be multiple different things, and certain personality types work better for some things better than others.

After that session ended, I was off again, one more time moving one room down, and I was at the Elephants and Onions seminar. It was the only program I went to that was not very well attended, though I feel that made this more of a strong program. It definitely was easier to talk in this one than the other two due to there being fewer people around. We started off by identifying what the term of social justice means.

We then played a game called Airport, in which we, as a group, were wandering around as if we had our heads cut off like chickens would until we were told to stop and pair up, and were given a way to portray the person we were looking at (ie. a person who just passed gas, an ex that the situation ended less than amicably, best friends who haven't seen each other in years, etc.) After that ended we jumped into a game of Strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree, and talked about a myriad of topics such as PDA's, religion, welfare, the pledge of allegience, and a few others. We kind of jumped ahead, and did the 'Yeah but'/'But why' part of the exercise while it was going on, which was incredible. Having done this before in high school about topics and having to discuss, I had only received the opinion of students my age then, when at this we had advisors as well as students giving input, as well as students of different backgrounds and cultures. We ended with one of my favorite songs as well, which is the youtube video below.

Once back from sessions, we as a delegation, keeping true to our mentality that Everyday is a great day to be a Bear went to the Black Bear Saloon, and we had a delicious dinner, and came back to the hotel and played some Catchphrase, and now, at 12:30am, Nick is asleep, and Matt, Swiddy, and myself are finishing up our blogs, and I believe it's time I go to bed as well. My alarm is set, and I'll be updating you again in less than 36 hours.

Enjoy the videos and pictures. More will be coming tomorrow.

Thanks for reading!

-Dan Eveline

Hi Friends! so todays sessions were super awesome! I was lucky enough to be able to attend three different presentations. During the first presentation we learned about the benefits of having sorority recruitment at a third party vendor off campus. The ideas the sorority women from BU suggested were awesome. Unfortunately, i feel as though a recruitment event like this is for a much larger campus. During their last formal recruitment they had over 900 woman registered!
During the second session we discussed the benefits of extension. I am hoping BSU gets a forth NPC sorority so we can expand our greek community. The last session i attened was my favorite. It was called "students are friends not food" This session explained how important it is to connect with your advisor on campus. Lucky for us we have the BEST GREEK ADVISOR EVER!!!
I am exhausted from all the fun facts we learned today! Excited for tomorrows sessions and all the new friends waiting to be met! LOVE NGLA!
xo; EOB

A Day for the books!

Hi Friends!

So today was our first full day at NGLA and it was so much fun! The morning started off with Erin, Nichole, and I running down to Starbucks at 7:15 to wait in line. The line was crazy long by the time 7:30 hit and then it was history from there. Once we got back up to our room, we were in full fledged go-mode! Clothes were everywhere and we were on a mission to be downstairs for 8:30.

We crossed the way to the convention center for the keynote speaker and were so happy that John was introducing him. David Stollman got up on stage and completely blew my mind away. One of the first few things that he presented to us was "We make men better men, and women better women through brotherhood and sisterhood". This is one statement that stuck out to me because it's completely true. The values that we receive from our organizations just make us better than who we were before we joined. Not only did he make me think about that, but he then brought up a discussion question and asked people in the audience what they thought: "If sorority women were asked how they view fraternity men, what would they say? And vice versa". The responses were absolutely shocking. The good comments were few and far between compared to the negative ideas that came up. We as a community struggle every day to break stereotypes and it is when society has depicted us in a horrible light, this is what happens. He not only made us think about ourselves not only in letters, but also out of them. There were so many times when he would say something and I desperately wished that all of BSU Greek Life was here to hear it! Overall, he showed us how to positively represent our organization and that we need to hold ourselves accountable. After his amazing speech, I was completely ready for small group break-outs.

Our small group break-outs were really interesting. We were able to have a large open discussion about what our issues were within smaller groups in the room. We talked about "what is your reality?" and then there were subcategories within that. We had to think our current reality, where do you want your organization & community to be, and lastly what's standing in your way/why/&what can you do to navigate it. This definitely made me think about my organization and what is actually going on. It was also nice to hear that other organizations deal with the same issues that we do. It was good to be able to get advice from other people who don't know anyone and have a very unbiased opinion. However, there was plenty of controversy between people when chatting about what was going in other organizations. In the end, I thought that these small groups were a great way to get us prepared for our sessions and thinking about how they relate to our organization.

