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Book Review: Social Excellence

Posted on June 8, 2019 by Joe

In August 2018, I traveled to Indianapolis, Indiana to attend the North-American Interfraternity Conference‘s (NIC) Annual Meeting of Members. The meeting looks and feels like any other professional trade conference complete with a wide variety of vendors and service providers who travel to the event to talk about how they can help your organization succeed. I was very impressed with the wide variety of vendors who were at the conference and I was happy to see some familiar organizations among the vendor tables.

For example, I stopped at the Phired Up table and had a chance to say hello to some of the newer team members that I have not had the opportunity to meet before. Phired Up played a critical role in the development of several of the Sigma Pi Fraternity chapters in the New Jersey Province that I worked with when I served as Province Archon some 10+ years ago. In fact, based on our wide agreement with the principles in their book, Good Guys, our volunteer team in New Jersey actually hired Phired Up to conduct a regional recruitment workshop for our undergraduate chapters back in Fall 2007 and it was very well-received.

At the NIC’s Annual Meeting of Members, I told the young men at the Phired Up table how much Good Guys improved my chapters and they gave me a copy of their Social Excellence book to review. I finished reading Social Excellence quickly – in a matter of days. My big takeaway from this book is that you have to give life a chance! Go out there and take the risk of saying hello to someone, reach out and shake someone’s hand, live a life that is above the norm. The team at Phired Up talks about the four pillars of social excellence in their book. Those four pillars are curiosity, generosity, authenticity, and vulnerability. I want to talk a little bit more about generosity and authenticity in this post, but there is so much that could be said about curiosity and vulnerability. You might consider getting a copy of the book if you want to read more of Phired Up’s take on those two pillars.

On generosity, they write about the power of saying thank you and the power of making a person’s day by giving them something. It is about making someone else’s experience better through your own actions. In my own work with my fraternity, I have tried my best to give back of my time and professional expertise. I have also been a financial supporter of my local chapter, my province, and my international educational foundation. When I mix what I read in Social Excellence with what I know of my own experience as a volunteer and a donor both in my fraternity and with the many other nonprofits that I work with in my state, I find some interesting intersections. For example, it strikes me that the people who are the loudest detractors – those who want to be opinion leaders, but do not have a well-informed opinion – are those who have typically given the least of their time, expertise, and finances to the cause. This is an interesting revelation because it speaks volumes about generosity as a leading indicator on whether or not you are dealing with a well-intentioned individual or someone who just wants the spotlight for the sake of having the light shine on them.

On authenticity and focusing solely on my work for my fraternity, not my work in the larger nonprofit sector, it is critically important to know the true intent of your people before you place any trust in them. Being truly authentic is difficult for some individuals in the fraternity world because they do not have an example on which to model their actions. For example, if you are an undergraduate and your only interactions with alumni advisors have been painfully forcing a smile and a head nod as these volunteers tell stories about their glory days, then your example of being a good alumni volunteer is skewed. Those volunteers are not working authentically to improve your undergraduate experience – their involvement is more about their own experience and reliving what they loved about their time as an undergraduate. Not good.

Authentic alumni volunteers are those who the needs of the undergraduates (or whomever they are helping) before their own need. When I train new alumni volunteers, I give them this advice: if you respond to an undergraduate’s question by saying, “Well, when I was an undergraduate…” then you have immediately lost their attention. When today’s students as you about today’s problems, they want today’s answers. It takes someone who is authentically committed to improving today’s undergraduate experience to build a bridge between yesterday’s experience and the future. This is not easy to do.

You can get better at building that bridge by focusing on improving your social excellence. And a great way to build your social excellence would be to read this book and study these four pillars. I think you will enjoy it!

Wise Words to Remember During Formal Recruitment Season

Posted on September 10, 2018 by Joe

While reading a PDF version of Sigma Pi Fraternity, International‘s Emerald magazine from October 1919 (Volume 6, Issue 3), I came across the brief article below, written by Harold K. Bowen.

As a clarifying aside, Brother Bowen is listed as being from “Delta-Xi,” though that is not possible using the chapter designations that the Fraternity uses today since the Fraternity’s Delta-Xi Chapter was founded at Southern Utah University in 1970 and this article was published in 1919. My assumption is that Brother Bowen is from Xi Chapter at the University of Iowa (the Fraternity’s records show a Ralph Bowen initiated into Xi Chapter back in 1918) which was part of the Delta Province at the time. Today, the Fraternity uses geographic demarcations to name provinces (Heartland Province, New England Province, South Atlantic Province, etc.), but this was not always the case – in the early 1900s, Sigma Pi used Greek letters to name the provinces.

