Deadline for UIFI is approaching

The Undergraduate Interfraternity Institute is like summer camp for Greek leaders. Fun, lots of bonding, hanging out, kissing in the hallways. OK, that's usually just the facilitators, but still, it's a great chance to refocus your energy, find out what other fraternity and sorority leaders are doing, and set some new directions for your Greek community.

If you've never heard of UIFI before, you should go to the North-American Interfraternity Conference's website and read about it. It's for both male and female leaders, by the way.

The deadline for early registration is May 1, then the price goes up $30. This is your reminder! Don't wait until after finals to register. You might not be able to get in.

If your Greek council is poorly funded, you might qualify for one of the multiple registration scholarships available. Several of these registration scholarships go unclaimed each year. Chances are, your national fraternity/sorority offers scholarships to leaders like you who want to go. The NIC has details about these scholarships. When you get one of these scholarships, you usually only have to find funds for your trip to Indianapolis. They also have a West Coast session, but it's almost filled up. Most spots will be full for all sessions by mid-May.

It's important to note that a trip to UIFI is not meant to be a vacation. Although there is fun, t-shirts, and cute IFC boys, it's meant to be a learning opportunity. Leave your alcohol at home and prepare for some mind stretching. Some of the very best professionals and volunteers in the interfraternal world serve as session facilitators.

If you have questions about UIFI, contact John Shertzer at shertzer@nicindy.org.

Words that make you look dumb

Folk just can't spell.

Cruising Facebook this morning, I counted three wall postings offering "congradulations" on upcoming graduations. If I thought it was a deliberate play on words (you know, congratulations on your graduation: conGRADulations!) I would groan just a tiny bit less.

It's not. Folk just can't spell.

I've been reviewing intern applications this week, and let's face it, there are common misspellings and crappy words that just make a person look dumb. My top five:

5. "Irregardless" Not a word. "Regardless" is just fine.
4. "Alot" – I see this a lot.
3. "Amongst" – Bring it down a notch, Shakespeare. "Among" is fine.
2. "You're" and "Your," used interchangeably.
1. "There," "Their" and "They're," used interchangeably.

Irregardless, amongst my Facebook peeps, their are alot of friends graduating, and its you're special day. So, congradulations!

Establish relationships with your professors

Regrets? I have a few. One of my regrets from college is that I never really bonded with any of my professors. Academics were not my priority – my attention was on my jobs and on my fraternity.

At a large public institution, you can can go through four years without making any real connection with professors, and that's just what I did at Indiana University. Professors don't seek you out for bonding at a big school. Professors were "necessary evils," and I just didn't see any reason to work for a connection beyond the two hours a week I was forced to spend with them. Our relationships lasted one semester, and then I forgot them altogether.

I graduated without a single professor in my corner. I wasn't going to grad school, so I didn't think I would need a future recommendation. No one gave me the talk about the importance of mentor relationships, so I never sought any out.

It never occurred to me that it might be good to invite a professor to lunch one day. I never dropped by office hours just to chat or review the salient points of the last class.

I regret it.

I did decide, later, to go to grad school, and I didn't have anyone to write a letter of recommendation. With my blazing 2.7 GPA, I could have used one. It also would have been nice to have a professor sending me the occasional note or email to keep me in the loop with alumni opportunities. Who knows? Maybe I could have served on some sort of committee or something. Maybe a mentor professor would have recommended me for some sort of cool opportunity.

If you're reading this and thinking, "Sounds familiar," then perhaps you can set a goal to build a couple of meaningful relationships with professors next year.

I have several friends who teach at the university level now, and uniformly, they love it when students seek them out and get to know them on a deeper level. I suppose that's why they chose a career that involved teaching undergraduates.

My partner, Scott, bonded with several of his professors back at the University of Texas during his Ph.D. work. In fact, we're headed back to Austin this weekend for his favorite professor's daughter's wedding. Wow. I see the bond between Scott and Dr. Singh, and I'm jealous.

You might not see the immediate value of developing friendships with professors. Perhaps they intimidate you. But, there are huge benefits for making the investment and keeping in touch with them as you begin your journey into the "real world."

Why hazing prevention is personally important to me and my family

National Hazing Prevention Week will be here soon. I thought you might enjoy seeing a short speech I gave at the National Hazing Symposium in Atlanta in December 2006. In it, I talk about the "Hidden Harm" concept and why it has personal relevance to me.

First time I'm trying to embed video in my blog, so let's hope this works.

I know four one-legged men

That's right, four.

