[16753] in APO-L
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daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ellen Kranzer)
Mon Apr 28 18:35:56 1997
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 06:35:13 -0400
Reply-To: Ellen Kranzer <ellen_kranzer@HARVARD.EDU>
From: Ellen Kranzer <ellen_kranzer@HARVARD.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
>Harvard: Never has had a chapter. School has a variety of rules that make
>extension to there, somewhere between very difficult and impossible.
>These include both rules against fraternities (voted on by faculty senate)
>and rules against student organizations being under any level of external
>control. Also they have a community service house on campus. I'm told that
>Circle-K changed its National by-laws to allow multi school chapters in
>order to have Harvard students join the chapter at MIT. The governor of
>Massachusetts said he'd try to help in his speech at the APO nat. conv. in
>Boston('92) at the final banquet. (You see how far that got). I'm sure
>there are people on section 96/Region I staff who can tell you more.
While we've had sectional chairs who eyed the concept, we haven't made any
serious attempts to start an APO chapter at Harvard in the time I've been
around (read as 16 years).
Harvard has a service organization called Phillips Brooks House which does
everything from hooking people up with organizations like Big Brothers/Big
Sisters to recruiting Harvard Students to man an soup kitchen to running
fund raisers for various charites to painting local homeless shelters to ..
To get a picture of the size of their service program: take the 5 chapters
with the most extensive service programs, add them together, you *may* wind
up with a service program the size of that run by Phillips Brooks House.
Harvard just isn't a fertile campus to try an extension effort -- there's
the no Greek rule already mentioned and with Phillips Brooks House there,
the adminstration doesn't see a need to change the rules to permit a service
organization on campus -- students have plenty of opportunity for community
service.
Now, if a group of Harvard undergraduates came to us and said we want to try
this, I'd imagine we'd certainly make the attempt, but I can't think of any
time we've seen interest from undergraduates at the school. We've seen some
interest form Staffers who think the prestige of having a chapter at Harvard
would be a good thing. We've seen some interest from alumni who are grad
students -- by they've rapidly discovered that they just don't have the time
or the contacts in the student body at large to work on an extension effort.
Personally, I don't see why everyone always focues on the Ivies as
colonization targets.
There are plenty of other schools in the area where the administration would
welcome APO. Take Boston College -- it has a large greek system (no problem
with the 'fraternity thing'), a public relations problem that would be
helped by having more service organizations, and a Dean who'd actively
support the effort (he was an advisor at another chapter once); we're only
missing on ingredient -- interested students.
Y.I.S.
Ellen c.c. Kranzer
Region I Staff
P.S. All this is my personal opinion and has nothing to do with how any
other staffers around here may feel.
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Email: ellen_kranzer@harvard.edu or ccrazy@world.std.com
Permanent Email address: ekranzer@alum.mit.edu
U.S. Mail: Ellen Kranzer, 18 Riverdale Street, Allston, MA 02134
Phone: (w)617 495-0573, (h)617 254-0057