The information that Brother Bowen provides in his write-up is interesting from a historical perspective, but also deeply relevant to keep in mind during formal recruitment. Here is Brother Bowen’s advice that you should remember when considering men for membership in Sigma Pi:

BADGE MEN OR CROWD MEN?
Harold K. Bowen, Delta-Xi

Sigma Pi does not seek to claim any man who desires to enter our Fraternity that he may merely wear our badge. Such a man if received within our fold would prove undesirable owing to his peculiar make-up. A self-individual within a fraternity is out of his environment and it would require more than a badge to convince him that he was in the right environment. He could not possess that capacity of wanting things for his fellowmen and would never sacrifice his interests or desires that his brothers might be benefited thereby.

Occasionally we recognize a fraternity man by his badge, only to conclude much to the discredit of his fraternity that he lacks that requisite quality of a true fraternity man, that of being a good mixer. Though he may have acquired much in wealth or honor he would know little of men and their ways. Anyone desirous for self alone could not be recognized as an authority on men and would never be considered by the world as one of its spokesmen.

Fraternity men should be crowd men and as such feel more at home when rubbing elbows with their brother men of the crowd. It is not easy to have courage for others when they are not interested in what should be our common endeavors. However, the men who achieve in this world are those who possess the courage to want things for others. They are not for self. (Nor is success measured by self.)

Sigma Pi is for all of us when all of us cooperate to make it better and bigger. Badge men should not seek to be Sigma Pis. Sigma Pi wants crowd men.

As is so often the case with our forefathers in Sigma Pi Fraternity, Brother Bowen writes eloquently about what the Fraternity needs to thrive. He distinguishes between Badge Men and Crowd Men with the primary difference being that Badge Men join a fraternity simply to join. Or, as was common in the 1910s when this was written, some men joined a fraternity just to show off the group’s badge on their chest instead of earning the privilege of wearing that badge everyday that they were honored to be a member.

Do you know someone like that in your chapter? Someone who is more concerned about being a “frat guy” than about living a contemporary revival of the storied history behind the letters on his chest?

Today, think of the guys who come out for rush just because they want to be a “frat guy” and not necessarily because they want to join something bigger than themselves. These are the opposite of the Crowd Men that Brother Bowen notes in his essay. He says that Crowd Men are those who “have courage for others when they are not interested in what should be our common endeavors.” What does this mean? In today’s terms, Crowd Men are those who are constantly working to improve their local chapter, the larger Greek community, and the plight of collegians across the country. They take an interest in what is important for the Fraternity, but they also see the larger battles taking place across our culture and work to improve the standing of their friends, fraternity brothers, and colleagues in the greater struggle.

One of Brother Bowen’s final comments resonated with me in a particular way. He writes, “Sigma Pi is for all of us when all of us cooperate to make it better…” We need more men – young and old alike – who are committed to cooperating to truly making the Fraternity better for all of us, but more importantly – better for the next generation of Sigma Pi men who have yet to join us.

This article is cross-posted at TheEmerald.org.

Why I Volunteer My Time to My Local Chapter of Sigma Pi Fraternity

Posted on June 1, 2017 by Joe

Since August 2003, I have proudly volunteered as the local advisor to the Delta-Beta Chapter of Sigma Pi Fraternity at Monmouth University. The role that I fill is called the Chapter Director and I officially held this position for the better part of the last 14 years. There was a two and a half year period where I switched from being the Chapter Director at Monmouth to Sigma Pi Fraternity’s Province Archon for all of New Jersey. The Province Archon is a volunteer advisor and coordinator for a specific geographic region. I held that position from August 2006 through January 2009 and the reason why I resigned from that position might be the focus of a future article here on the blog, but is irrelevant today. At the time that I resigned as the Province Archon for New Jersey, the Delta-Beta Chapter Director position was just vacated by the alumnus who held the position after me, so I was able to easily move back into the Chapter Director position again. I resigned as Chapter Director last August to focus on my obligations as a member of the national board of directors, but I still work with the young men at Monmouth on a daily basis.

