Building a Case for Careers in Fraternity/Sorority Advising

Among the variety of roles I play at UWF, I serve as the faculty advisor for our Student Affairs Graduate Association (SAGA). I was meeting a few weeks back with the executive board, and they brought it to my attention that October is Careers in Student Affairs Month. Who knew?!?!

A few days later, Josh Schutts and I were having lunch with one of our UWF graduate students (none other than NASPA-FL graduate student of the year and 2014 AFA Grad-staffer Sarah Cohen), and she was picking our brains about conducting her fraternity/sorority advising job search. What kinds of jobs should she be looking for? What kinds of institutions should she look at? What are the ideal office structures to look for? She had lots of good questions, and I hope we provided her with some helpful answers.

Our conversation at lunch that day sparked an interesting side dialogue related to Careers in Student Affairs Month. Why is it, we wondered, that so few professionals actually plan a career in fraternity/sorority advising?  Why do so many talented f/s professionals jump ship after a few years in the director’s chair and move on to more lucrative or less stressful roles?

I can count on my two hands the number of professionals that I know who have made the conscientious choice to have a career in fraternity sorority advising – those for whom the highest job aspiration they have has been to serve as a director of fraternity/sorority life on campus, and who are actually good at it.

This phenomenon is the exception, and not the rule, in student affairs. Many talented professionals who work in the areas of campus recreation, housing and residence life, student transition programs, student conduct and university unions/campus activities (to name a few) aspire to nothing more or nothing less than the director of their respective units. Many a career has been made serving as a long-time director in one of those areas. But such is rarely the case in fraternity/sorority life.

I had the pleasure as serving as a director of fraternity/sorority life at two different institutions prior to my current appointment. At both places, I was the youngest and lowest paid director in the entire division of student affairs.  At both places, I worked in an office that was tremendously understaffed and under-resourced. At both places, I was expected to work ridiculous hours with no formal “flex schedule.”  And I know from conversations with colleagues that I am not alone in having those experiences. My experience was the norm, and not the exception, in fraternity/sorority advising.

It should not be this way.

It does not have to be this way.

I want to make a case for why directors of fraternity/sorority life should be more valued within their institutions, and I want to lay out a model for how that can happen.

Here are five reasons that directors of fraternity/sorority life should be more valued within student affairs:

1. The Politics – Without question, a director of f/s life deals with more politics than any other director within a student affairs division. When I worked at Alabama, I was on the phone with the president twice a month, and in meetings with him monthly. I had to balance policy matters with political matters, often walking a very fine line. Powerful alumni donors with strong ties to the university were very interested in the day-to-day workings of my office, and they were also in contact with my superiors. I know that Alabama may be a bit more political than the average institution, but I suspect that every f/s director deals with these issues from time to time. How many wealthy alumni are attempting to exert influence with a director of housing or campus recreation? My guess is not that many. A f/s director must be able to navigate these waters with skill and great care - a tall order for a young professional with less than five years of professional experience.

2. The Constituents – A f/s director balances more relationships with more constituents than any other person in student affairs. Students. Parents. Chapter advisors.  Alumni. Headquarters staff. Faculty. Law enforcement. Housing and facilities staff. Alumni relations and development staff. Student conduct staff. I could go on. No other director-level position within a division of student affairs must juggle relationships between so many different entities, all of whom the f/s advisor is partially dependent on for his/her success, and many of whom have competing interests.  The relationship management required to be an effective f/s director exceeds that of any other student affairs director and, again, may be difficult for a new professional to handle effectively.

3. The Impact on the Institution – A well-run and properly advised fraternity/sorority community can be a tremendous asset to an institution. A poorly run and improperly advised community can be a tremendous liability. Fraternity and sorority membership significantly impacts student retention, alumni satisfaction and giving, student health and wellness, academic performance, and overall student satisfaction, just to name a few. Depending on the quality of the experience, these impacts can be positive or negative. No other singular experience on the college campus has such powerful impacts on such a wide variety of student outcomes. Why would any VPSA want a new, inexperienced professional leading a program with the potential to have such a positive (or negative) influence on so many student outcomes? It makes absolutely no sense.

4. The Required Expertise – Running a f/s community, or at least running it well, requires a certain level of expertise that very few people have. Having someone who can simultaneously navigate the labyrinth or arcane Panhellenic recruitment rules, understand the intricacies of the NPHC intake process, develop curriculum for an officer training retreat, manage budgets, conduct a risk management program, and advise multiple organizations and governing councils is no easy task. Not just anyone has the skills, knowledge and abilities to do what a f/s director does. It is a highly specialized skill set, but for whatever reason, that highly specialized set of skills does not always translate to competitive salaries relative to other unit directors.

5. The Risk – At the end of the day, I think every VPSA in the country should ask him/herself a simple question – can I afford NOT to hire a talented, seasoned professional to run the f/s community here and pay them what they are worth? I would argue that one of the reasons we continue to see the same problems – hazing, alcohol abuse, sexual assault, etc. – year after year is because we do not have highly skilled, experienced and talented professionals in these important positions. We have new professionals with five years of experience or less managing incredibly complex, political, high-impact systems without the proper skills, experience or training to do so. No unit on a college campus can give a VPSA more heartburn tham a fraternity/sorority community, yet rarely do you find unit directors with less experience and lower salaries. It just does not make sense.

So, what kind of model can be implemented to allow for the changes we need?

As much as I hate their football team, I think LSU has instituted a model f/s program that other institutions would be wise to duplicate. Every fraternity and sorority member at LSU pays a “Greek Activity Fee” of $44 each semester. This fee generates nearly $400,000 of revenue each year. And given the services and privileges that f/s members on most campuses enjoy, I think a small service fee is easily justifiable. The revenue generated goes to fund the salaries of a well-staffed office, supports educational and risk management programming, and is re-invested in the community in a variety of ways. The institution has made the very intentional choice to hire the best staff, pay them what they are worth, and invest in quality programming designed to move the community forward.