Ron, Chad, Dan, and Seamus. I honestly don't know what happened to the legs of Dan, Ron and Seamus. Chad had a cancer of some sort which claimed his as an adult.

All four of these one-legged dudes rock. Chad runs marathons. Ron was recently the president of a national higher ed organization. Dan just moved to L.A. to pursue his dream of being a screenwriter. Seamus is a student and a fraternity man at a school in New Jersey.

Seamus recently came to a program I did at his school. I had met him before. He had just come from an intramural soccer game or something, and he was sweaty and stinky. "Do you mind if I take this damn thing off?" he asked, tossing his prosthesis to the floor.

"No, go for it," I said.

"I didn't want to freak you out," he said.

"Don't worry. I know a lot of one-legged men."

"Really?" he asked.

"Yes, but I only know one Seamus." He liked that.

I don't know any one-legged women.

I know a guy with no legs – Matt. He's a speaker with another agency. Pretty remarkable guy. He does several programs (read about them here), but I think it's especially cool that he does a program called "Dating for the Physically Challenged." Dating pretty much sucks no matter who you are, and I'm sure it's no picnic for a guy with no legs. But, I'm thinking Matt does pretty well. He's cool.

Chad does programs for my company. Read about him here. He does an orientation program called "Getting Off on the Right Foot, Even If You Don't Have One," which makes me laugh. Chad is married, has two beautiful kids, appeared on the show Survivor, and is a spokesman of some sort for the Challenged Athletes Foundation. Oh yeah, and he's hot. Totally hot. Having one leg hasn't slowed him down even a tiny bit.

Sitting here, I'm trying to remember which leg is missing for each guy. I can't remember. For Seamus, it's the left for sure. For Chad, I think it's the right. Hmm...

Chad has this totally awesome artificial sports leg that is very high tech, and he has these amazing athletic shoes that fit right over the foot of it. Pretty fashionable, too. I think that other one-legged guys must be pretty jealous of Chad's cool leg. Chad doesn't mind when I stare at his cool leg because he thinks it's pretty cool, too.

I've always had a crush on Dan. Pretty much everyone who's ever met Dan has a crush on him. He's charming, sweet, and handsome as hell. I even think his occasional slight limp makes him sexier. Chicks dig Dan, big time. Too bad, though. Dan bats left.

So does Ron.

I know two one-legged gay men. That's fun.

Chad and Seamus love the ladies.

As far as I know, none of these men lost their leg in combat. But, there will be a lot of one-legged men on campuses soon. I heard yesterday that more than 30,000 men and women serving us in Iraq and Afganistan have been injured. We're going to be seeing a lot of folks living with disabilities – young people – very soon on our streets, in our grocery stores, and even on the dating circuit.

Pretty soon, knowing four one-legged men won't be remarkable at all.

That would have been a good paragraph to end on. End with a moral to the story. But, I just wanted to write about one-legged men today.

I know four, did I mention?

Discussion Starters

As a leader of a student organization, you can sometimes get valuable discussion started by simply asking a question. So, I'm going to start a new feature on this blog: discussion starters. Some you might like, some you might find dumb. But, you might occasionally find a question that you want to put to your officers at an exec meeting, or to your members at a retreat. Maybe, once in a while, these discussions might lead to some "a-ha!" moments or some good new ideas.

Plus, these make for easy posts when I'm not feeling otherwise inspired.

So, here we go. First one...

If we suddenly had twice our current budget, what would we do with it? What would we do differently?

I got this idea, by the way, from a student at Missouri Western University this weekend. So, thanks to him.

University dollars: use them or lose them!

Do a portion of your funds come from student activity fees or university dollars? If so, make sure you understand your university or student government's policies about unused funds. Many new leaders are shocked to learn that any unspent money in their treasury gets absorbed back into the general funds on June 30.

Most universities operate on a July 1 - June 30 fiscal year. Many schools and student governments simply absorb back any unused dollars.

Ask your advisor, "Are we going to lose any unspent funds at the end of this fiscal year? Or does our balance roll over in full?"

Let's say that your budget for your Student Committee on Diversity Issues (I just made that up) gets its funds from the vice president of student affairs' general budget. Let's say that of the $2,500 that was budgeted for your committee, you spent $2,100, with $400 remaining as you end the school year and start summer. You might assume that you will come back next year with $400 plus the new budget allocation. What you might find instead is that you lost the $400 because you didn't use it, and you start off the new academic year with only the new allocation. You thought you would come back to $2,900, and only $2,500 sits in your account.