We all regrouped and it was time for lunch. It was great to hear about everyone's experiences in their small groups and see that even though we were not in the same groups, we were all hearing very similar stories.

It was then time for the educational programs to begin. My first session got cancelled so I was able to go to MB's session with Cat Sohor, "No Greek Row? Why a house doesn't make your chapter, members do!". This session was really interesting because we started off by drawing a house and had to describe our foundation, support for members, what we're proud of, how we bring in new members, how we resolve conflict and reduce stress, and finally how we protect our members. Many of the points that I had were what other Greeks had. They really got us involved and made us realize that you don't need to have a house to have a great sisterhood / brotherhood. One thing they said that I loved and took to heart was "You don't need a house to be memorable; it's your members that make it memorable". People don't join a structure; they should be joining people. Another really good point that they made was that just having a meeting place where sisters or brothers can always find someone is great for us as initiated members, but it's also a great way for people to get to know us. This session made me realize that it's okay to not have a house because we can have just as much fun as them!

My second session was "Building your Brand Identity". This was all about how to get your brand out there and to brand, not advertise. That's the biggest issue is that we advertise and don't have a "brand". When you think Disney, most people think of the ears. However, what do people think of when they hear "Gamma Phi Beta", "Sigma Pi", "Phi Sigma Sigma" and on?We need to learn how to sell ourselves and to do this successfully, we need to be able to explain who we are, what we do, why we are who we are. This really got me thinking because people always ask "what is your sorority about?" and now I feel as if I'll be able to fully answer the question more confidently than before. We also learned great website content tips and that we need to keep our websites simple, yet providing people with information that we need. Our website isn't necessarily for us; it's for people who are curious about us, want to be us, and our family / friends. I cannot wait to get all of the tips I learned from Campuspeak back to our PRVP!

Finally, as I entered my third session, "DUI: A Powerful Lesson", I was surprised. We walked into loud music and music that we all know and listen to frequently. However, my thought of a fun session was quickly changed when Mark Sterner started talking. He asked us a few questions about stupid choices we had made and then he said "Now think about this for 10 seconds before raising your hand; basically, don't do anything. How many of you have killed your three best friends and have been a convicted felon?" He was the only person who raised his hand. He told us a back story, explained that he was IFC VP and the VP of his fraternity, turned a DVD on, and left. This video was of this last night of spring break his senior year of college. He and 4 of his best friends went down to Florida. They had a plan set that everyone would be a sober driver one night and it was night six meaning everyone had done their "turn", so they decided that the least drunk person would drive. This turned out to be Mark. As this video goes on, we saw them all drinking, driving 100 mph, drinking more at a bar, and then deciding to leave. The DVD ended and Mark came back in wearing an orange jumpsuit. He went on and on about the challenges he faced, facing his friends' parents, and the daily grief he struggled with. That night he drove drunk and killed three of his best friends. Every day he wonders why him? Why did he survive. He then gave us a food for thought and told us to think of our three best friends and all the moments we shared with them. He then said "Now imagine you wake up and they are all dead. Will everything still be the same? Can you still tell those stories and jokes and hopes for the future?" By the end of the session there was barely a dry eye and it is clear that he affected our room. This has by far been my favorite session and would definitely be a great speaker to come to BSU.

After a day of sessions, our delegation went to the Black Bear's Saloon for dinner where we all had a wide variety of food and great conversations. We then went back to the hotel and had our pajama jammy jam! We played a few rounds of Catch Phrase, but then had some great conversations after. I'm finally completely tired and so ready for bed. If today was this amazing, I can only imagine how wonderful tomorrow will be. Be prepared for more from the Bears!

Lots of Greek love : )
Kara

How many greeks can you stuff into one elevator?