Ironically, the director at LSU, Angela Guillory, is one of those people I can count on my two hands as having made a career in f/s life. I have no idea if Angela aspires to anything higher, but here is what I do know – she has been a director for a long time, she is darn good at it, and she is well-paid for the work she does. LSU has invested in their professional f/s staff, and that decision is evident in the progress seen in that community over the last 10 years.

I think one of the most important things we can do as a profession is to become better advocates for ourselves and our work. As a board member of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors (AFA), I will say that one of my top priorities as a board member is to ensure that AFA helps in this advocacy work. We need staffing and organizational models in which talented professionals can make a career in fraternity/sorority advising instead of models in which a vast majority of talented professionals eventually jump ship and move up or out of the field. We must educate senior student affairs officers on the importance of our work and we must lobby and advocate for more resources, better pay, and increased priority. 

The future of the fraternity/sorority experience demands it.

*Next week, I, along with my pal Josh Schutts, will deliver part two in this series dedicated to Careers in Student Affairs Month. Part two will investigate the various models dictating where F/S life offices are housed within divisions of student affairs, discuss the limitations of these models, and propose a new model designed to maximize the potential of what a f/s life office can and should be. Tune in next week!

Changing the Shape of Hazing – Five Things We Need to Be Doing

I write this blog at 30,000 feet, somewhere between Pensacola, FL and Fort Worth, TX, where I will be spending the next few days working with the students and staff at Texas Christian University.  Our flight path is following a winding river flowing its way through Mississippi or Louisiana or some other such place. A few miles back, there was an oxbow lake – for whatever reason, I have always remembered oxbow lakes from my fifth grade science class. An oxbow lake is created when a bend in a river is cut off by erosion and the river forges a new, more direct path.  That old bend in the river, now separated from the flow, gave me the inspiration for this blog – specifically, the need for us to forge new, more direct ways to confront, address and prevent hazing on college campuses. We need to leave some oxbow lakes in our wake – vestiges of days gone by – as we step up our efforts in the prevention of hazing on campus.

Here are five things we need to be doing to change the flow of this river:

1.     Address What We CAN See –This time last year, I was having lunch in the UWF cafeteria, minding my own business and enjoying whatever delicious fare Chartwell’s had offered up that day. As I was finishing my meal, I heard a commotion behind me. I turned to see a group of what were obviously fraternity pledges standing at their table and reciting a creed of some sort.  I knew they were fraternity pledges by their telltale khaki pants and navy blazers, and based on the color of their matching ties, I had a pretty good idea what chapter they were in.

As I watched and listened, I noticed that there were several other guys at the table, dressed in street clothes, not standing or reciting anything. Now, in the grand scheme of things, this was not a big deal. Hazing? Technically. Going to keep me up at night? Nope.  But as I pondered the situation, I decided to walk over and confront the situation.

None of the guys in this chapter knew me at the time, so I was able to play dumb. I walked over and said “hey…that was pretty cool. What was that you were just reciting?” A pledge was pleased to tell me that they had just recited the fraternity’s creed before their meal. I turned to one of the active members and asked “are you in the same fraternity? I didn’t see you guys standing and saying the creed.” He informed me that he was, in fact, a member of the same fraternity. So I asked him why only the guys wearing blazers stood to say the creed. His response was perfect – “Well….because they’re pledges.”

“Hi, I’m Dr. McCreary, the Associate Dean of Students….”

My research into hazing rationale has illuminated for me that the most dangerous, and the most common, form of hazing is what has been termed “social dominance” hazing – that hazing that serves no purpose other than to reinforce a social hierarchy in the chapter – we make the new members do things because we have the power to make them do anything we want. This type of hazing is strongly correlated with increased severity of hazing, alcohol use, conformity, and unethical behavior. Here’s the problem with social dominance hazing – it does not always take the form of “Big H” hazing. It is often done publicly, out in the open, and can be easily dismissed as no big deal. But once a chapter culture of social dominance sets in, it is not a long stretch from having pledges recite the creed in the cafeteria to having them recite the creed in a bucket of ice water or forcing them to chug a fifth of bourbon if they mess up their recitation of the creed. Once a chapter convinces itself that it is OK to do things to pledges just because you can, then a sick culture of social dominance sits in which involves hazing much more dangerous and deadly than the situation depicted above.

So – don’t accept any hazing. Don’t let anything slide. Address everything you see. This does not mean you have to be draconian in your approach – zero tolerance where reciting the creed in the cafeteria leads to automatic suspension. But it does mean that there should be a swift and appropriate response. Allowing a culture of social dominance to go unchecked and unaddressed can have deadly consequences.

2.     Conduct thorough investigations – My dissertation research confirmed for me the importance of campus culture – the campus environment has a unique and distinct interaction with the moral disengagement that allows hazing to take place.  Students need to know – to see – that an institution takes hazing seriously. One of the best ways to do this is to conduct thorough, reliable investigations for any allegations.  It is hard to do that if the person investigating alleged hazing is the Greek advisor. The Greek advisor has multiple responsibilities, and in a previous blog post, I have argued that they are often ill-prepared to take the lead on hazing investigations.  Instead, campuses should adopt and independent investigator model, similar to what many campuses are adopting for Title IX cases. By having a team of independent trained investigators, campuses can quickly and more thoroughly investigate cases of hazing, sending a strong and clear message to the campus community.

3.     Talk about it – When I worked at Alabama, I had a philosophy when it came to our education, prevention and risk management initiatives – if you haven’t said it in the last three months, you have never said it.  Memories are short, but traditions are long. We must be constant, persistent and pervasive in our hazing prevention programming. If you are only talking about hazing during National Hazing Prevention Week, then your students are not getting the message.  The speaker you bring in will have an impact for a few weeks, maybe even a few months, but their message eventually wears off as old habits creep back in. We must expose students to a constant barrage of prevention-minded education at every level, from new members to chapter officers to alumni, and we need to be doing it nearly constantly. Only then can our prevention efforts begin to have a lasting impact.