If you find out that your budget is subject to "use it or lose it," there are some good ways to use it. Naturally, I'm a big fan of pre-paying for a speaker you've got scheduled for next academic year! But, you could also pre-pay conference registration fees, buy some supplies that you know you will use, pre-pay some bills you will incur in the fall. Go ahead and buy those t-shirts for that Fall event. Put a deposit on that facility now for your holiday party or retreat.

New leaders of organizations on a "use it or lose it" budget plan are rarely told about it. It's part of a deliberate strategy some schools use to come in under budget for the year and return the money to the general fund. Be smart about it, and use the money that's been allocated to your organization. If you don't, the only ones being cheated are your members.

I'm not telling you to waste it. I'm just telling you to manage it well.

Also, it's important to consider that groups that do not use their allotted budget are unlikely to get more money later. So, using your budget will probably help your organization get budgetary increases in future years. When cuts happen, they are more likely to happen to groups who have shown an inability to spend their allotted funds.

If your organization's money comes from dues, fundraising, etc., then none of this probably applies to you. But, if you receive any money at all from the university, student government, a grant of some sort, or from some granting source, you'll definitely want to check on it.

Students to protest campus gun bans

I continue to find this issue interesting. Note the part about a nationwide campus demonstration that is being planned for next week.

The article below ran April 11 in the Colorado Springs Gazette:

Group wants to carry guns at UCCS

By BRIAN NEWSOME

THE GAZETTE

If a gunman were to burst into a classroom at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs with murder on his mind, one group of students wants a chance to shoot back.

But packing heat to class, even with a concealed-carry permit, is prohibited by CU (University of Colorado) policy and cause for expulsion.

Now, about a dozen UCCS students have joined a national and fast-growing group, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, whose goal is to lobby legislators and school administrators to allow their handguns in class.

"I carry because I'm a former Boy Scout, and the motto is ‘Always be prepared,'" said John Davis, 30, a UCCS senior who organized the local effort.

Both Colorado College and Pikes Peak Community College also ban guns regardless of permits, but students at those campuses have not objected to the policies, according to the schools.

"From my perspective, I certainly am an advocate for people's Second Amendment rights," said CU Regent Kyle Hybl, R-Colorado Springs. "I also think the issue of concealed carry on campus is one that needs to be looked at internally to see what's in the best interest of the campus."

Students at UCCS and CU-Boulder plan to participate in a nationwide protest April 22-25 in which they will wear empty holsters "to show we're basically defenseless when we come to school," Davis said. He said his group will use the event to educate other students about concealed carry permits. Students also will collect signatures on a petition that will be presented to the CU Board of Regents advocating a change in its gun policy.

Davis and other members of the group believe being armed in an incident like those at Virginia Tech or Columbine High School could save lives. The guns are concealed, he said, and having one in a classroom is no different than in a restaurant or a movie theater. His parents and other family members carry concealed weapons, he said.

But the CU policy came about because "there is a strong belief that having guns in classrooms is not conducive to an open environment or a learning environment," said UCCS spokesman Tom Hutton.

"There's an appropriate place for guns, and the classroom is not an appropriate place," Hutton said. Students with concealed carry permits are allowed to store their guns at the campus police station or lock them in their cars, he said.

A state law passed in 2003 allows concealed weapons to be carried in most parts of Colorado.

That same year, the Board of Regents sought an opinion on its weapons policy from the Attorney General's Office. Then-Attorney General Ken Salazar said the Colorado Constitution gave regents authorization to regulate their internal affairs and said there was no conflict in saying no to guns.

Davis said his group is talking to students at CU-Boulder and other campuses, including PPCC, about an effort to get state lawmakers to limit the regents' authority on the matter. Colorado State University allows people with concealed carry permits to bring their guns to class, according to the national Students for Concealed Carry on Campus Web site.

The group claims on its Web site, www.concealedcampus.org, to have recruited 25,000 members in the last year, mostly college students. It says it is not affiliated with the National Rifle Association or any political groups.

In identifying its mission, the group says: "The first step is to see ‘colleges' removed from the lists of places listed as ‘off limits' by the concealed carry laws in many states.

The next step is to see other states follow Utah's lead in prohibiting state (tax subsidized) colleges from enacting their own bans on concealed carry."

Supporters of allowing concealed handguns on campus are quick to point out the background checks and training required to obtain a permit, and they say concealed-carry permits have not led to more violence among those people.

Opponents point to the risks of guns ending up in the wrong hands or being misused.

