Fraternity President (eBook)

Leadership Lessons for a Lifetime

John D. Burkey (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
120 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-7923-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Leadership has become more complex and challenging, especially in era of the changes that were ushered in by the COVID pandemic. Through autobiographical information and storytelling, this book provides leadership lessons the author learned as president of a college fraternity at the University of Illinois. Each chapter draws connections of how those lessons helped the author's leadership as a large school district superintendent.

Textauszug

Chapter 1:
The Improbable Journey to the Presidency of a College Fraternity

The fact that I became the president of a college fraternity was highly improbable, to say the least. For the most part, I had a positive high school experience and had a circle of friends with whom I was quite comfortable. I also really enjoyed being around my family. I was fortunate that three of my four grandparents were alive and lived nearby. When senior year in high school came and my friends began to select colleges, I became very nervous. None of my good friends were going to the school I had chosen—the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Although I was not concerned about being on my own, I was sad to leave the experience of high school and my friends. I am an introvert by nature and, consequently, it had taken me a long time to develop the group of really close friends that I had. Would I be able to make friends like this in college?

One weekend during the fall of my senior year in high school, I went along with my friend Mike to visit his brother at Iowa State University. We spent the night in his brother’s dorm. This experience provided me even more trepidation about college. Early in the evening on this dorm floor, everyone started drinking. Heavily. The drinking began through an introduction to the game of “Hi, Bob,” in which about 30 guys crowded around a 1980s 25-inch tube TV and watched the old Bob Newhart Show. Participants of this game had to take a drink every time someone said “Hi, Bob.” If you’ve ever watched that show, you know “Hi, Bob,” is said a lot. Consequently, that led to many highly intoxicated viewers that night. Because of the heavy drinking, things on that floor got pretty crazy that night. Neither my friend Mike nor I drank at all that night. We just watched all this with wonder. And this was just a freshman dorm; I could only imagine what a fraternity might look like. This was all so alien to the experience I had in high school, I wondered nervously as to how I would survive in this type of environment in college.

As I prepared to go away, I viewed college as a sort of purgatory—four years that I would spend in transition between childhood and adulthood. It was something to just get through, perhaps even endure. I expected to learn a great deal in my academic classes, but I never predicted that the lessons from outside the classroom would be even more impactful on my future. To my great surprise, instead of being merely a transitional part of life, college instead became one of the most significant periods in my life.

The year it all began was 1985. Ronald Reagan had just entered his second term as president, and Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union. While the Cold War was as hot as ever, there was hope that it would soon cool. The history of the next few years proved that to be true. A gallon of gas only cost $1.09, and the average price for a new car was $9,000. The top-rated TV shows of that year were Family Ties, The Cosby Show, and Murder, She Wrote. And people had to watch TV shows in real time or record them on a new device called a VCR. We were first introduced to Marty McFly as the big movie of the summer of 1985 was Back to the Future. The song We Are the World was recorded in January of that year, and the first Farm Aid concert was presented in September of 1985 (At Memorial Stadium at U of I),

I so well remember the drive in August 1985 from my home in Washington, Illinois to Champaign-Urbana. It was just my dad and me, and the drive took approximately 90 minutes. The view was primarily of the corn fields of Central Illinois. We listened to a mix-tape I had made (yeah, mix-tapes were a big thing back in 1985) of popular songs from the summer. Tears for Fears’ Shout, a-ha’s Take on Me, and Huey Lewis’s Power of Love were all on that tape. As we approached the Lincoln Street exit in Urbana, cars were backed up all the way to Interstate 74 as it was move-in day for over twenty thousand students. After a few miles of stop and go traffic on Lincoln Street, we finally arrived at my dorm. The unloading process was very organized as upperclassmen were ready with carts to help move our carload of supplies into the dorm room. After setting up my room and attending a family orientation meeting in a theatre in Krannert Arts Centre, my dad left to head back home. I was now completely on my own.

