The "post risk management era" for fraternities and sororities, Part One

I entered the fraternity and sorority world about the time that the risk management mania began. I joined my fraternity in 1987, and I went to work at the fraternity headquarters in 1988. These were the years when kegs were banned, FIPG came about, and undergraduate members of fraternities and sororities began paying steep annual insurance premiums.

My second job out of college was as the national coordinator of GAMMA, Greeks Advocating Mature Management of Alcohol, and I was kept very busy helping Greek communities respond to risk management policies. Most Greek communities had speakers visit to promote risk management practices. For quite a while, most men's national fraternities hired lawyers as their executive directors. Publications like Fraternal Law became must reads for campus advisors.

The last 20 years of fraternity and sorority life can be aptly called "the risk management era." The emphasis was on rules and policy adherence. It dominated everything: chapter services strategies, fraternity education, volunteer training and duties, consultant training, board meetings, etc.

Someone a lot smarter than I will write a book about this, and I'm sure opinions will vary on whether or not it was a good, important era, or a harmful one. Was there any net benefit? Some will say that fraternities and sororities grew stronger during this time. The values congruence crowd will continue to crow about how risk management draws us closer to the values we were founded upon (a weak argument, I'd say). Others will say fraternities and sororities lost their fun, their innocence, and their relevance. One thing for sure, lawyers and insurance agents made a lot of money. Yet, students are still dying from alcohol poisoning and hazing on a regular basis.

In any case, I believe everyone is ready to move on. FIPG is now older than most of the student leaders taking the reins of our chapters. Most fraternity and sorority advising professionals have never known anything different – as professionals, or as students. Just about everything that can be said or created around the idea of risk management has been done.

Risk management isn't going away, for sure. As long as there are people falling out of windows at fraternity parties, risk management will be in the picture.

But, things are changing. I can feel it. I can see it as I visit campuses and attend leadership conferences. As I sat with some fraternity staff members at a luncheon last week, they asked me what I thought was on the horizon for the nation's fraternities and sororities. I told them that I wasn't sure, but that I thought that whatever is next is going to come from the students, not from the national organizations.

I believe that after nearly two decades of being told how fraternities and sororities should operate, should look, and what values they should seek to represent, students are ready to innovate.

To be continued...

Stop desecrating your composites

I was recently hosted by a very nice, very impressive sorority chapter. They were wonderful hosts. Prior to my presentation, I had dinner at their sorority house, and leaning against a living room wall was a fraternity composite.

The composite was from one of the local fraternities, dated 1993-1994. I got up to take a look at the old clothes and hairstyles. I noticed that the glass had a gigantic crack in it, and the frame was heavily scratched and banged up.

"What's this doing here," I asked?

"Oh, we steal theirs, they steal ours. They're all over the house," replied one woman. "I bet we have one from almost every fraternity on campus."

I noted that the sorority's current composite was enclosed in a very large, locked container lit by lights in their foyer. "Why is it that you take such great care of your current composite, but you could care less about the old ones?"

The woman looked at me strangely. "We need them for recruitment, I guess," was her best answer. "The guys don't care about their old composites, and we have so many of our own, we don't have anywhere to put them anyway."

For many students, they're a joke. Funny names, odd hair. Old. They break them, throw them in closets, steal them from other chapters. I am willing to bet that many find their way to the dumpster every year from damage caused by neglect.

Undergraduates at many campuses should be ashamed of the way they treat old composites.

First thing, these things are incredibly expensive. Thousands of dollars. Those who came before you paid a steep price for those, and they expected you to care for them. Second, they are incredibly sentimental to your alumni. I love walking into my fraternity house at Indiana and looking at the composites from my years, remembering the names, faces and bad haircuts. While they might seem ridiculous to you, they are awesome to me.

I was devastated a few years ago when I visited my own chapter and no one knew what had become of the composite my fellow founding fathers and I had made in 1987. That's right – the founding composite! Missing in action. Nothing but shrugged shoulders when I asked.

Councils across the country should immediately ban the desecration of composites, and the young men and women who are currently the stewards of their chapters should start acting with a bit more respect toward them. They are your history. Those faces mean something to those of us who made it possible for you to be in the chapter today.

I wish every alumni IFC or Panhellenic across the country would immediately rent a huge storage unit, confiscate all the old composites from the undergraduate chapters, and keep them under lock and key. Where alumni councils don't exist, the university should ask for them. There are services available for composite restoration, by the way. Then, when it was time for class reunions or significant anniversaries, we could pull them out and display them.

Perhaps then, undergraduates would respect them more.

Take the has-been high road

You finished your term in office. You passed the gavel, and the pressure is off. All those crazy problems are no longer yours. If you've done your job, you made sure the transition was an effective one with lots of inside advice and an offer to be available for questions. With a wink of good luck and a small dose of empathy, you handed over the monster to the new officer.

You're free! Congrats. You can now head home – or wherever – for some true down time. Less stress, no more complaints, more free time.

For some of you, you'll be moving on to another leadership position. Perhaps you've signed on to lead a council or another student organization that has nothing to do with your previous leadership position. New challenges await.