A big fat love letter to WRGA

I just returned from the Western Region Greek Leadership Conference (WRGLC) in San Francisco, and I have to tell you, the conference is BACK, baby! It was really terrific. This posting is a big fat love letter to the men and women who put it on.

The conference fell on some hard times in the mid 90s. There are lots of rumors of why things went downhill (an unfortunate hotel move, some financial shenanigans that left the treasury empty, too few people doing all the work -- I don't know the real story, honestly). Attendance was dwindling each year, and I thought the conference was dying a slow death. Vendors and speakers were complaining that the conference was a waste of money. Many schools stopped going. Advisors invested their travel dollars elsewhere.

It was really sad, because the Western Regional Greek Conference was the very first of the Greek regional conferences.

Then, a couple of years ago, a new leadership team took over. It's virtually the same team that runs the MGCA conference (which is held each February in Chicago, and starting next year in St. Louis). They changed the name of their group to WRGA, the Western Region Greek Association. The names are familiar: Shelley Sutherland, Mark Koepsell, Beth Condor, Steve Latour, Kyle Jordan, Steve Whitby, and other very talented people who have whipped the conference back into shape after years of decline.

Here's what I noticed this past weekend. Attendance was up 200 people or so from the previous year. Attendance was around 800, and many schools I've never seen before were there. The vendors were doing good business. There were no behavior problems and no damage to the hotel (as of Saturday evening).

Fully a third – maybe more – of the attendees were members of multi-cultural fraternities and sororities. I've never seen a more diverse student conference, anywhere. They had an awesome silent auction that raised thousands of dollars for the association. Attendance was very strong at the general sessions. And, like they do at MGCA, the conference planners had an impressive stage and multi-media system for the general sessions, which lent the conference a much more impressive feel.

The whole damn thing just felt professional and impressive. For all I know, there could have been behind the scenes drama, but to my critical eye, this team pulled off a damn-near perfect conference. The tone was great, the faculty and content was terrific, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves tremendously.

They had a vendor breakfast and asked for feedback, complaints or suggestions. No one had any. All the vendors were happy. Trust me, this does not happen frequently.

If you are reading this, and you work for a national fraternal organization, you need to plan to send staff and/or volunteers to this conference next year. If I was the Greek advisor at a school in Texas or Florida, I would be sending my students to San Francisco next year. They will love how inclusive and diverse the student attendees are.

Big kudos to the whole MGCA/WRGLC team. You really knocked it out of the park this year. Congrats on breathing new life into a 60 year old conference. You saved it, and you've provided a top quality fraternity and sorority leadership experience for many students who wouldn't have this kind of experience otherwise. Bravo.

End of the year thank you's

The end of the academic year is quickly approaching, and many of you soon will be attending awards and recognition ceremonies. Student athletes have them, many fraternity/sorority communities have them, and many clubs and organizations do something small and less-formal to mark the passing of another year.

If you don't do one, you should. It's a nice way to say thanks to everyone for their contributions. If your group is small, invite everyone out for dinner at a restaurant, or have some sort of potluck at someone's house. Go around, and let everyone say a few words. Give out a few funny awards. Give your advisor a group hug.

The goal is to put some closure on the year and set a tone for next year. If people leave for the summer with a less-than-positive view of your group, then you will have attrition problems over the summer. Leave people with a good feeling, and you'll come back strongly. Make sure that everyone has emails and phone numbers for staying in touch over the summer. If most of your students live within driving distance, plan a gathering at someone's house in July.

If your group has some sort of formal banquet, reception, or other awards ceremony, take advantage of the opportunity and write some short, handwritten notes to folks who made a difference for the organization this year. Thank your officers or team captains. Thank the coaches or advisors. If you take a moment to write a short note to each graduating senior, I promise they will really appreciate it and will probably keep it for years. The end of college is a very emotional time for many people, and your note will have much more impact than you can imagine.

Learning to say "thank you" is one of the greatest skills you can ever learn as a leader. Take this opportunity to practice it.


Personal Note: I'm dedicating this post to one of my best friends, Kevin Stever, who died this week unexpectedly. Kevin was the king of the thank you note, and I have dozens that he wrote to me over the years thanking me for birthday gifts, dinners, and other special times we shared. He was a really amazing guy, and I'm going to miss him terribly. The world is a little less bright without him. Thinking of Kevin this morning gave me the idea for this post. TJS

Should he join a non-Black fraternity?

