Kenneth Cheung's Alpha Phi Omega Universe
Hitting the Pledge Wall
When you want to join a fraternity or some other very established organization, most of the time you will have to go through a pledging process. First, you must become a pledge before you become an active member. When most people think of fraternities, they think about hazing, drinking, partying, and sex. These ideas are largely imposed on us by the media. After joining this particular fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, I realized that the stereotypes did not apply here. First of all, this fraternity is not really a fraternity in the established defining sense. Alpha Phi Omega is co-ed, so it allows men and women to work together. Also, this club is also dedicated to service, so there is little time for partying or even sex for that matter (drinking is another issue, which I wish not to discuss any further).
To join the fraternity, you must meet a list of requirements. It is understandable for a club to have some requirements for membership. In this case, there are five pages of requirements. Just from the fact that there are five pages; one can immediately feel the apprehension of this whole pledging process. If you do not, then you are not aware of the full scope of the point that I am trying to make.
Let us begin with the obvious requirement: meetings. Like any club, this organization meets regularly on a weekly basis. However, pledges in the club must meet on an additional time dedicated to the pledges only. So a pledge has two meetings to go to each week. The meetings alone occupy at least five hours a week to the student’s busy schedule. Of course, we are not are required to attend all the meetings, just 80% of the pledge meetings and 50% of the chapter meetings. However, a lot of items are processed during each meeting. In the case of the pledge meetings, the executive committee creates an agenda. There are no explicit parameters to follow when creating a meeting agenda; it allows the pledge executive committee to utilize their leadership skills. On the other hand, there may be some implicit requirements because ultimately, the true power remains in the hands of the Pledge Trainers and Educators (more on that later). The meetings are fairly dull, as would a business meeting would be. To compensate for this, on every Pledge meeting agenda is an ice-breaker. Ice breakers usually involve some interactive activity; jumping around, talking to people, writing notes on pieces of paper, shaking hands, etc. It does occupy a good chunk of the time. It does not seem very useful from a professional standpoint, but it may help those with short attention spans. Attending a Pledge meeting is like enrolling in a night class. The goal is to learn about the club and find out how to become a better member. If you can get accustomed to these kinds of meetings, you will do well in the professional world.
The next standout requirement is the fee: $95. That is a lot of money. I have never paid such high dues before. $95 is just the requirement as set on paper for the semester. You will have to pay more for various luxuries like gifts and t-shirts and fundraising. Speaking of fundraising, each pledge is expected to raise $60. For people who are uncomfortable raising money, it is very tough on them. As a Republican Party member, I do not think that funds are the problem: it is spending that is the problem. If we can cut costs, then we would not have to raise as much money. The fee goes towards three items for the pledges: the membership fee, the banquet, and the sweater. The membership fee is $35 and it is unchanging: the treasury must have its share. The banquet costs $45, and the food is comparable to that of Northside Community Center (except their food is free for volunteers). In the Ray Hancock Banquet, the DJ played B-rated Hip-hop music all night and we had to leave at midnight (which was for the better, considering the music). The extra $10 would go to the sweater that everyone gets at the banquet. In our case, we did not get the sweaters in time. It sounds like a good deal, but you need to have the money, which can be paid in weekly installments. But, it also encourages fund-raising: it makes you go out there and beg.
Each pledge must chair or co-chair at least one project. If there are, say 40 pledges, then there should be around 40 projects. Pledges are required to attend a Pledge-only project. One very unrealistic requirement is to have 95 percent of all the pledge class to attend an exclusive fellowship. This is difficult to achieve because of scheduling conflicts. These events are in addition to the existing projects that manifest from the active members. You could be booked for the whole week on club events. Because so many people have to chair their own events, the influx of service projects creates scheduling conflicts and speedups. The result is the overall declining quality of some projects. The leadership bug does impose its will on you if you must a chair a project, though.
02.17.2004