My alarm clock playing "The Circle Of Life" at 7:15am started off the first day of the NGLA conference. After strolling out of bed we made our way down to Starbucks to get our energy for the day. One Venti latté and a shower later I was ready to listen to our keynote speaker. David Stollman took a very unique approach to his presentation, Buy In or Get Out. He started out talking about the very blunt sorority and fraternity stereotypes. He then turned those stereotypes into how greek life is portrayed in the media and on college campuses. The moral of Davids presentation was to try and ween out the members of your organization who are just in it to wear the letters, and the members that are the reason those stereotypes exist. David ended his presentation with a philanthropy video showing different events that chapters put on to raise money for things like providing children with chemotherapy or building unfortunate families houses with Habitat For Humanity. This video was so inspirational to me, it just goes to show how much our philanthropy events can make a difference in someones life. After the keynote speaker ended, the whole conference split up into small groups to do a problem solving workshop. I really enjoyed the small groups because it was interesting listening to all of the different struggles each chapter faces at their own school. Some I could definitely relate to and others were completely new to me. My small group basically bounced ideas off of each other and talked about different ways each chapter deals with issues that they run into. I took so many new creative ideas away from this workshop that I can't wait to propose to my chapter at Bridgewater. After the small group workshop we all reconvened for lunch. Immediately following lunch we all broke off again to divide and conquer almost all of the sessions that NGLA had to offer. I chose to attend Whose Looking Out For You: The Sam Spady Story, The Power Of Personal DECSIONS, and Appetite for Strength. If I could video tape each of these sessions and bring them back to Bridgewater with me I would. Each of these sessions were so inspirational to me and I took so much out of each of them. My favorite session of the day was The Power Of Personal DECISIONS. Andrea Mosby told her moving life story that started with the decisions she made to create the best life she could for herself and her son. She then used the word "decisions" to give each of us the necessary tools to change our own lives. This session really hit home for me and I honestly left that room with a completely new perspective on life. After our information filled first day of NGLA came to a close the Bears ventured into Hartford to eat dinner at the Black Bear Saloon and have a night of games and good ol' greek bonding. I did not know the other BSU Greeks attending the conference very well when I first arrived. I am so glad this conference has given me a chance to get know some people that I may have never gotten the chance to know on my own. NGLA has already exceeded my greatest expectations and its only the end of the first day! I cannot wait to see what day 2 has in store. Greek Love! Nichole

Day 2: The Short Edition

Hi friends! So today was so great, lots of fun and lots of learning happened! But this bear right here is super tired and needs to hibernate for the night to rest up for another great day tomorrow. So MB said it was okay if I just did a short blog tonight and I'll really blog it out tomorrow for all of you lovely readers. So here's the teaser edition (so everyone will come back tomorrow and will read what I mean by all this)...... Sadie and I's Starbucks Adventure. Buy In or Get Out. Small Groups. If you don't do bad things, the media can't talk about it. No more drama, change your perspective and stop making assumptions. Understanding your LGBQ Broters and Sisters. Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself. The Black Bear Saloon. Cheetah Footie Pajamas. Catchphrase. Sadie and I's Ice Cream Adventure. Soo those are the key words from my day, and everyone will just have to sit and ponder what I am actually talking about. I promise I will elaborate tomorrow. Get excited for it! Just know I am having an incredible time and am really soaking it all in. You can follow my tweets from NGLA at @KristenScoville. OH and I am super excited that Lexi and Katelyn will be joining us tomorrow! Okay goodnight Bears:) Much NGLA Love, Kristen

Day Two

The second day of NGLA was extremely productive. The day was full of many opportunities to further enhance my knowledge one being a better human being, a better Fraternity man, and a better campus leader. In the morn we heard a presentation called "Buy In Or Get Out." It was a great presentation. You could tell the presenter had a take no crap mentality, which I was personally was very fond of. The presentation highlighted ideas about what being in a Greek Organization was all about. Being able to hear someone talk about sticking to the values we all VOW to instill in ourselves in the members of our organization was a nice reminder about why i felt i joined Phi Kappa Theta and that i was doing the right thing.

After the Key note speaker, the entire group broke off into smaller groups to discuss some issues that we felt were going on with our organizations or campus. I always find it useful to sit back and reflect on what I see going on in my organization and thinking about what can be done to fix it. That session will continue in more detail tomorrow.

After lunch we had three block sessions to attend. The first of these that i attended was put on by Phired Up Productions and was called Social Excellence. I deeply enjoyed this session because this is something that I myself feel I try to subscribe to with every interaction I have. It was all about have deep meaningful conversations with people you just met. I thought it was great because the talked about how our generation is loosing basic conversation skills do to the overuse of social media. The second session was about having a successful year with your organization. This was very useful because the presenter was talking about thinks that should kind of be obvious to people but we do not realize. He also gave us a really good outline on how to plan doing an event or achieving something that you can remember for a long time. The last session i went to was dealing with mediation and judicial procedures. It was put on by women of NPC and did not relate to myself to much however, I was able to take a lot out of it that i can adapt to how my chapters judicial system works. This was extremely beneficial for me since this semester is the first time my chapter will be using our judicial system.

All in all was a very productive day.

Matthew D. Foss

"Here have this tissue. BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU!"