But for others, you'll come back in January with no specific student leadership responsibilities. You'll just be "Joe Member" of your organization. A has-been. That can either be really great, or it can be really confusing. A few bits of advice.

Please, please, please... do not be an obstructionist former officer. The last thing the new leaders need is your open criticism of everything they try to do. Keep your mouth shut and let them try their new ideas, make their mistakes, and face their struggles. It's tough being a student leader, and your meddling can make it worse. If you can't say anything nice, then just shut up. Yes, you might be right. Yes, you might have made a better choice. But, it's not your turn.

If you choose to hang around, then lend a hand on a project or area of the organization that desperately needs some attention. Raise some money, work with the alumni, do some public relations, paint the basement, clean up the constitution and bylaws. You're not in charge any longer, but you can still be useful. Make a contribution without getting in the way of the new leaders. Set an example for other members that membership means stewardship of the organization, whether or not you're in a leadership seat.

Show up to things. Your year as a leader doesn't give you a pass to skip everything from here forward. Take an interest in the youngest members of your organization, and help shape their experience in a positive way. Again, you're setting an example.

Support the new person even when it hurts. When people in your organization dislike something the new officer does, the first thing they will do is look at you. Don't roll the eyes, don't make clever criticisms. Even if you disagree, your most critical response should be something like, "If you guys don't like what he's doing, then go talk to him and work with him for a better solution." Don't add fuel to a fire by encouraging dissent. It doesn't make you look smarter or cooler to stir the pot – it just makes you look like a pain in the ass.

Go find another place to be useful. Join another student organization. Volunteer. Make some new friends. Sometimes, former officers become a negative, toxic presence in their organizations because they are bored, under-utilized, and are struggling with a lack of validation. When that happens, you start becoming the in-house critic of everything. Don't go down that path.

Former presidents of the United States are good role models for how you should act. They reserve criticism. They help if they are called upon, even if they aren't particularly fond of their replacement. They work on their own projects (their libraries, for instance) without getting in the way of the new leader. When encouraged to criticize by the press, they pinch their lips.

Like them, be classy about being a former leader. It's the has-been high road.

Don't just meet to meet

I'm headed to a very important professional conference next week. I am literally designing my own spreadsheet schedule because I have so many appointments. I might have to schedule pee breaks.

Needless to say that there will be a lot of meetings. Like many people, I am fine with meetings when there is a purpose and some progress, and I hate them when they are utterly useless. I am the king of excusing myself and leaving if there's not some progress after about 15 minutes.

If you can't get things moving in a valuable direction after 15 minutes, I'll excuse myself and find a better way to be productive. I know it sounds harsh, but ladies and gentlemen, time is money.

As a student leader, you probably attend a lot of meetings – some that you are responsible for and many others that you are simply expected to attend. Take an inventory of your current schedule of meetings and evaluate if they are worthy uses of your time.

I reject the idea that all meetings are necessary. They're not. If the person in charge of a meeting doesn't respect your time enough to make the meeting productive, you don't owe your attendance. Rather than make excuses for skipping the meetings, or sitting there in a haze wasting your time week after week, confront the person holding the meetings and make suggestions for how the meeting could be changed.

Be part of the solution.

Can the meeting be shorter? It's amazing how many people default to an hour meeting, because that just seems like the right amount of time. Let's make it 30 minutes and see what that does.

Can it be held less often or on a non-regular schedule? Why weekly? Let's change it to once a month, or maybe just twice in October. Schedule these meetings with purpose and justification.

Can fewer people be invited so that it's only key decision makers? Maybe we need two meetings: one for those who make decisions and one general meeting each month to just keep the membership in the loop.

If the meeting is mostly for political purposes (i.e., making the Dean of Students feel "in the loop"), can that be accomplished another way?

Can the agenda be restructured?

If the host of the meeting never starts on time, confront that also. Assist the host of the meeting by publicly making a request to participants that they show up on time, and then be a role model by making sure you're on time.

Suggest to the host that he/she sends out an email 48 hours prior to the meeting to focus participants on three key issues for the meeting.

I'm not a fan of meetings that try to be both social and business. Choose. If you want me to conduct business, then have a meeting and make it productive. If you want to serve a social purpose, then have a social event, advertise it that way, and I'll show up with bells on my toes. Meetings that try to blend the two usually end up being neither fun nor productive – they just feel disorganized and unfocused. Yes, meetings can be fun and light, and people can enjoy being around each other and interacting, but if you're calling a meeting it needs to yield something.

And, most of all, make sure that you never attend a meeting unless the host specifies an end time. Demand it. An end time allows you and the other participants to structure your day or evening more effectively.

I need to also suggest to you that you evaluate the meetings that YOU host. Are you wasting people's time? Are you starting and ending on time? Are you accomplishing anything, or just meeting to meet? Are your meetings interactive, or is it just people sitting and listening? Before you can ask others to improve their meetings, you need to step up and set the example.

If you haven't discovered it yet, time is one of your most valuable resources. When people waste your time, they hurt your morale, and that hurts your organization. Take charge.


For a good article on "Making Meetings Matter" go here.