4.     Help fraternity chapters redefine brotherhood – My research into fraternal brotherhood with Josh Schutts has revealed four schema of brotherhood – four unique and distinct ways that fraternity men define and conceptualize brotherhood. Many men think about brotherhood as merely being about solidarity (i.e. I’ve got your back, you’ve got mine) or about shared social experiences (all the fun we have together is what bonds us as brothers). Chapters who think about brotherhood in these ways are more likely to have severe hazing. The hazing is designed to produce faux solidarity through a difficult new member process, or prevent new members from immediately exploiting the benefits of membership (i.e. earning your letters). But chapters who balance out the solidarity and social elements of brotherhood with equal parts of belonging (i.e. my fraternity is my home away from home and a place where I feel accepted and appreciated) and accountability (i.e. my brothers make me a better person by holding me to high standards) are less likely to haze and are more likely to have healthy, productive chapter experiences. We know from our research and work on campuses that fraternity men enjoy and are willing to engage in conversations about brotherhood, and that programming aimed at realigning their conceptualization of brotherhood is effective. In other words, if we can get men to change the way they think about brotherhood, we can get them to think differently about the need for hazing to be part of that brotherhood. Conversations about brotherhood offer us an alternative point of entry into conversations about a variety of difficult topics – hazing, sexual assault, values congruence, alcohol, etc. – and show incredible promise in the worlds of education and prevention.

5.     Find the right alumni and get them engaged – If there are Greek advisors who feel that recruiting alumni advisors is not part of their job description, then I would encourage them to seriously reexamine their priorities. Plugging the right alumni into the chapter experience is among the most important work we can do. As I have suggested in a previous post, we need to be moving away from the failed “self-governance” experiment and begin instituting models of shared alumni governance. The number one risk factor leading to severe hazing in fraternities is the lack of responsible adults involved in the new member process. Greek advisors are well-advised to spend time networking and building relationships with alumni and other responsible adults who may be able to get plugged into chapter governance models. The introduction of responsible adults may be one of the most important things we can do to change chapter cultures as it relates to hazing.

I am incredibly humbled to be able to do the work that I do. This week, I will visit five campuses spread across the United States and have a chance to talk to students and university administrators about this important issue. It is my hope that this work, and the work of others, will change the conversation on campuses about hazing prevention in a way that will change the trajectory – the direction – of hazing on college campuses. I think these five things represent our best hope of making oxbow lakes out of hazing – changing hazing from an expected cultural norm to a vestige of the way things used to be. 

On Overcoming Racism

What’s happening at the University of Alabama has the potential to change the world.

Before I tell you why, let me tell you a story.

When I came to the University of Tennessee as a freshman in the Fall of 1997, I really had no idea what I was in for. That may sound cliché, but if you know anything at all about LaFollette, TN, then you know that pretty much anywhere else you go from there is going to be a culture shock, and at that time I had not been to many other places save a few 4-H meat judging trips to such exotic destinations as Manhattan, KS.

I was just savvy enough to get myself selected onto the SGA freshman council (I suppose I met their hillbilly diversity goal). At our first meeting, as we were playing the name game, people snickered a little when I introduced myself. At first, I had no idea what they were laughing at, but later figured out it was because of the way I talked (I had a strong rural Appalachian accent). They were all from places I had never even heard of (Brentwood? Germantown? Were those places in TN? Why had I never heard of them?).  Suffice it to say, I stuck out like a sore thumb.

Word quickly spread among my 40 colleagues on the council that I was the resident expert on parliamentary procedure, and a few weeks later, when we elected our officers, I was elected to the executive board as the parliamentarian. I was one of four executive officers – a president, vice president, secretary/treasurer and me.  Part of me was elated – barely on campus for more than a few weeks and already assuming important, prestigious leadership positions. I was on my way!

But another part of me was horrified. You see, the president of our freshman council, Sharrie Williams, was black.

Why was I horrified? Bluntly, I had never been around a black person before. I had only observed them from safe distances. I had wonderful stories of being in Atlanta during Freak-nic and that time my pals and I stopped in Macon, GA on our way to Orlando and decided to watch “Waiting to Exhale” in a local movie theater. But I had never had any significant interactions with any person of color. And I was horrified that I would say something offensive or stupid or wrong without even knowing it or meaning to. I was a product of my environment, and LaFollette, TN was not exactly a bastion of diversity or tolerance.

Sharrie intimidated me. She was outspoken. She was smart. She was confident. She shattered any and all stereotypes I may have had in my 18 year-old mind. And for whatever reason, she decided that we were going to be friends. To this day, I have no idea why. But over the course of our first semester at UT, Sharrie and I became buddies. We had lunch together at least once a week. We would meet up in the University Center to chat about school and freshman council business. She even came to a few parties down at the AGR house.  We were quite the pair.

Now, fast forward five years. I was in the first year of my Higher Education/Student Affairs graduate program at South Carolina, in Dr.John Lowery’s student development theory class. At the beginning of the semester, Dr. Lowery asked us to write about how we were different at graduation compared to when we started college, and to what experiences we attributed those changes.  And guess who I spent a good portion of that paper writing about? If you guessed Sharrie Williams, you would be correct.

Later in that class, I learned about racial identity development theory, and my experiences with Sharrie began to make more sense to me. Growth and development come from being exposed to individuals and experiences that challenge stereotypes and expose differences and privilege.  I think I was able to quickly move through the “abandoning racism” steps of Helm’s White Identity Model because my first significant interactions with someone of a different race were so positive and impactful, allowing me to cast aside previous racist ideas and focus on my role in both perpetuating racism and abandoning white entitlement. My experiences with Sharrie had completely altered my world view, making me simultaneously more aware of myself and the issues of race surrounding me.