Undergraduates and alumni from Delta-Beta Chapter in February 2017

Before I became the Chapter Director at Monmouth, our Faculty Advisor held the position. Our Faculty Advisor is probably the best, most engaged Faculty Advisor in the entire fraternity (in fact, when Sigma Pi started giving out a #1 Faculty Advisor in the nation award, our advisor was the first recipient). However, when I graduated in 2003, the position was ripe for a new person to hold it. I spent two years as the President of my chapter and during that time I was required to research the many events, reports, and issues that our chapter was completely out of the loop on. Shortly after I graduated, the new President of the chapter and I traveled to Sigma Pi’s leadership school and talked to the fraternity’s Executive Director about our situation. During our trip, I was asked to become the new Chapter Director and we implemented that change immediately.

What I learned from my time as an undergraduate leader through my time as a young alumni volunteer and now to someone who has some seasoning as a volunteer is that undergraduates are, naturally, not as connected to the on-going workings of the national organization as one might expect. In other words, national student organizations like fraternities and sororities should not expect every single undergraduate leader at every single undergraduate chapter to take an impassioned interest in the finer points of completing and submitting monthly or quarterly or annual reports. There is going to be an equally less-than-enthusiastic understanding of why it is necessary and beneficial to attend national conferences and regional workshops.

It is one of the many jobs of a local and regional volunteer to connect with their undergraduates in an educational, uplifting, and genuine way. The connection must be educational because we need to make the mundane reporting relevant to their everyday experiences as undergraduate leaders. The connection must be uplifting because today’s young men are berated and denigrated by nearly every corner of society just because they are young men. Who will tell our young men, “Good job!” or “I’m proud of you,” if not for us?

But most importantly, the connection must be genuine because undergraduates can see through lies and falsehoods with laser-like accuracy. And they should cut through the nonsense!

I’ll be writing more about mentoring undergraduates soon, so stay tuned!

News and Updates from Sigma Pi Fraternity – Circa 1916

Posted on June 21, 2016 by Joe

One of the many fascinating elements of reading past issues of The Emerald is generating a basic idea of the climate within a Sigma Pi chapter during the early years of the fraternity. I recently finished reading the January 1916 issue of The Emerald which featured a lengthy update on the Kappa Chapter of Sigma Pi and its history at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Temple University around the turn of the century

What I liked best about reading this update from the Kappa Chapter is that they told a wonderful story regarding the history of their chapter. And I might add that they told their story in a beautifully written piece where the language was rich and the content was deep. There are no writers today who put pencil to paper (or fingers to keyboard) in as beautiful, meaningful, and precise a language as what I have read in the old issues of The Emerald.

Some other interesting notes and observations from the January 1916 issue of The Emerald:

Who Should Be Elected to the Grand Council?
This is of particular interest to me since I am running for the Grand Council next month. There was an editorial in The Emerald that gives good advice on the type of person who should not be elected to the Grand Council. The magazine says: “…the distance between good intentions and actual results from hard work is so infinite, that to elect or reelect a man simply because he appears to love the Fraternity; to propose the name of a man simply to get chapter representation or to hold on to a man who has proven his worthlessness, not only injures the Fraternity at large but seriously handicaps the Grand Chapter.”

What to Expect at Convocation
Next month’s Convocation will be the eighth one that I have attended. Before attending my first Convocation in 2002, I had no idea what to expect. Well, for brothers who find themselves in a similar position to the one that I was in 14 years ago, here is what the editors of The Emerald wrote to prepare Sigma Pi Fraternity for Convocation 100 years ago: “The coming Convocation is the logical and appointed time to shoulder all your grievances, protests or recommendations and go after the ‘powers’ without gloves. All delegates should come ‘armed to the teeth’ with sound arguments to propel their pet hobbies through the ranks of the ‘enemy.’ The man who has to stop to think is going to find it rough sledding.”

What is the Executive Council?
In this issue as in prior issues, The Emerald lists both the Grand Council as well as something called the Executive Council. It seems to me like the so-called Executive Council is either the group of people who worked for the fraternity at the time or an expanded governing body of volunteers, which we sorely need today. Seven Grand Council members just does not cut it in 2016 – we need more.

The “Father of Chapters”
The brothers at the Kappa Chapter referred to themselves as the “Father of Chapters” because they set up two iterations of the Delta Chapter at the University of Pennsylvania and the Theta Chapter at Penn State University. Back in 1916, there were only 9 active chapters so Kappa Chapter’s claim was pretty legitimate.