I met a young Black man this weekend (let's call him Michael) who is facing a dilemma. He goes to a university in Utah which is predominantly white. Actually, it's almost entirely white. In his words, "There are like 12 black people on campus," and almost all of them are athletes. Michael has often thought that he'd like to be a member of a fraternity, but there are no historically Black fraternities within hundreds of miles. He couldn't really start one if he wanted to, because there aren't any other interested Black men on campus who would want to join, and they would have no graduate member support.

So, being an undergraduate member of a Black fraternity basically isn't possible, unless he wants to transfer to another school, which he does not.

Meanwhile, his friend (also his roommate) is working hard to start a multi-cultural fraternity on their campus. The friend wants to create a place for non-white men to gather and find support. He has invited Michael to join, and Michael is struggling. Should he join a fraternity that would not be his first choice, just so he can have an undergraduate fraternity experience? Or, is he somehow selling out? Does he have a responsibility as a Black man to only join a fraternity if he can join a historically-Black one?

He put this question to me, and I'd be interested to know what some of you think.

I told him that there is tremendous benefit in the fraternity experience, and that he should seriously consider joining his friend in founding the multi-cultural group. While it might not be an NPHC group, it could potentially provide a very supportive place for future Black men and other men of color at an institution where they are massively outnumbered. He said that he really likes the men who are joining the new group, so he'd probably really enjoy it, too.

I told him that you can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. Someone should write a song about that...

But, maybe you don't agree? Maybe he should just wait until later in his life and join the fraternity he most personally identifies with? Would the answer be different if the only fraternity option open to him was a historically white fraternity?

Hmm...

Greek Service: Too much of a good thing?

There are campuses where fraternity and sorority philanthropy events have gotten out of control. Nearly every weekend is full of tournaments, contests and fund-raising events where fraternity and sorority members trade funds for their charities. For many chapters already inundated with mandatory events, it's starting to be too much.

Service: good. Constant events: evil. While it's great that we raise money for worthy charities, we've allowed the time demand of philanthropy to get out of hand.

Having just returned from the Southeastern Panhellenic Conference, I was reminded about how the constant barrage of charity events has become the bane of many Greek women's experience. One woman from a large campus told me that they sometimes had as many as three fraternity fund-raisers a weekend. "If it's not a formal or semi-formal, it's a philanthropy," she said. "You really have no free time at all when you're in a sorority at our campus."

Of course, the sororities are just as bad as the fraternities.

I recommended to the woman that there was no requirement that their sorority participate in every fraternity's event. They could say no to some of the events, I said. She laughed at me. If they didn't, they would be seen as unsupportive of the community, and no other group would support their fund-raising projects. It's a vicious circle. You have to go to 50 events so that people will come to your 1.

The core problem is that our philanthropy efforts are no longer just about raising funds – they are about image and showing off. It's about having an enormous tournament for multiple days with t-shirts, teams, sponsors, food, and banners. We want everyone to be impressed. The irony is that by the time we complete these monster events, the money raised is usually disappointing. Routinely, Greek chapters are spending more than they raise.

It doesn't have to be that way. A spaghetti dinner where everyone pays $5 for unlimited food can be fun and easy. Churches have been doing it for generations. What about selling candy bars? When I was a kid, we raised $10,000 in a week by selling boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts. By the way, they still do that program. You can read about it here.

I bet there are lots of chapters that would rather write you a check for 10 boxes of donuts than rally their members to attend another dreadful day-long tournament. But, getting Greeks off the "crack" of philanthropy events is going to be difficult. Naturally, the charities and some of our fraternity headquarters are putting major pressure on chapters to not only keep up their events, but expand them.

Another idea... What if you took your Greek community and put all chapters on a service rotation. One third of chapters could hold fund-raising events, and everyone would agree to support them. One third of chapters would host hands-on service events. Greeks interested in service (like a few from each chapter, not 90% of all chapters!) would show up to a hands-on volunteerism event, helping kids, seniors, or building a house for Habitat. The final third of chapters would organize awareness events for their particular cause. So, one week we wear ribbons for AIDS awareness, or we distribute buttons on campus for sexual assault awareness, or we hold a rally to end homelessness open to the whole campus.

If we did this, we would certainly get better press coverage, and we could involve the rest of campus. That's good for campus image.

Service, to be really impactful, needs to be about all three things: funds, hands-on volunteerism, and awareness. By putting your chapters on a three year rotation, you teach your members that service is more than swapping checks, accumulating t-shirts, and filling your calendar.


The picture is from John Hopkins University, Kappa Delta Phi, 2003.