Thus Gentry’s First Law of Student Development: Any program or activity on a college campus is only as good as its ability to get students from different backgrounds interacting with one another in meaningful and significant ways.  My graduate students here in the UWF College Student Affairs Administration program know and can tell you all about Gentry’s Laws if you're interested...

Now, look at where we are today.  For 150 years, the Greek system at the University of Alabama has been a bastion of exclusion and intolerance. Last year, because of the courageous work of a handful of sorority members, those walls finally came crashing down.  And last week, 21 African American women, and dozens of other women of color, joined historically white Panhellenic sororities during formal recruitment.  I am willing to bet that the number 21 will represent the largest number of African American women pledging historically white sororities on any college campus in the Unites States this year. If any campus pledges more, I hope they will let us all know. To contrast, in my five years as Director of Greek Life at Alabama, I think the most we ever had was four African American women going through recruitment in any given year.  Think about that – from four (none of whom joined a sorority) to 21 (all of whom joined a sorority) in only a few years.

So, in one year, the Alabama Panhellenic community has gone from a bastion of racial exclusion and white privilege to a model for diversity within fraternity/sorority life (note, this movement has actually been building for at least a few years now, as noted here).  Alabama (yes, that Alabama) may actually become a destination school for women of color looking to join Panhellenic sororities. Imagine that! Roll Tide!

How did they do it? I’m not entirely sure. I suspect there is more to the story than we have been told. I hope someone, at some point, will tell us the full story, because it is a story that needs telling.

But here is why this is so important. For 150 years, students at Alabama have been able to come from their all white neighborhoods and their all-white private schools and immediately join their all-white sororities and live in all-white sorority houses and never have any interactions with anyone who was different from them.  No growth. No challenge. No significant interactions with those who are different - just stagnation and solidification of their world views. After a few years, they graduated and moved back to Mountain Brook or Fairhope or Greenville or Highland Park to the same gated communities and small towns from whence they came and they were no different, at least in terms of multiculturalism, than they were before. The University failed fraternity and sorority members by allowing them to limit their interactions only to those who looked, dressed, talked and acted like themselves.

Today, finally, that separation will not – cannot – happen anymore. Thousands of students – future leaders in our society – are going to come to college and have significant and meaningful experiences with people who are different. Stereotypes will be shattered. Myths will be busted. Racism will be turned on its ugly head. And those experiences will last with them long after their college experiences. After college, how will these experiences impact their civic engagement? Their philanthropic giving? Their political ideology?  Where they choose to send their children to school? Their world view?

Don’t get me wrong – Alabama, just like everyone else, has a long way to go. I’m not sure what is happening in Tuscaloosa today, but I am certain it is not a post-racial utopia. But the progress that has been made there is very real, and it has the potential to change thousands of lives. And if the Alabama Greek system can do it, anyone can.

How many young women at Alabama today will have a Sharrie Williams in their life? How many will grow and change in positive and meaningful ways because of those experiences? And how might those experiences transform their lives and, eventually, our society? I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I look forward to finding out.

Epilogue

Sharrie and I stayed in touch after freshman year, but gradually drifted apart as she became more involved in the world of sports/news broadcasting and I became more involved in the world of fraternity life and meat judging. She is now an anchor on the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia. We haven’t spoken in years, but I hope she reads this and knows how much our friendship impacted the person I am today.

The Problem with the Values Movement

Values development has been an intended outcome of membership in fraternity/sorority since the inception of these groups. In modern day practice, organizations espouse these values front and center through a review of websites and materials. Advocates of the collegiate fraternity/sorority experience believe that when members demonstrate their values, they can be seen as relevant and contributing organizations on a college campus.

Here’s the problem - values congruence is very difficult to actualize with traditional-aged college students.

While it’s easy to say that the values movement has “always” been a part of these organizations , the last 30 years have made the topic of values and fraternities and sororities as values-based organizations more salient and more of a focus point because (1) legal challenges have positioned us as defensive, (2) fraternities need a distinctive niche in a flooded market of involvement opportunities, (3) college and university presidents told us we had to focus on this (see Franklin Square Group, 2003) and (4) new member and intake programs have become more focused on concepts of student development, which coincidentally has components of aligning actions with values (think Kohlberg, Baxter-Magolda, etc.).  A more extensive examination of the recent history of the “values movement” can be found in Veldkamp and Bureau (2012).

Imploring students to align their actions and values has been a strategy for advising fraternities and sororities for some time now.  Numerous articles have been written that examine strategies for using values as an approach to advising (for example, Bureau, 2007; 2009). It has been an approach that has been promoted in numerous workshops and trainings for fraternity/sorority professionals. AFA has a core competency focused on values alignment (Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors, 2014). However, I believe that while well-intended, the "live your values" approach is flawed: The problem with the values movement is not in the nobility of the goal, but in how we are trying to get there.  Here are four reasons I believe the approach needs rethinking, and some thoughts on what we should be doing differently.

1. The term “Values” is nebulous – Imagine the average fraternity chapter on your campus. Imagine walking into a chapter meeting at that chapter house and asking them “What are your standards?”  You might expect to hear about minimum GPA requirements or minimum standards for recruitment.  Now, imagine walking into a chapter meeting and asking them “What are your expectations for members?”  Again, you might get answers related to paying dues, attending events, and certain behavioral expectations.  Finally, imagine asking them “What does your chapter value?”  What answers do you expect that you might get?  The values written in their ritual book or the values espoused through their daily activities? 