Who was the First Grand Sage?
Throughout their update, the Kappa Chapter talks about so-and-so being elected as the Chancellor of the chapter. Based on what I’ve read, it sounds like the position of Sage used to be called Chancellor. At some point in their update, they mention that Kappa Chapter alumnus M. Atlee Ermold attended Convocation at the end of October 1910. During that Convocation, Ermold was elected as the Grand Sage of the fraternity and was “the first man in Sigma Pi to hold that title.” Interesting. So were Francis L. Lisman and Winford L. Mattoon not the “Grand Sage” but, instead, the National Chancellors of Sigma Pi Fraternity?

No Love for the Herald!
Incidentally, they refer to the chapter’s Executive Council as the Sage, First Counselor, Second Counselor, Third Counselor, Fourth Counselor, and “fifth member.” No love for the Herald position back in 1916!

Fall and Spring Convocations – Not Summer
Also, whenever Convocation is referenced in the old issues of The Emerald, it never takes place during the summer months. Rather, the Convocations seem to have taken place during the months of April and October. Why did this change? The fraternity appears to be so disconnected during the summer months and most of today’s undergraduates are busy working summer jobs to pay increasing tuition, textbook, and off-campus living costs that it seems like holding an event during the school year might actually generate higher attendance along with some cost savings. Who knows? It’s probably worth some research. Here is a screenshot of the invitation to the 1916 Convocation that was included in the magazine:

Kappa Takes a Shot at New Jersey!
As a New Jersey guy I have to take issue with Kappa Chapter’s comment that one of the negatives about a recent initiate is that “he hails from Camden, NJ, that barnacle which clings to Philadelphia’s water line.” How dare you?! We didn’t even have any New Jersey chapters back then to defend our good name!

The Worthiness of Inter-Fraternity Councils
I laughed out loud after reading this line in one of the editorials: “We sometimes wonder whether local Interfraternity Councils are of any real value or not.” Ha ha! Oh, if the editors of the magazine could only see some of the IFCs on our campuses today…

That is all that I have for this review of the January 1916 edition of the magazine. If you are interested in this type of stuff, then I encourage you to check out the online archive of The Emerald by clicking here!

Inspiring Words from Past Grand Sage William D. Akers

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Joe

Over the last several months, I’ve spent some time reading through past issues of our fraternity’s national magazine, The Emerald. There are some truly inspiring words in these magazines. And those words are spoken in a tone of voice that we have too quickly forgotten in today’s fraternity world. That lapse in memory is not confined to Sigma Pi Fraternity, but to all of today’s fraternity men who opt to willfully disregard the decades of success that fraternities have achieved in building strong, tradition-minded, masculine men. Of course, in today’s world the very notions of traditionalism and masculinity are under attack so it’s no wonder that today’s fraternity men are so quick to bend (and, ultimately, break) to the incredulous, anti-male demands placed on them by those in perceived authority positions. More on that as we go along…

This is how the title of The Emerald magazine used to appear.

Here are some inspiring thoughts from Brother William D. Akers of Zeta Chapter, the sixth Grand Sage of Sigma Pi Fraternity. Incidentally, Past Grand Sage (PGS) Akers served as Grand Sage for a 4 year period; why is today’s Sigma Pi Fraternity seemingly so against Grand Sages serving more than one, 2-year term? That might be something to think about, I guess. In any event, PGS Akers delivered the comments below to an assembly of Delta and Kappa Chapter undergraduates in 1914, while he was serving as the fraternity’s Grand Fourth Counselor.

“In college life as well as in the business world there is no room for the passive type of man. A dead man and a lazy one are exactly alike, except the lazy one takes up more room.”
I’m sure that we’ve all heard several iterations of this idea over the years – that if one is not being a productive member of society, then they’re not really living life and might as well be dead. Or that if an employee is not pulling his own weight, then they are actually dead weight and should be fired. I believe PGS Akers’ point is that as fraternity men, we must be active in the affairs of our chapter. For the undergraduates reading this – don’t get your defenses up just yet! Too often, today’s young men see a call for involvement as an unwanted burden on their freedom or a tax on their time. That’s not what “involvement” should be, regardless of what instruction you may have received locally. To avoid being the “passive type of man” that PGS Akers refers to, today’s undergraduate man just needs to avail himself of the activities that his chapter should already be engaged in. For example, if your chapter is mixing with XYZ Sorority on Thursday night, then go to the mixer! And if you have a few free minutes during the day that Thursday, then why not ask the Social Chairman if there is some small piece of the planning for the night’s activities that you can help him complete?

