[15881] in APO-L
All-Male Resolutions @ Nationals
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Da Bull)
Thu Jan 2 01:29:21 1997
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 01:30:56 -0500
Reply-To: Da Bull <bsmith@VOICENET.COM>
From: Da Bull <bsmith@VOICENET.COM>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
As I have already seen a few posts about what happened with the all-male
related resolutions at Nationals, I thought I would post about what
happened since I was on the Chapter Operations Reference Committee that
dealt with it and eventually proposed the resolution that was accepted by
the floor. Before I begin, let me first say that serving on this committee
was one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had in my life. The
synergy and determination that was evident within our small group was very
overwhelming. The group focused on the issues at hand and developed very
rationale explanations for why we pushed certain issues to be voted on the
floor. In our case, each resolution/bylaw/ritual change, etc that we voted
to put on the floor was accepted with some minor changes being made to
some. If I'm not mistaken, the Chapter Ops committee was the only
committee to have everything they put on the floor accepted in all
instances. That in itself says a lot since we dealt with some very hot &
touchy issues. With the background info out of the way, I'll now explain
what led our committee to the proposal that those of you there at
Nationals know and those of you who weren't will know shortly. The main
issue at hand dealt with the so called "Gentlemen's Agreement". Since no
one present in our room had any definitive information on existence of
said agreement, we brought in a few people who were around this time and
asked them for some background information. As we begun taking in this
information things became a little clearer, but were by now means
completely clear. In addition to seeking background info, we also sought
the opinions of brothers both pro/con and male/female on both sides of the
issue. What this helped us was to get a feel of how some of the current
undergrads felt about this issue. Surprisingly, the majority of people who
spoke were in favor of upholding the Gentlemen's Agreement. This was
by no means biased because we actively sought opinions on both sides
of the issue.. Once we had taken in all this information and discussed it
all very in depth, we then proceeded to establish based on the information
we had via our interviews and actual documents what we thought to be the
substance of the Gentlemen's Agreement. With this in mind, we then decided
initially to recommend upholding the Agreement using as rationale among
other things what we had established to be part of the Gentlemen's
Agreement. As we were ready to put this issue to rest we took another
long, hard look at it at the advice of our advisors and began to see there
were much larger issues than met the eyes. Some of the isses were that
recommending what we were planning on would carry some major ramifications
in a legal, ethical, and philosphical sense. Furthermore, we also began
to realize that although we had garnered a lot of background info on the
Gentlemen's Agreement, there was still a lot of information that we didn't
know of and couldn't get in the short amount of time we had. Overall, our
entire committee realized that the topic at hand was a major one and one
that required us to know a lot more information than we had. As was
stressed to all of us before we even started on the legislation, we should
think about not what is good for us or our chapters, but what is good for
the fraternity as a whole. Keeping what was stressed to us in mind, we
finally decided that we as a committee and a very small percentage of the
fraternity as a whole simply could not make an informed decision to
present to the floor based on the facts we were lacking a lot of pertinent
information and simply did not have the time to garner what would be
needed. As a result of this, we then proceeded to produce our own
resolution for what we thought should be done. In a nutshell, we propsed
having the National President, that being the re-elected Wilfred to form a
committee which would investigate the all-male issue on a number of
different tiers and also garner very detailed information on a list of
issues which we included. Some of those issues were the legal, ethical,
and philosphical ramifications of keeping all-male chapters, the number
all male chapters who had some type of sister organization such as GSS or
Omega Phi Alpha and the impact of all male chapters going co-ed on these
groups. Also, we included seeking opinions from any brother who wished to
submit one regardless of how they felt and also talking to members of some
of the sister organizations and other single-sex groups to find out their
feelings and how they handled the situation APO currently is trying to
right now. There are numerous other issues we asked to have investigated
too; however, I thought I'd give you some of them. Over the course of this
study, we also asked for an interim report that any brother or chapter
could request. I forget exactly when we asked to have the report completed
by. Conclusively, we asked that at the completion of the study, which
would have to be done before the legislation deadline for the '98
convention that the committee submit legislation recommending either to
allow all-male chapters to continue to exist or force them to go co-ed. In
the eyes of our committee, which contained representatives from 3 all male
chapters we felt this was by far the best option to take since we could
not have made an informed decision otherwise. Additionally, we also felt
that with submission of legislation one way or the other we could finally
end the debate and struggle with this issue that has been causing rifts in
the fraternity for the past 20+ years at the 1998 Convention in
Minneapolis. If anyone has questions regarding what I have said, please
feel free to ask me and I'll answer them to the best of my knowledge since
what brain I did have was fried as a result of 4 days in
committee/legislative sessions. In closing, let me re-iterate that serving
on this committee and working on the floor was rewarding and something I
would do again without blinking an eye.
In LFS,
Bill