As Schutts (2013) has suggested, the things on which we spend our time are the things we value. So, what does that chapter value?  Drinking beer? Chasing girls?  Hazing pledges?  Are those not values? If a student values those things, and does those things, are they not “living their values?” Merely using the term “values” is problematic. It is nebulous. It could mean anything. Different people respond to the word in very different ways.  Which leads to the next problem…

2. Values are not an explicitly overt part of brotherhood – Brotherhood can be thought of as the foundation of the fraternal experience.  It is the currency of fraternity – it is exchanged by members and sold to potential new members.  In our research on brotherhood (article in press with Oracle), Josh Schutts and I identified four distinct ways that fraternity men think about brotherhood –based on solidarity, based on shared social experiences, based on belonging, and, the highest form of brotherhood, that based on accountability. When building the Fraternal Brotherhood Questionnaire (FBQ), an instrument designed to measure the four schema of brotherhood, we used the terms “values”, “expectations”, and “standards” interchangeably in building items to measure the accountability factor (i.e. brotherhood is best demonstrated when members are held to the chapter’s standards/expectations/values).  When we completed the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on the proposed factors, an interesting thing happened – many of the items that used the words “standards” and “expectations” loaded onto the accountability factor as expected.  Not a single item that used the word “values” loaded to the accountability factor.

Suspecting that perhaps values are separate from standards and expectations, we attempted to force a fifth factor using the “values” items. In the resulting EFA, the values items did not even load with one another, indicating absolutely no consistency in how the participants responded to the term “values.” In other words, when it comes to holding chapter members accountable, the “values” of any given chapter are completely different depending on whom you ask, and members do not think about values when they think about accountability. Rather, they think about standards and expectations.

Conceptually, this makes sense: Moses did not come down from Mt. Sinai with the 10 Values. Two major world religions are not built from a list of vague values – they are built from a set of very specific standards and expectations.  After all, “thou shalt not kill” is a little more straightforward than “thou shalt value human life.”  If we are looking to alter behavior through accountability to values, then we may be spinning our wheels.

3. New members aren’t joining values (or are they)?

We have all seen our fair share of distasteful “rush” t-shirts.  Have you ever stopped to wonder why we continue to see them, year after year? Could it be that they are effective at recruiting new members?

Many who work day to day with fraternity/sorority leaders interact with those who “get it” and want their chapters to be more congruent with espoused values. The reach of our work is often with a very small fraction of the fraternity/sorority members on a campus. Potentially, we are out of touch with the “average” member.

Some of us may have even deluded ourselves into thinking that WE joined OUR organizations because of the values of the group.  I would call this selective memory at best.  When I came to the University of Tennessee in the Fall of 1997, I had no idea what a fraternity was. I could not have been less interested. But my friend Lake Elliot convinced me to go with him to the Alpha Gamma Rho house our first weekend on campus, and the rest is history. It was a place where I felt comfortable, with a group of guys I really connected with.  I joined because I felt like I belonged there.  In hindsight, it is easy for me to make the connection between my sense of belonging and the values I shared with both the organization and those in the chapter, but I would be lying to myself and to you if I said that I joined the values. I joined a group of people with whom I felt I had a great deal in common. I valued those people, but I didn’t join for values. Also, there may have been some beer involved.

The fact is, students join chapters for a variety of reasons. Many join to take advantage of the social benefits and have a good time, because that is what they value. In those cases, would the rush shirt depicted above not qualify as “values-based recruitment?”  Students are not joining values, but their values play a significant role in where and why they join. The term “values-based recruitment” is one we need to remove from our lexicon.  Expecting people go live out the values of an organization, when those values had little to no influence in their decision to join that organization, is an adventure in futility.

4. Trying to force students to live the values of their organizations may actually be counter-productive – As a field, we love to talk about students “getting it.” I have had a number of conversations with colleagues either bragging about their UIFI group “totally getting it” or lamenting the students on their campuses “not getting it.” In the spirit of conformity, I may have even uttered those words a few times myself.  But what is this mythical “it” that students are supposed to be “getting.” What is it, exactly, that we want from our students? We assume that we want our students to “live their values.”

As it turns out, most of us studied a theory in graduate school that directly speaks to this idea. If you have read Baxter Magolda’s (2008) theory of self-authorship, then the graphic above should look familiar. As adolescents, external formulas guide our path, as we largely pursue our lives as others (parents, teachers) have told us.  At some point, we hit a crossroads where those external formulas no longer work for us, and we begin to develop self-authorship (the ability to determine our own life course). Finally, we develop internal foundations, which is essentially values congruence. As a part of solidifying our internal foundations, we develop a set of personal values, and live our lives in accordance to those values.  According to Baxter-Magolda, most adults don’t reach Internal Foundations until their mid-thirties, well above the age of the vast majority of our undergraduates and even older than most fraternity/sorority professionals.

So what does this all have to do with the values movement? We like to tell students that they should live their organization’s values as explained in the ritual or espoused on websites, instead of their individual values. When we do this, what we are actually doing is imposing a different external formula on them.  In effect, we are saying “I don’t like your values, so here – take these values and live them.” If we were truly concerned about student development, we would be creating cognitive dissonance in a way that would lead to a series of crossroads and, eventually, self-authorship.  Conversations about how actions reflect values can and should be part of creating that dissonance, but when we impose new external formulas on our students, we are limiting their growth and development.

So, What Should We Be Doing?

I am ready to declare the end of the “values movement” and the birth of the “brotherhood/sisterhood movement.”  We have been talking about values congruence for the last 20 years, and where has it gotten us? We need a new paradigm – a new entry point into the conversation with students.  My research and work with students has led me to believe, very strongly, that conversations about values need to be replaced with conversations about brotherhood and sisterhood. Through these conversations, we can allow students to see for themselves that brotherhood/sisterhood without accountability is not really brotherhood or sisterhood at all.  Once they embrace accountability, they will have no choice but to move their chapters to a place of values congruence.

I also think we need to focus more of our time, energy and effort on the moral development of our students.  As I asked in Perspectives (2012), what if we spent as many resources on the moral development of our students as we did on the leadership development of our students. Leadership is sexy, but the empirical evidence linking increases in moral development with declines in anti-social behavior (hazing, sexual assault, cheating, to name a few) is overwhelming.  If we do more to boost the moral judgment of our students, then values congruence should come about as a result.