Further, to avoid the passivity that PGS Akers warns us about, today’s undergraduate man should attend his chapter’s weekly meeting, philanthropic, and service events. Again, these should be part of your daily activities as an active member in your chapter in the first place. This isn’t a call to new action, but rather a call to existing action.

Some Delta-Beta Chapter brothers hanging out at a chapter BBQ.

Where PGS Akers’ comment begins to challenge us, I believe, is when it is applied to the larger population and its growing number of phobias and general mania around fraternities and fraternity men. Strong undergraduate leaders are not the ones who simply take what they’re given and regurgitate it for the next “leader” to read and hopefully do the same. Strong undergraduate leaders take the information that they’re given, question it in a thorough and independent manner, and then decide which elements of the material are best able to advance his chapter to its goals and his brothers to their goals. The most important part of that decision-making, though, is when the leader takes the material that he has found to be bogus, biased, or not worthy of propagation and tries to ascertain why it was included in the first place. Was this information included in an effort to disrupt a positive, yet traditional environment? Was it an oversight on the part of the person providing the material? Is it a poorly-veiled attempt to fundamentally change the perspective of the leader and his brothers? And if the answer to that question is “yes,” then why is the leader’s perspective trying to be modified? The answers to these questions (and more) should determine how the leader’s next actions.

“We Greeks, and I mean to speak with modesty, are the highest type of American manhood.”
This comment should hold true today as well, though I fear the forces of anti-masculinity and anti-traditionalism which are ripping through our culture are too often preventing fraternity men from exhibiting the highest type of American manhood, that is, traditional masculinity. The conflicting, often biased voices in today’s conversation on what it means to be a fraternity man often leave fraternity men confused at best or uncaring and aloof at worst. Today’s young fraternity leaders need to cut through the nonsense and demand clear, concise language from their leaders. If they suspect someone from their university or one of their elected leaders in the fraternity is communicating in double-speak, then they need to stop the conversation until the party they are speaking with plays fair.

That is the method by which today’s young fraternity leaders need to position themselves if they want to represent the highest type of American manhood. Be tellers of truth and promoters of real equality. Do not allow someone – anyone – to be held to a lesser standard because of their position, gender, race, socioeconomic class, etc. Fraternity men should only work pleasantly in those systems where all people are treated equally. However, what I think most fraternity men will find is that today’s college environment is stacked against them because of their skin color, gender, and/or choice to embrace a traditional view of fraternalism. Fraternity men must work to change that growing bias because bias in any form is unacceptable – particularly on college campuses.

“[Those who are jealous of fraternity membership] view us through glasses which magnify our sins and fail to even show our good points.”
Boy, it’s like PGS Akers gave this speech in 2014, not 100 years earlier! How true is this statement? Earlier in his speech, PGS Akers describes the people who are consistently anti-fraternity as “individuals who fight us through jealousies.” What is most distressing about PGS Akers’ comment here is that it is so relevant to today’s hostile environment for young men, and young fraternity men in particular. Also disturbing is that if you apply PGS Akers’ statement to any aspect of life outside of fraternity membership, then you’re likely to get a similar outcome. Imagine this being spoken in 2015 and replacing “fraternity membership” with “investment banker” or “tech millionaire.” The point is that when you’re a fraternity man, you are likely receiving a considerable amount of seen and unseen anger from a population that is jealous of your very existence because of what your existence represents in their known-only-to-them minds. It’s hard for us, as leaders, to take the comments of Akers’ jealous populations seriously because they are spoken from a place that we can’t enter nor can we innately understand (nor should we attempt to understand). Most of their comments are spoken from a place of jealously and an attempt to diminish you by neglecting all of the good you provide while highlighting your negatives.

My Delta-Beta Chapter guys at a fashion show they put together for autistic students.