My first semester at U of I went well academically, but was a slow start socially. I spent some time with friends that I knew from high school, but as mentioned earlier, my best friends from high school went to other schools. My roommate was from the Chicago suburbs, and we shared history as a major. While Pat and I never became social friends, we got along well and had many deep conversations over history and politics. My first college romance in September, although brief, was with a girl I met in my speech communications class. By mid-semester, I made a good friend, Stacy, who I also met in my speech communications class. He lived in my dorm as well. The first night we ever did anything socially was in early November, after he and I had gone to hear a required speech one evening for our class. The speech was held at the Illini Union, which was about a 20-minute walk from our dorm.

On the way back from the speech, he suggested that we stop at T-Birds, the one campus bar that admitted 18-year-olds. I had never been there, but was definitely game to try it. Because it was the only campus bar that 18-year-olds could get into, it was populated primarily with freshmen. We stayed for several hours and had a great time. I can still remember that one of the songs on their short playlist was Davy Jones’s Daydream Believer. That song was almost 20 years old then. College students were not here for the music. The freshmen were there for alcohol. That evening was to be only the first of many times at T-Birds. After Stacy and I came back to the dorm, we went into the cafeteria, which was used as a study lounge in the evenings. Stacy introduced me to his girlfriend, Margaret, and several of her friends. I hit it off with them immediately, and we all became a good friend group.

The thought of joining a fraternity had never crossed my mind. My dad had been in a fraternity when he was a student at U of I, but he never pushed the issue with me. I had, of course, seen Animal House and viewed a fraternity much like I viewed that dorm party I had experienced the previous year at Iowa State. It was clearly not for me. Additionally, neither Stacy, nor his friends, were into fraternities. In fact, Stacy and I would often sit in the cafeteria at FAR (our dorm) and comment about the stereotypical fraternity and sorority students we saw. In the mid-80s, the tell-tale sign you were in the Greek system was wearing sweat pants with big Greek letters across your rear end.

One Saturday night in February, our friend group was sitting in our dorm cafeteria eating dinner, and Stacy and I planned to go to the U of I hockey game that evening. Margaret mentioned that a fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi, was having an informal rush event later that evening, and she suggested that Stacy and I should go. Margaret had been there for a party the previous night and said that she really liked the guys, and that this house was different. It was not a stereotypical fraternity. Stacy had no interest in going, but I was actually more of the mindset of trying it out. Later, as Stacy and I were at the hockey game, we debated whether to go as we continued to make stereotypical comments and jokes about fraternities. Would one of us have to change our name to “Biff?” Would we have to wear the sweats with the big Greek letters?

In the end we decided to go. The Pi Kappa Phi house was only a few blocks from the hockey arena, so we walked over there from the rink. Immediately upon entering the house, it did not have the feel I expected. The rush event was very low-key. It was not a partying atmosphere, but rather just an event where we sat in different guys’ rooms and talked. At least from the looks of this event, it was not Animal House.

Even though they seemed like good guys, I didn’t really feel that I clicked with them. In that one evening, however, Stacy was hooked. He did a 180-degree turn from being anti-frat to believing this was a place where he completely fit and could flourish. I, however, was not so sure.

The next week, Pi Kappa Phi invited us back to the house for dinner and the next weekend to a party. Within two weeks of that first Saturday evening rush event, we were both offered bids (invitations to join). Margaret was very supportive of us joining and listed all the reasons why we should. I was still skeptical, though. For one, I had not even explored other houses. If I was changing my perspective and deciding to go Greek, shouldn’t I at least go through the formal rush process? But as I thought more about it, I realized that the whole rush process was very intimidating to me. And I realized I would be doing it myself, as Stacy was going to go with Pi Kapps.

In the end, I decided to take the plunge and join Pi Kappa Phi. I calculated that I could go through pledgeship, and if I didn’t like it, I could leave. At this point in my life, I was not much of a risk taker, but I just decided to close my eyes and take the leap. What did I have to lose? I needed to quit analyzing and just do this. This was so unlike me.

My pledge class was small, with only eight guys in total. Consequently, we all got to know each other very well. During rush, the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 8.2.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-7923-5 / 1667879235
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-7923-9 / 9781667879239