A Day to Consider Values & Dreams

by
Matt Mattson


Today is the day set aside on the calendar to honor the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Thinking back about what I know of Dr. King, and because I was sitting here wondering how that ties into fraternity/sorority recruitment -- so I'd have something to blog about today, I'm immediately drawn to two concepts: VALUES and DREAMS.

We talk about values a lot in the Greek world. We talk about values a lot. Some committed fraternity/sorority members truly take that talk seriously, and they try to walk the walk. Unfortunately, there is one area of fraternity/sorority life in which values are often forgotten: recruitment. This happens in two ways, 1) Big Rush Events that do not represent core values, and 2) Offering a life-long commitment of sisterhood or brotherhood to strangers based on minimal information or mutual commitment.

When selecting members, does your chapter have a set of values-based selection criteria? Or, to take another approach, does your chapter require an, clear commitment from each new member that they understand before joining?

Martin Luther King also demonstrated for the world the importance of a DREAM. Consider that the dream that King spoke of in that famous "I Have a Dream" speech was a dream to utterly change the world. This wasn't a goal, a benchmark or even a vision. This was a dream. At the time it was wild, it was extreme, and it was revolutionary. But because that dream was so big... the obstacles, challenges, and sometimes horrible pain that stood in the way of achieving that dream didn't matter to those that believed. Consider how easy it would have been to use all those obstacles as excuses for why King and other leaders just couldn't recruit enough members into the movement. But he chose to make the dream so big, that the challenges seemed inconsequential.

Do you have a dream that you're leading your organizational members toward?

I realize that equating the Civil Rights Movement with fraternity/sorority recruitment may seem a bit of a stretch -- even silly. But consider for a moment the way in which involvement in an organization like yours can literally change a person's life. Consider the power of a shared commitment to truly live by a stated set of core values which instruct you to be honest, loving, caring and giving. Consider that this is all Dr. King ever asked of us.

Maybe they are two different things, but the fraternity/sorority world can learn a lot from the challenges and successes of the Civil Rights Movement, and from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you have never seen the famous "I Have a Dream" speech, it is one of the most moving pieces of video that I know of. Watch it.