[10001] in APO-L
Toast Song
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sharon Zohar)
Thu Nov 3 22:24:05 1994
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 1994 21:29:05 EST
Reply-To: Sharon Zohar <75277.620@COMPUSERVE.COM>
From: Sharon Zohar <75277.620@COMPUSERVE.COM>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L%PURCCVM.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
As a staff member, I try to avoid influencing actives when it comes to deciding
how to vote on legislation at Nationals. I can't do that now.
I recently worked with the rechartering group at Delta Nu (Yale) as their
liaison. Up until the time I had to teach them the toast song, I was a "Men of"
supporter - tradition and all that sort of thing.
As I taught these eager petioners the toast song, I watched the faces of two of
the women in the group change in horror as I got to "Men of" and realized,
suddenly, that I was likely to lose two key people from the group. I became
"True to" our fraternity VERY quickly. I bucked the official words and taught
them the toast song with "True to" and would do it again. This small group of
petitioners is now a healthy and strong chapter with a pledge class of 25 or so.
I'm not sure that this would be true if we had lost those two women early on.
Every pledge/member-in-training/etc.. is new to our fraternity. Those of us who
have been around for years (and years and ...) take our loyalty and devotion to
this fraternity almost for granted. We forget that we introduce ourselves to new
people every semester. If "Men of" can cause us to lose even one potential
member over these two words, a member who can end up as President, or VP
Service, or a member who can recruit five or more pledges over his or her time
in this fraternity, is it worth the risk?
Brothers say that people should be able to see past "Men of" - but why should
anyone HAVE to look past the words in the first place?! "Men of" is distracting
us from our purpose in the first place. Let's just change those two words, and
then get on with the business of LFS!