*This blog post is adapted from an article originally published in AFA Essentials and is posted here with permission from the publisher.

References

Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors (2014). Core competencies for excellence in the profession. Retrieved January 8, 2014 from      http://www.afa1976.org/AssociationBusiness/CoreCompetenciesforExcellenceintheProfession.aspx

Bureau, D. (2009, Winter). Using values to rationalize risk management. Association of Fraternity Advisors Perspectives. Indianapolis, IN.

Bureau, D. (2007, Summer). Beyond the Rhetoric and Into the Action of the Values Movement. Association of Fraternity Advisors Perspectives. Indianapolis, IN.

Franklin Square Group (2003). A call for values Congruence. Washington, DC. Author.

Schutts, J. (2013, Fall). Perhaps its time we stopped talking about values. Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors Perspectives. Ft. Collins, CO.

Veldkamp, S. & Bureau, D. (2012, Summer). Call for values reflection: Together forward. Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors Perspectives, 12-15. Indianapolis, IN.

Sheep Amidst the Wolves: Making Our Own Leadership Commitments

It’s summer leadership conference season!!!  For the last few weeks, and for the foreseeable future, my newsfeed has been blown up by posts from friends and colleagues headed off to Bloomington or some other far-flung place in order to facilitate a UIFI or a Leadershape or any number of hodgepodge fraternal leadership programs.

   

I have facilitated a number of these programs myself. I see great value in their ability to inspire students to become greater versions of themselves, to live with integrity and purpose, and to build skills that will help them lead their peers and their organizations.  Unfortunately, when it comes to real culture change, most of these programs continue to fall short.

One of my favorite movies is “The Devil’s Advocate” starring Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves. There is a scene, early in the movie, when Reeve’s character, Kevin Lomax, is recruited away from Podunk, FL to New York City. His mother pleads with him not to go, afraid of what might befall him, but Kevin is determined to make it in the big city. As he leaves his crying mother behind in a proverbial cloud of dust, she admonishes him with scripture; “Behold, I send you out as sheep amidst the wolves!”  I have always assumed that she meant she was sending him out into the world, completely unprepared to handle the pitfalls and perils certain to come his way.

For a while now, I have thought that we should end our fraternity/sorority leadership programs with the same warning to students.  We bring them together for a week, surround them with mostly like-minded people, make them cry, implore them to live their values, make them feel guilty for all of the bad things going on in their chapters, get them all fired up to go home and change the world, and then send them out as sheep amidst the wolves. We send them right back to the sick cultures from whence they came, ill-prepared and naïve in their expectations, expecting them to enlist others in their cause, hoping and praying that they will be able to get their chapters and communities on the right track.

Here’s the problem with that model – the students we are asking to fix these broken cultures had no role in making those cultures what they are.  The problems facing the fraternity/sorority community are systemic. They are the natural and inevitable by-product of the systems we have in place. We have recruitment policies designed around conformity and social status, yet act surprised when alcohol becomes part of the recruitment process or when new members aren’t recruited “based on their values.” We have antiquated new member models in which 19 year-old boys are given absolute power to teach 18 year-old boys what it means to be a man, yet act surprised when hazing becomes ingrained in a chapter’s culture.  We build palatial mansions with little-to-no adult oversight, then scratch our heads and wander why our members feel entitled and isolate themselves from the rest of campus, especially people whom they perceive as “different.”  While we are pounding our chests, imploring students to live their values, we are complicit in supporting the organizational and institutional fixtures that promote the very behaviors we are trying to change. Yet we pat ourselves on the back every year when students in our small group “get it” and high-five one another if we can make them cry at our closing session.

One of the more popular fixtures of these leadership programs has been the “commitment ceremonies” that are often carried out right at the end.  We have participants circle up, and everyone goes around completing the “I commit to _______” sentence.   We sit and smile as we hear students make commitments that we know, in the back of our minds, they will never be able to achieve.

I think it is time we made some commitments to our students. Instead of expecting them to fix all of these problems on their own, we should commit to SUBSTANTIAL and MEANINGFUL action that will help address the problems that plague us.  Here are some recommendations of places we can start:

The North American Interfraternity Conference:  Commit to putting your money where your mouth is. Develop meaningful standards for your member organizations. Develop standards that would, if implemented, fundamentally change the nature of fraternities. Enforce those standards as passionately as you enforce open expansion policies on college campuses.  Stop wasting money on meaningless “research” that confirms what we already know and is designed to make us look good, and devote time, energy and resources into evidence-based research that will help us figure out how to best address some of the issues that are plaguing our organizations, regardless of how it might make us look. Use the resources and clout that you have to actually LEAD the fraternal movement to a new and better place.

National Panhellenic Conference: Commit to getting your heads out of the sand. Members of your organizations are the most likely candidates on college campuses to be victims of sexual assault, yet nowhere is victim-blaming more prevalent than around the NPC table. No organizations want to stand up and address this issue, because to address it would be to recognize that we have a serious problem.  To my knowledge, the only action the NPC has taken with regards to Title IX and the issues surrounding it has been to lobby the Office of Civil Rights AGAINST the recent mandates, particularly the articulated “preponderance of evidence” standard for resolving these cases. A governmental agency is promoting legislation to make your members safer and to make it easier for them to resolve their claims of sexual assault and you lobby AGAINST these reforms?  Your student members demand better.  I am ready for the NPC or one of its member organizations to stand up and LEAD on this issue.

National Organization Executives: Commit to not waiting until the press declares you the “Nation’s Deadliest Fraternity” before taking drastic measures. Our system is broken. Pledging, as we now know it, needs to become a thing of the past. We need new systems of shared alumni governance. We need to educate our members about sexual assault and consent. We need more national headquarters willing to make substantive structural changes that will help create cultures in which values congruence is the norm and not the exception. Don’t wait for negative press or ultimatums from your insurance provider before making these changes. Stand up and LEAD on these issues.

