I've always wondered why business was a bad word and what was so special about brotherhood. I've read a fair number of articles and I've talked with a few people from both the business world and (as a consultant) from undergraduate chapters and their advisors and I seem to fall back on this one simple (albeit probably unpopular) precept
BUSINESS and BROTHERHOOD are values neutral statements. They just...are.
This flies in the face of the rhetoric that follows both. The media, especially since the passage of TARP at the beginning of the financial meltdown, has talked about Main Street versus Wall Street. Big Business controls Washington and Academia, especially the liberal arts, stands in stark contrast to the profit obsessed culture of America.
Yet businesses create jobs, donate more philanthropy dollars, raise awareness, and drive innovation in today's society. And despite a tendency to demonize business, more graduate leave college joking about how their high priced degrees have made them well spoken barristas at starbucks at best and unemployable at worst.
This challenge is seen in the interfraternal world as well. On one hand, we talk about being "brothers for life" yet one of the biggest complaints I hear while I am on the road in big chapters or small is that seniors have dropped off the face of the earth, or worse, contributing to a deliquent culture against the wishes of the officers of the chapter. At the national level, volunteering and giving levels remain far lower than total "lifelong" membership would otherwise suggest was feasable.
As a Leadership Consultant for my Fraternity, my job is to look at some of these issues and develop solutions to address those problems. From my novice perspective on the field, it seems as if we spend a significant amount of time justifying our relevance rather than making ourselves relevent. We fall back on brotherhood or sisterhood and sometimes miss the overal point that our relevance is in fact very much linked with the concerns of undergraduates today - can I get a job for doing this?
Right now I'm working on a project that will try and reframe how we talk with some of our undergraduates about values. Specifically, by linking the values of Fraternity and Sorority life to that of the business world (responsibility, honesty, discipline, creativity, socialization / sales, and community involvement) I hope to make the case that being a good Fraternity Man or Sorority Woman has a direct impact on your appeal in the work force.
In other words, Fraternities can do what many complain their degrees may not necessarily be able to do on their own - get them jobs!