My chapter at Monmouth University has had to deal with this weak-mindedness in at least one Greek Advisor. This individual loved to denigrate my undergraduates’ accomplishments and took every opportunity to do so, which were numerous since the chapter was winning many awards during that time – most notably winning Sigma Pi Fraternity’s Most Outstanding Chapter Award (#1 in the nation in their tier). He loved to put my guys down because his graduate school indoctrinated him to promote an extreme position held by too many student affairs employees. And that position is that they should receive external undergraduate successes by challenging the students do to more and reach higher. Do more? Reach higher than #1 in the nation? Really? For those student affairs employees who may be reading this commentary, please take this former Greek Advisor’s pigheadedness as a lesson. Sometimes the student affairs employees need to check their biases and jealousies at the door and simply say, “Wow – you guys did a great job! We’re proud of you! Congratulations!”

“To know that you have warm personal friends, who are intensely interested in you and in your success is one of the greatest of motive forces, and makes us do our best.”
Preach on, PGS Akers! Isn’t this the very core of motivating forces that propels fraternities forward in the right direction? Namely, that no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you have a group of individuals behind you “who are intensely interested in you.” Further, they are intensely interested in your success! What greater squad is there to roll with than people who actually care about you, right?!

For my part as an alumni advisor, I’ve increasingly become intensely interested in the professional successes of my young alumni. When I hear about one of my young alumni upgrading to a new company, receiving a promotion, or getting a raise, I find a growing level of pride in their accomplishments. In a similar manner, when one of my young alumni decides that they want to go back to school to earn a master’s degree, I become proud of their decision to expand their academic pursuits. And it’s that pursuit of excellence – the pursuit of being something bigger and greater than you are today – that I find so great and admirable!

A group of my undergraduates at this past May’s graduation.

A word to the undergraduate Sigma Pi leaders reading this commentary: you will not receive this type of lasting, post-graduation support from your Greek Advisor or from any of the negative voices that you hear while you’re running your chapter. As PGS Akers instructs us, the negative voices only want to magnify your sins and fail to recognize your good contributions to society. Lucky for us, we’re members of a true brotherhood of men. We celebrate each other’s successes and share the aggravation of each other’s setbacks. Those on the outside don’t understand that connection, but they do understand how to criticize their personal interpretation of that connection. Let them spew their hate because it further degrades any perceived authority that they assumed to have in the first place.

“…the strength of our fraternity and the future of the fraternity are in your hands.”
These words are as true today as they were when PGS Akers spoke them in 1914. Remember, when he delivered this speech PGS Akers was speaking to a group of assembled undergraduates from Delta and Kappa chapters. And even though we have over 100 more chapters today and we are a much more complex organization working in a much more biased environment, the truth is now and remains that the future of the fraternity is in the hands of our undergraduates. In a very real sense, as a group the undergraduate votes at our biennial Convocation far outnumber the combined votes of our alumni clubs, past grand officers, and other individuals who are allowed to vote during the business meetings. In a much more theoretical sense, the future of Sigma Pi Fraternity rests in the hands of those undergraduates who are willing to stand up to the hypocrisies that they face on a daily basis. Those undergraduates who are willing to question, in a gentlemanly manner, those with perceived authority regarding their hypocrisies are the ones who will lead this fraternity into the future.

“…the duties of our latest initiate are of more importance to the Fraternity than those of the Grand Sage. While the former may have no official duties to attend to, he is actively engaged, either in building up or tearing down our reputation, a matter of more vital importance than any official business could be.”
This comment follows the one immediately listed above as a further indication that the future of the fraternity is set by the undergraduates, not our alumni. Sure, our alumni may be in elected or hired staff positions, but the work of the fraternity has always existed at the active chapter level. This doesn’t take away from the many great and varied efforts of our alumni clubs and alumni volunteers. Our alumni volunteers, especially, are the workhorses of Sigma Pi Fraternity. Theirs is a labor of love and, if done correctly, their work bears more and better fruit than any other effort put forth by any other constituency in the fraternity.

Some of my Spring 2015 initiates from the Delta-Beta Chapter.

Yet still, the people who are most important to the fraternity’s future are not those with the shiny medals around their necks or the ones who get up each morning to go to work for Sigma Pi. The most important people in the fraternity are the ones who were just initiated into the brotherhood and have their entire lives ahead of them as men of Sigma Pi. Will they be actively engaged in building their chapter and, through that effort, making the national fraternity stronger? Or will they be one of the better-off-dead lazy men that PGS Akers notes in one of the earlier quotes cited above?

