Week 1: ATZ Island

 “ATZ Island” was the dubbed name of my fraternity in years past. As my big brother tells it, the chapter did its own thing without engaging in the Greek community. The past two presidents before me oversaw major steps that built bridges across Indianola and 14^th Avenue.  As new pledge classes came, old ones went and so did the culture of isolation. In 2010 our 113-year-old chapter merged with FarmHouse International Fraternity, which connected us to 1500 other brothers across North America. We took ownership once again in participating in greek events like homecoming and greek week, and even won a few campus contests with our paired greek organizations. Our brothers became presidents and executive members in multiple student organizations. And now that I took over the reigns, it is my role to cast a vision of growth from our stagnant 20-30 membership range to a 40-60 range. In doing so, we are continuing to recruit men who have the capacity to meet and make friends and who will not return FarmHouse to its island-like past. 

Giving credit where credit is due--this is the area where I hope I am improving. My big brother pointed out to me that as the titled leader I need to recognize and honor those who built those bridges that rescued us from our isolationist state--even though I may be in charge when we see major accomplishments by our chapter. 

Though I think I have always associated social change as something that takes time, over the past month of being in office the benefit of gaining respect first by honoring those who put in hard work in the past is apparent (especially since I was elected just 7 months after being initiated). This made it a whole lot easier to receive buy-in for the vision of growth that I am casting. The results of our shared vision brought in 15 PNMs this quarter (a few of whom are leaders in other student organizations), which is our largest pledge class ever and will put us at 44 members. Life on the mainland feels great.