Campus-based F/S advisors: Commit to being better at your job. We all need you to stop buying into the latest bright shiny object and to begin thinking for yourself. Assess your communities to find out what the critical issues are. Plan strategically to address those issues. Measure your results. Use data to become a better advocate for yourself and for our profession.  Stop wasting time with the 10 percent of students who “get it” and get out of your office to spend time with the other 90 percent who need you. Stop doing things because you think they will make you look good to the AFA crowd, and start doing things that will have a meaningful impact on your campus. Stand up and LEAD the F/S community on your campus to a better place.

Some, particularly those who support the status quo, will misinterpret this post as me being negative – of me seeing the glass half empty and just rabble-rousing in order to get attention.  Nothing could be further from the truth. This post is not intended to be negative. Rather, this post is intended as a call to action. We must stop putting the burden of fixing our problems squarely on the shoulders of our students. We have to stop sending them out as sheep amidst the wolves and not doing our part to support those efforts. We have to stop setting lofty expectations for our students to lead in drastic ways if we aren’t willing to do the same ourselves. 

We can all do better.

Five Reasons You Should Be Using Title IX as a Model for Hazing Investigation and Adjudication

Hazing has been all the buzz in recent months. From the slew of coverage in Bloomberg News to the recent expose’ in The Atlantic, hazing, particularly within college fraternities, has felt the heat of a very bright media spotlight.  Colleges and universities are under increased pressure to improve the manner in which they prevent and respond to incidents of hazing.

As it turns out, most campuses have a protocol in place that provides a good model for investigating and adjudicating hazing allegations.  This post offers five reasons you should be using your campus Title IX protocols as a model for hazing adjudication. If your campus has not adopted an investigator model for adjudicating Title IX cases, or if you are unfamiliar with the process, you can read more about the ATIXA model here.

1. The investigations can be complex, and require a trained, knowledgeable investigator. Like sexual misconduct, hazing cases can be incredibly complex with multiple witnesses, varying versions of events, fuzzy memories, and the like. These investigations often take a great deal of time – interviewing and entire new member class is not an uncommon practice.  The principles of a good investigation do not change based on the type of case. It makes a great deal of sense to use your trained investigators – those you have already trained for Title IX cases – to also conduct hazing investigations.

2. Your Fraternity/Sorority Advisor should not be investigating hazing cases. I worked as a fraternity/sorority (F/S) advisor for nearly seven years on two different campuses. On one campus, I played the lead role in investigating hazing cases. On the other, I played no role. Want to guess on which campus I had the best relationship with students?  Your F/S advisor needs to be seen as an advocate for the community. Having them take the lead on hazing investigations puts them in an incredibly awkward position of being the “heavy” within the community for which they are supposed to advocate. It harms their ability to foster positive and meaningful relationships with students, and damages student trust. Your F/S advisor should certainly play a supporting role in these investigations, providing guidance, assistance and context, but they should not be seen as the driving force behind the investigation.

3. The victimology of hazing and sexual assault are strikingly similar.  Victims of hazing share striking similarities with sexual assault survivors.  Both know and are often close to their perpetrator(s).  Both feel immense pressure to stay quiet about what happened to them. Both suffer from victim-blaming.  Both suffer from the fear of re-victimization in the form of retaliation which may prevent them from participating in a campus conduct process.  For all of these reasons and more, an investigator model for hazing adjudication makes a great deal of sense. In such a model, a victim could freely participate in an investigation without having to fear the pressure or retaliation that might come from their participation in an open disciplinary proceeding.

4. Time is of the essence. In hazing cases, it is important to investigate as soon as possible. Unnecessary delays can allow for interference into an investigation (i.e. everyone “getting their story straight”).  Having a team of trained investigators ready to immediately begin an investigation as soon as allegations are received is critical. If only the conduct officer or F/S advisor are able to investigate, it may take days or even weeks to begin and complete an investigation. Using a team of trained investigators allows for a speedy and thorough investigation that will be more likely to yield useful information.

5. Thorough investigations and consistent adjudication are a powerful prevention tool. One of the most significant predictors of the severity of hazing within a fraternity/sorority community is the perception students have regarding the extent to which there may be consequences for their actions. Does your institution clearly and frequently communicate expectations to students? Are all hazing allegations thoroughly investigated and adjudicated, regardless of the severity of the report?  Are groups sanctioned appropriately? All of these things create a culture on campus that significantly predict attitudes about hazing. By moving to a trained investigator model, you will be able to more fully and thoroughly address allegations of hazing, no matter how severe. This will go to great lengths in deterring behavior. If students know and see clearly that there will be consequences for their behavior, they will be less likely to minimize or distort those consequences of that behavior (i.e. “we won’t get caught, and if we do, we won’t get in trouble”). This will not make hazing disappear from your campus, but it will drastically reduce the severity of the hazing on campus.

I think the independent investigator model is a promising alternative to current approaches. In my consulting work, I have been able to spend time with campuses putting together and training these investigative teams – I have found that to be some of the most rewarding work I have done.  At UWF, we are in the process of adjusting our hazing policy and our Student Code of Conduct to allow for this type of process. The model will provide for a more timely response, more thorough investigations, and will allow campuses to investigate ALL hazing cases, not just those that they see as serious or life-threatening. This will go a long way in our continued efforts to prevent hazing.

Is Self-Governance Dead?

The concept of self-governance is at the heart of the American college fraternity. Self-governance has long been considered the key to the development that takes place within these organizations; take a group of young men, put them in a cooperative social setting, allow them to wrestle with the concepts of accountability and responsibility, then sit back and watch them grow up. Magic.