The adventures of the day began by being woken up by my lovely roommates and Nick. I had set my alarm for 7:15 (so early) and had woken up a few minutes before my alarm so I was just chilling until Nick knocked on our door and Amanda warned me that she was going to turn the light on in the room to get me up, and it barely did anything so Nick took it upon himself to open the shade and let the light from outside shine through the window and completely wake me up. Now for those of you who have not had the pleasure of experiencing Sadie before a coffee, she is not her happy and typical self, so needless to say this was not a very lovely experiencing. Me and Kristen then decided that we would venture down to Starbucks but we missed the memo about wearing our pin attire so we showed up in our unmatching pajamas and shoes and looked quiete interesting. We thought that this was typical for us and could not help but laugh at the situation.

After we got dressed we headed down to the opening ceremony where David Spollman was the key note speaker. I honestly could relate to him so much, because he emphasized the point that we are always in our letters and this importance of this idea. This idea is very important to me and no matter where I am, what I am doing, and who I am surrounded by I always remember this. I pride myself on the idea that I always are representing my letters, my sisters, my organizations, my values, and my ritual. I think that this is an idea that is often forgotten and needs to be reinforced. The speaker made several comments that stuck out to me such as "We're all about the same thing" and "If you can't have a social life without dragging your letters through the mud, then you can't have a social life." Both of these quotes stood out to me because I truly believe that even though we all wear different letters across our chests, we all are promising ourselves to something to bigger than us, and a bigger meaning, and I believe that if you can't be a proper represenation of your letters while trying to have a social life, then you need to take a step back and realize where your priorities are. I truly believe that everyone is allowed to have fun and a social life, but not at the expense of their letters, and their chapters. Everyone needs to be more aware of what they are representing, and that once they decide to join a Greek organization, they are part of something greater than themselves, and need to always remember this.

Next, we attended our small group sessions. This was interesting because we were given the oppurtunity to reflect on ourselves, our dreams, our chapters, and our Greek community. I was really intrigued to see that although we may have our issues at BSU they are not as bad as they could be, and I enjoyed seeing Greeks come together to help each other out and reflect on their own struggles. I also really enjoyed this because our facilitator was Kristen, a sister of Delta Phi Epsilon who came to BSU this semester to work with my chapter. It was also awesome to talk more on an individual level with Greeks about how things at their schools run.

I found that all three of the sessions I attended were a bit similar. The three that I attended were "The Persuasive Greek Leader", "Crucial Conversations", and "What is Your Fraternal Truth". In an essence all three got me to think about what kind of Greek I wanted to be and most importantly what kind of leader. In my first session, "The Persuasive Greek Leader", we were taught different types of language and hand gestures that help us be more persuasuve and help us get our point across, and gain the support from others that is crucial to being a Greek leader. The other two sessions I attended talked about how the difficult conversations that we are forced to have in a Greek organization and in real life, and the third showed us how important it is to demonstrate the positives of being a Greek and that if we don't get rid of the negative images, then noone will. We can not expect change if we do not do anything about it, and we need to not be afraid to be the ones to bring change. I am so glad that I chose to attend these sessions because I feel as though I have the potential to be a good leader in the Greek community, but I know that I have a lot of room for improvement.

This brings me to my next point. Throughout this whole weekend I have been trying to figure out how I want to continue with leadership next year. I am not sure about what new positions I want to run for as of now, but I know that I want to continue with my involvement. I am open to any suggestions/advice :)

The rest of the evening was chill and good bonding time with my fellow bears. Before we headed off to dinner Amanda and Erin had to borrow a pair of my jeans (if that doesn't say Greek bonding, then I don't know what does). We then all took public transportation to a local restaraunt where we reflected on our sessions and our days. We then headed back to the hotel to get ready for our jammy party. Before the rest of the crew came to our room me and Kristen had a life chat and decided to order ice cream. Too bad the ice cream took half an hour, we forgot there is food tax in CT, and we didn't have enough money ready for the deliverer when he came to our room, so we had to search through the hallway in pajamas to give him two dollars. We then played catch phrase and just hungout and had snacks. It was a great way to end a very long day.

I am going to end with a shout-out to Kristen with some fun facts about myself because she wants me to so I love the summer, am a sister of Delta Phi Epislon, am the Assistant Director of Programming for Panhellenic, and am about to fall asleep so I'm done blogging for tonight.

Thanks for reading and #BearsRoundup,
Sadie