“Sigma Pi wants MEN, – men of brain and brawn, clean men, men who love and honor their Mother and Father, these are the men who will love and honor our Fraternity.”
During recruitment season, I wish that our leaders promoted this quote more to our undergraduates than anything else. In the last 10 or so years, many student affairs employees have co-opted Phired Up’s “values-based” recruitment model and demeaned it into becoming yet another battering ram to use against traditional fraternities and sororities. By “traditional fraternities and sororities,” I am talking about those chapters who look to find certain characteristics in the people that they recruit. That is, to find groups of kindred minds who are diverse by their origins and life experiences, but share common characteristics that are valued by the members of the chapter. Sigma Pi chapters should take PGS Akers’ suggestion and look for young men to join our fraternity who are MEN! Find guys who live clean lives, take care of themselves, and honor tradition both in their families and within the fraternity. These days, society is too quick to rewrite history in an effort to make tradition always appear biased, angry, or discriminatory. And while that may be true in some cases, the history of thousands of fraternity and sorority chapters across the country is not a history of discrimination. Even for those chapters who were founded by organizations that had exclusionary policies at their national levels – those policies no longer exist and likely haven’t existed for decades.

Today’s undergraduates do not need to be brow-beaten into thinking that they are exclusionary and that they need to take a more inclusive approach to recruitment. That’s nothing more than extremist jargon that seeks to dismantle traditional forms of masculinity (and femininity, for that matter). As PGS Akers states – Sigma Pi needs to recruit MEN.

Here are some other interesting points that I found in the January 1915 issue of The Emerald:

The Directory of the Fraternity lists the 6 Grand Counselors and then it lists an “Executive Council” that includes 4 additional men who appear to be in leadership positions. I’ve said for a long time that our national organization is hindered by the fact that we only have 7 members on our national board of trustees (the Grand Council plus the Past Grand Sage). Organizations of our size should have 11 to 15 contributing members on our board of trustees. It appears that the founders and early leaders of our fraternity well understood that need for increased engagement and more hands to help move the fraternity forward. I wonder what happened that the number of elected leaders was reduced? We should go back to a larger number of members on our board of trustees.
The Delta Chapter called PGS Akers the “Patrick Henry of Sigma Pi,” which is a really great compliment if you know American history.
One quote that I didn’t use from PGS Akers was, “…wells of fraternalism whose waters are brotherly devotion and loyalty to ideals.” I bring that up because I believe that people spoke and wrote much more beautifully 100 years ago. We live in a world where the word “literally” is bastardized and “like” is overused to death. Reading these old magazines is a great reminder of how wonderfully speakers spoke and writers wrote 100 years ago.
There’s a nice, two page profile of Byron R. Lewis in this issue of The Emerald. It was nice to read about the man who did so much to build the foundation of Sigma Pi Fraternity.
During this period in The Emerald‘s history, each issue was “sponsored” by a chapter of the fraternity. In other words, the bulk of this issue talks about the Phi chapter at the University of Illinois because this was the “Phi Number” issue of the magazine. There are some great pictures of the University of Illinois in the magazine and some discussion about campus history. I encourage the undergraduate members of Phi Chapter to take a look at this issue of The Emerald just for the 100 year old pictures of their campus.
This issue also marked the first update from the Delta Chapter of Sigma Pi Fraternity. According to their update, they started from the Mag Piis Club which was colonized into Sigma Pi in spring 1914. Our current Sigma Pi Manual (why isn’t it called the I Believe Manual any more?) lists Delta as inactive from 1913 to 1914. That doesn’t seem correct if we colonized them in spring 1914 and they were an active chapter by January 1915.
During this time, The Emerald featured a section called Exchanges. In this section, the magazine would reprint the best selections from other fraternities’ magazines, copies of speeches given as they related to fraternalism, and articles from national inter-fraternity conventions. Interesting idea – especially about the speeches.
Finally, a company named Schloss Manufacturing Company advertised on the back page of The Emerald. They were advertising Sigma Pi Greek letter banners for either 85 cents (an 18″ x 30″ banner) or $1.25 (a 24″ x 30″ banner). I think we’ve experienced a little bit of inflation since then!

I encourage everyone who has an interest in Sigma Pi Fraternity’s history to check out the online archive of old Emerald magazines. If you like this stuff, then they are a treasure trove of information!