For over 150 years, this model has worked pretty well.  Sure, the college fraternity has taken its lumps over the years, and fraternity members have made their fair share of screw-ups, but on the whole, most fraternal experiences could be described as developmental, and self-governance has played a key role in that development.  Individuals from my generation, and previous generations, often attribute their fraternity experience as a key to their growth and development into responsible young men.

In principal, I think self-governance among college students is a good thing, and an erstwhile goal for higher education administrators. Research from the National Study of Student Engagement suggests that student agency, a fancy term for self-governance, is linked to a number of positive outcomes on campus. Allowing students to take ownership over their choices, and to reap the rewards and pay the consequences of those choices, is a powerful developmental tool. This idea has found its way into my teaching – In my student development theory class, my students have become familiar with “McCreary’s Laws.” Law Number Two is “Never do for students what they can and should do for themselves.”  You would be hard-pressed to find a bigger advocate of student agency and self-governance than myself.

Despite my enthusiasm for self-governance, a number of emerging trends point to an inescapable truth: college students today are developmentally much less prepared to effectively self-govern than previous generations.

A 2010 study by researchers at the University of Michigan point out that empathy among college students is at an all-time low. Empathy, or the ability to relate to another person by putting yourself in their shoes, is a uniquely human trait and, as suggested by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, is at the core of human morality. Several explanations have been made for the decline in empathy – my friend Stephen Black would suggest that it stems from our decreased levels interaction with those who are different from us – the civic disconnect of our society. Some argue that levels of empathy are down because children have less unstructured time and less opportunity to resolve conflicts among themselves as adolescents. Regardless of the reason, this lack of empathy has a profound impact on one’s ability to govern oneself and one’s peers.  Simply, how can a student who is unable to put himself in someone else's shoes be expected to responsibly make decisions impacting his peers? How can a student lacking empathy be expected to hold peers accountable in any meaningful way?

The decrease in empathy has been coupled with steady increases in narcissism. It does not take a long time to surmise what this combination means – students are much more concerned about their own lives and struggles than they are with the lives of their peers. Again, the implications for self-governance are obvious.

Perhaps most troubling, the research of the co-chair of my dissertation committee, Dr. Steve Thoma, is pointing to the clear trend of students coming to college exhibiting lower and lower levels of moral development. In his research with Micky Bebeau he has found that not only are post-conventional moral development scores on the decline, but personal self-interest (PI) scores are on the rise. In a nutshell, this means that college students today are much less likely to make decisions about right and wrong based on universal ethical principles (i.e. do unto others…) and much more likely to make those decisions based on coarse self-interest (i.e. I don’t care if my fraternity brother is struggling with substance abuse problems and is abusing his girlfriend, as long as it doesn't affect me) or based on maintaining group norms (i.e. I have a problem with the rape culture in our chapter, but nobody else seems to have a problem with it…). We also know that the moral development of college fraternity members stagnates during college, while non-affiliated students experience tremendous growth during the college years.  Expecting students with these attributes to self-govern in the same way that previous generations have self-governed may be a tall order. These phenomena may also be responsible for the increase in behavioral problems (hazing, substance abuse, sexual misconduct, etc.) we see across the board in the college fraternity today. Today's college student is much less prepared to confront others, resolve conflict, or foster an ethic of social responsibility when compared college students of previous generations.

All of this begs the questions: Are our models of fraternal self-governance adequately equipped to provide for the development of today’s college student?  Is the free reign and autonomy given to undergraduate fraternity leaders adequate in properly developing them as future leaders of society?  Or are we using an outdated model that needs to be adjusted to meet the needs of today’s college student?

A Model of Shared Governance

Instead of a model in which undergraduates are expected to make all decisions in a vacuum, completely insulated from the input of responsible adults, I would offer that we should begin investigating models of shared governance for undergraduate chapters.

At the national level, Alpha Tau Omega has flirted with a version of shared governance with their Board of Trustees chapter advisory model. I have worked with some very high-performing ATO chapters in my career, and can directly tie the success of some of those chapters to highly involved BOT’s who ACTIVELY INSERTED THEMSELVES into the decision-making apparatus of the chapter. They assisted in the new member education process. They helped oversee the budget. They were involved in recruitment. In a word, they did more than show up at a chapter meeting once a month – they were actively involved in making decisions and running the chapter.  And these chapters were incredibly high performing – large chapters with incredible grades, sound risk management programs with members involved in all corners of campus life. These were model chapters; award-winning chapters.

Notice I did not say these BOT’s ran the chapter. The president still ran meetings. The new member educator still delivered the new member education. But none of these individuals operated in a vacuum. They were actively supported by, and were in frequent consultation with, a responsible adult.

I think this issue is much bigger than just active advisory teams. How can we infuse alumni into chapter operations in a way that allows them to play an active role in the governance of the chapter? In a previous blog post, I have argued for a model in which alumni play a role in decisions about membership.  We should also involve them in the internal standards/accountability process, the recruitment process, and in all facets of chapter operations. These processes should not be run by alumni, but alumni should not be limited to the role of passive bystander. They should be actively involved in shared decision-making. 

Transitioning to such a model could have multiple benefits. It would improve chapter operations. It would reduce risk management issues. It would provide more opportunities to develop meaningful mentoring relationships. It would provide alumni with meaningful volunteer opportunities and lifelong engagement.  Perhaps most importantly, it would allow for meaningful student development by giving students an opportunity to work hand in hand with adults on important issues. There is a reason that most collegiate sororities operate at a much higher level than their fraternal counterparts – the alumnae advisors play a much more active role in the day to day operations of the chapter.

One thing is certain – our current model is unsustainable. Sigma Alpha Epsilon has decided to address its issues through the elimination of pledging. While this model may have merit, would a move to shared governance not have been less painless and would it not be capable of similar results? Only time will tell, but we need more organizations willing to challenge the status quo and experiment with new ways of doing business. Moving towards models of shared governance may provide some answers to the questions vexing the fraternal community.