A Higher Standard

When it comes to wearing one's Greek letters, it's not all about pride or prestige. It's not all about popularity. It's something much more than any of these things: it's all about holding oneself to a higher standard & a higher set of expectations.

However, there are those duders who have a different take on the matter & they never cease to amaze me. For such men, being a member of a fraternity (note they won't state this openly) is all about getting plastered & scoring with lots of wonderful ladies. What kind of fraternities would allow men of this sort to enter their chapters with a mindset which is not only immature but also plain antithetical to the creeds & standards which their chapters were based on to begin with? I guarantee this much, only the problem chapters would go to lengths of this magnitude to allow duders in who can "perpetuate the house tradition," as it were.

On the other hand, there are men who sincerely give four hoots or more about their fraternities & they sincerely care enough to know that they're looking for duders of the highest caliber, duders who are willing to step up & get involved in who knows how many aspects of campus & Greek life. They know what place the chapter holds in their lives & they know that to keep their chapter on the up & up as far as house management, academics, scholarship, etc. are concerned, they can ill afford to churn out chapter members who are nothing but a bunch of dead weight & don't want to bring any positive benefits to the house.

It's about accountability, holding oneself to a higher standard & with it higher expectations.

To think that the fraternity is nothing more than a well-stocked bar, that the fraternity is actually irrelevant to one's intellectual & spiritual growth (not to forget personal either)...that's downright unacceptable as well as an insult to your fellow initiates & the ones who came before.

Just keep that thought in mind whenever you've got the letters on, duders; seriously, that's all I can ask for now.