Dean Gabriel Williams/Special to The Beacon
Too often, many within the social Greek community pursue student leadership for power and/or pleasure, both of which are damaging to the student body and illogical in nature. This behavior has, does, and will stand in the way of the student body sharing in and working towards one unified vision, if not resolved.
In the interest of full disclosure, I speak not as an observer within the student body, but as a member of the social Greek community. In my short time as an active brother, I served as chapter vice president and then chapter president, and was the Interfraternity Council’s 2010 New Member of the Year. As an alumnus, I currently serve as the chairman of the Board of Directors of my chapter’s Alumni Association.
Within our community, there is a desire to define our organizations by a laundry list of the involvements of our brothers and sisters, and by the number of trophies, plaques and accolades we receive as a result. And often times, we achieve these ends by forcing unwilling brothers and sisters into the realm of student leadership.
There are three major problems with our behavior. First, because some Greeks assume student leadership roles for the advancement of their organizations and not the advancement of the student body, they seem to forget that they are serving a student trust, which is about student advocacy and the general welfare of the future student bodies of FIU.
Second, because our organizations are generally more concerned about their own respective success and image and not the success and image of the broader Panther community, we are not participating in the creation and inspiration of one cohesive vision. Third, because we are more apt to be involved, we have exploited that relative fact and somehow turned it into a referendum on the failure of the level of involvement of the remaining 95 percent of student body.
What we fail to realize is that we have not only demoralized and demotivated the general student body with our behavior, but a vast majority of non-affiliated students, as a result of our behavior, will not even consider the possibility of becoming a member of the Greek community.
So, what’s the answer to these ills? One word: Ritual. Whether a social Greek organization has one, two or three letters, the ritual that each man and woman receives as part of the privilege that is membership is to be protected, but is also meant to be used to improve ourselves, our brothers and sisters, and our Greek Community, but most importantly, our Panther community.
In reality, because of the ritual that each of us has been privileged to receive, we have a greater responsibility to act in the best interests of this university. Your ritual not only provides you with personal solitude and guidance, but with the tools to make the Panther experience more enjoyable and fruitful for all students. Rather than using the fact that we are Greeks for our own personal pursuit of power and pleasure, let’s do something to shatter the “FIU Greek Stereotype” and collaborate with the broader student body to create and inspire a shared vision for the now 50,000 member Panther Nation.
This is the second in a two part series about Student Leadership at Florida International University.
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