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!

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:

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.

I don’t know if it was either of these things that brought me down, though turning 26 was as uneventful as it could have possibly been. Just to imagine that 5 years ago I spent my birthday night out at the bar with 20+ undergraduates and alumni from my fraternity in a drunken stupor…but I digress.

Honestly, I think that the weight of my disgusting amount of student loans finally lowered its boom on my back. Sure, I’ve been paying them back since July, but when that small CitiBank loan kicked in at the beginning of December – that was the kick in the balls that I really didn’t need. Thankfully, I’ve already paid back 25% of this smaller loan and I anticipate having it paid off by the time the summer starts (if not beforehand). Stupid small loan trying to mess with me…

However, as much as taking a financial stand against my student loans has been a positive influence in my daily life I think that my volunteer work has been a bigger pick-me-up. It started when I went out on my annual trip to St. Louis for Sigma Pi Fraternity’s Mid-Year Leadership Conference. This is an event where the new undergraduate Presidents, Treasurers, and Recruitment Chairmen are each trained on how to operate the chapter while the alumni volunteers (me) are put into a separate education track for the weekend. Not only did I get to present at this year’s workshop (my topic was how to have better workshops), but I also enjoyed hanging out at some of St. Louis’ more famous landmarks (the Arch, the Budweiser Worldwide Headquarters, Laclede’s Landing).

The best part about these fraternity events, for me at least, is that you come back from them on a natural high about life. In other words, the whole morose feeling that was bringing me down prior to the St. Louis trip was gone.

And I only bring this up because I just remembered how crappy January was and how out of place it is for January to be a bad month for me. I’m a January fan, but this year sucked. I’m glad that I had a volunteer-based weekend in St. Louis to give me a nice kick in the ass.

I really enjoyed reading this book as I suspect many fraternity volunteers would enjoy reading it. What really got me about the book was the universality of the message (to fraternity men, that is). Anyone who has ever taken over a chapter of a struggling fraternity knows that it is one of the hardest things in the world to change that chapter into something worthwhile. Not only do you have the innate problem of running a fraternity chapter which is most likely stacked with hormone-enraged young men, but you have the old 1970’s stereotypes that you have to overcome, too.

But rest assured, it CAN be done! The secret to reforming a failing chapter of any fraternity is shared by the Phired Up team in “Good Guys” and was the same method that we used at the Delta Beta Chapter of Sigma Pi Fraternity at Monmouth University – look at your ritual, read it, understand it, and follow it. For fraternity men, the “ritual” is what makes you unique. There are things said and ideas brought up in Sigma Pi’s ritual that are wholly unique to our organization, just as there are likely to be the same secrets and mysteries in your own organizations. If you’re a fraternity man, ask yourself this question:

If you are NOT following what it is that makes you unique, then what exactly is the difference between joining your organization or another one? The letters on the shirt? Guys – shirts are just made of fabric. What? Are you going to talk about how “tight your brotherhood” is? Well look at that for a minute. If you do the same thing that a bunch of guys who live off-campus and are NOT in a fraternity would do for each other, then what’s the difference other than that you’re wearing the same fabric on your chest?

There IS something that makes fraternity men different and it’s got nothing to do with Bluto Blutarsky and his drunken rampages. Fraternity men stand for something. What do you stand for? Do you even know? Is it time that you picked up your ritual book and really, actually read through it?

This is just one area in which “Good Guys” excels as a “How to Guide” for operating a fraternity. Which brings me to my next point – though this book is being marketed as a guide to recruitment it really is a guide to overhauling your chapter and making it something worthy of being proud of. I e-mailed the guys from Phired Up and told them that they’re really selling themselves short by saying it’s simply a recruitment book – and they understood my point. However, I also understand their point that recruitment is the lifeblood of a fraternity.

Often, as alumni volunteers or even men working for fraternities, we tell our undergraduates that they are running a small business. And that’s true, except that there are no long-term employees in this particular business other than the volunteer advisors and the Executive Office staff. This is a hard concept for undergraduates to grasp because they are joining a lifelong brotherhood, and that is also true. What the “catch” is here, though, is that you won’t have a chapter to go back to during Homecoming or other alumni-themed events if you choose to be shitty with your recruitment. “Good Guys” teaches you how to have solid recruitment throughout the entire year and how to constantly bring in men that are worth your organization’s time and effort.

Sure, some bone-headed fraternity guys would read this and say, “Whatever, man. I’ve got a bunch of guys who like to party and I’m sticking with what works for us.” Well hey, that’s good for you. And please, party your asses off now, because the chances of you having a chapter that you’d want to bring your family back to one day or have your son join are slim to none. But hey, kegger this weekend, right?

That’s the other thing that “Good Guys” touches on and something that I’ve begun to talk about with my undergraduates – being a top-ranked, highly efficient chapter and having ridiculous parties that you’ll always remember are NOT mutually exclusive! No one EVER said it’s one or the other. In fact, I think there is a solid argument to say that if you have a highly efficient chapter, your parties will be better overall. Think about it – doesn’t it make sense?

My recommendation for “Good Guys” is as high as it could be. It’s a quick, good read that many of you could probably get through in a night. And what’s also great about it is that you can purchase an e-copy of the book for about $12 instead of a hard copy. If any fraternity men would like to talk some more about the pros and cons of this book, please contact me. It’s definitely worth the money!