Guest Post - Conclave Legislation

We are finally able to start attacking the backlog of 'viewer mail' since Conclave. In this guest post "Keman" offers his take on some of the resolutions:

A quick note about legislation:
This author feels that there were only 3 pieces of legislation that came to the floor that are worth discussing. Ironically enough, these three were voted down by the Grand Chapter. Yes, there were two pieces about raising GPA which Headquarters has already begun to spin for the public. “We are the first national fraternity to have a GPA requirement above the National Interfraternity Council’s minimums.” This is all well and good but in some ways entirely expected. There was also the little bit of legislation about raising new member fees. Honestly though, shouldn’t an increase in fees be expected with an increase in services and inflation costs? No, it was the three defeated resolutions that I think signal the real issues in the organization right now. While I do not know full details about all three of the resolutions, I do think that these will be things that could get buried thanks to the SpinEp push.

First Resolution: This resolution dealt with the issue of appealing a Standard’s Board decision. This was proposed by a relatively small, new chapter who apparently had been dealing with some discontent of past Standard’s Decisions. Interpreting the National By-laws to say that Standard’s Decisions were final, after all as a new chapter they took the Trial Procedures published by Headquarters seriously, they aimed to make a difference by bringing their concern to the Grand Chapter. After all, in their mind, what is to stop a tyrannical Standard’s Board from suspending everyone that flinches the wrong way if their decisions cannot be appealed? Seems like a legitimate concern. The resolution made it back to the Grand Chapter but only narrowly being recommended to pass by the committee. The vote was 9 to 5. The 5 opposing the resolution felt so strongly that they wrote a dissenting opinion. The main point raised in objection was that individual chapters should be allowed to make their own appeal process. This brings up an interesting question though, what from headquarters is law that must be followed and what is mere suggestion? The Trial Procedures from headquarters state clearly that Standard’s Decisions are final and yet no one corrected the delegate presenting the dissenting opinion with regards to the chapter’s right to choose their appealing process. Does that mean that in fact all of the trial procedures can be thrown out if the chapter sees fit to do so? Odd loophole that one. To make a long story short…well slightly less long…the resolution was referred back to committee (Archie Yeatts seemed to think the grammatical structure was lacking) where a valiant group of undergrads led the charge against it. When the resolution made it back to the floor, with proper grammar thanks to Grand President Yeatts’ English degree, the committee had reversed its opinion and recommended that it fail…and fail it did.

Second Resolution: This little piece of legislative gold dealt with a fundamental issue in our organization right now: what is most important to us, programming or member development? The social nature of our great brotherhood would suggest that perhaps programming is key to our success. However, the balanced man program and headquarters would suggest that perhaps developing our brothers is the more worthy goal. To settle this conflict a piece of legislation was proposed that would swap the Vice President of Programming and the Vice President of Member Development in the order of succession. This would put the VP of Member Development as second-in-command for the chapter. At the heart, pun and founder’s badge reference fully intended, this seemed like a point of rivalry between the bmp and pledging model or the undergrads and headquarters. Well, as I understand it, the resolution was overwhelmingly defeated suggesting that for now, the brotherhood feels that events are more important than development.

Third Resolution: Apparently there was a piece of legislation dealing with whether or not new members could wear letters from the day they joined. Pledging model chapters and most alumni out there will remember not being able to wear letters until after initiation. Now though, with the exception of pledging models, new members are considered a brother from day one. Granted there has been no initiation for them and so they are not quite on the same level but they are allowed to wear the letters. Again this seems to be a tension between bmp and pledging model. In addition, this is actually a really clever marketing tool. From the first day of a pledge period, young men get to see our new members treated with respect and allowed to wear letters. That is phenomenal advertising. The issue that comes up is that then other organizations lose respect for a chapter’s accomplishments calling them things like “Sigma Phi Everyone.” As with the other two, this was voted down. I’m proud that it came up though, it’s about time we started talking about our difference as a national organization. Not everything is from the cookie-cutter headquarters mold.

I recall from my days as a pledge that we could wear letters, but not a Crest. Just shows that different chapters have different traditions.