This weekend I tried to light a fire, not just any fire, but a bonfire built with wood that had been sitting out in the rain for days. After many attempts (and two cans of gasoline), it wouldn’t stay lit, and all I wound up with were some diesel-smelling clothes and a cold marshmallow.
I spent this past weekend in Woodworth, Louisiana as a facilitator for EMPOWER, LSU’s Greek leadership retreat. Over 100 other Greeks from all four of the governerning councils on campus spent time at the retreat recognizing our faults and discussing our values.
And you know what I learned? You can’t start a fire with wet wood.
Well, maybe not just that one specific fact, but a few things that can relate back to that analogy. As I was standing around our nonexistent fire, I realized that what we were doing that night was very symbolic of our current Greek system.
Finally, after the majority of the group had left in search of warmer places, a smaller portion of us discovered a few pieces of dry wood under a nearby tarp, and we built a small fire at the base of the bonfire. Eventually it (with the help of some more gas) caught on to the rest of the bonfire and the fire as a whole began to get bigger.
That large pile of wood is symbolic of LSU’s Greek system, a system I joined and support.
As much as I support that system, I recognize that it is a system with problems, a system set it its ways and one notorious for tragedy, hazing and disunity.
You don’t have to be Greek to know the actions of our organizations don’t always reflect the values we bind ourselves to as members.
On a campus where now only 13 percent of the students belong to a Greek letter fraternity or sorority, Greek life is slowly dying. Our past is littered with both triumph and defeat, from the highs of social events and raising countless amounts of money for charity to our lowest point, the 1997 drinking death of Sigma Alpha Epsilon pledge Benjamin Wynne.
Since then, initiatives such as the Campus and Community Coalition for Change and the Greek Assessment (both of which began after Wynne’s death) have forced the Greek system to change, but haven’t encouraged another point I learned this weekend, that without a unified Greek system, competition among chapters will only increase.
This “perfect Greek system” will only exist when all of the Greeks on LSU’s campus, be they black, white, green or blue can forget our letters and unite as one Greek community.
And unless that perfect Greek system begins to evolve sooner than later, there won’t me much of Greek life left on campus. For those of you who aren’t members of the Greek community (and there’s a lot of you), know that we’re working it out — and in the process expanding our horizons as well.
At EMPOWER weekend our biggest breakthrough is one that’s been talked of before, uniting the four major Greek councils on campus. Commonly known as a divide between the predominately black and white fraternities, this separation has been keeping the LSU Greeks from reaching their fullest potential. Unity between chapters is essential and also needs to be strengthened. But until unity is established across racial and council lines, we cannot truly call ourselves a Greek “community.”
Most of the participants left EMPOWER with a greater understanding and respect for all the different Greek chapters at LSU, and returned to campus having made a commitment to change the way our system works, to challenge the process and work for the preservation of Greek life at LSU.
Greek unity has been talked about at many previous retreats, but Assistant Dean of Students Victor Felts said the difference in this year’s participants is that they were not the chapter Presidents and executive board members, but the younger members (and future leaders) of their organizations.
The change has to start from below, from the new members like those who attended EMPOWER, and gradually, like the fire, it will catch on.