Delta Chi's Tom Hyndman describes his AFLV experience this week!
From listening to Vice President Joe Biden passionately speak about sexual harassment and assault to personally meeting fellow-fraternity man Jay Harris from ESPN, AFLV brought a lot of excitement to this not-so-average leadership conference. These types of engagements were matched with just as meaningful lessons and pieces of advice. My most memorable lesson from the weekend was that “there’s a difference between fraternity men and men in a fraternity”, meaning that just because you wear the letters, doesn’t necessarily mean you are fully embodying their values. This reminded me of a similar quote from Delta Chi’s Retiring International President, Miles Washburn. At the Delta Chi Region IX’s Leadership Conference, the weekend before AFLV, he stated “Being a Delta Chi is not an oath you take once. It’s an oath you live every day.”
Narrowing the gap between what it means to be fraternity men and just men in a fraternity should be a main focus of the Greek system, especially ours here at Lehigh. Similarly, but more specifically related to new member education, was the ideology that our founders don’t care if we remember their names, but care that we remember their values. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard than education through rote learning of names and dates, and definitely a higher standard than just wearing our letters. The values of Delta Chi are promoting friendship, developing character, advancing justice, and assisting in the acquisition of a sound education. However, all of our values are intrinsically similar, surrounding scholarship, leadership, and service. It should be obvious that if we spent more time embodying our values, rather than violating them, we, as individual groups and as a community, would be stronger, safer, and more successful.