Schaumburg - a Second Opinion

CLA Schaumburg had 400 + Sig Eps in attendance and seemed to go very smoothly. Chris Minnis and David Graziano were the staff members present. Registration went well thanks to Julie Ross and the RD's present and most of the participants were in attendance by the 8:00 PM Think Big! kickoff done by Graziano. He gave a rousing opening and the program settled in to a familiar format with emphasis on chapter evaluations throughout the weekend. Attendance at sessions seemed to be well maintained throughout the event and the feedback from chapters was overall good.

The hotel restaurant was outstanding - too bad it did not carry over into the meals served the masses. Breakfast was a scoop of scrambled eggs, two strips of bacon and one sausage and what appeared to be a potato/pepper combination. Lunch was Italian pasta with Mexican salsa, and dinner the proverbial chicken. Three or four chapters had a Sunday morning officer breakfast and the feedback was that it was again very useful to those chapters in attendance

Alumni sessions were done by Shawn Dalgleish (3) and David Friederichs (2). Shawn kept his sessions moving quite well, but more variety here would have been useful. As always, stuck in the same room all day rends to be a bit hard on the posterior. The one size fits all seems to be the alumni format, forgetting the needs of chapter counselors and alumni board members might be very different. There was a great deal of experience in the room - too bad some of them were not leading sessions or in sessions where they could have spoken more to their experience. Though Faculty Fellows received special invitations, there was no programming for them, so those in attendance set out on their own and had a session in the lobby which was reported to be very fruitful.

The ritual Renaissance of Brotherhood was reported to need more practice, and it seems that again the team did not have the full set of equipment and that was the reason given for not doing the interpretation. Not sure who was responsible to make sure they were on target. The session for people who have not gone through the Epsilon Rite of Passage or members in attendance who were pledges was really just building up steam when they got cut off to come to dinner, which was really an invitation to go stand in the hallway for 15-20 minutes while the room was being readied.

Steve Shanklin did a fine job with the evening MC duties and a new script was used. He kept it moving. Archie Yeatts was the keynote speaker and was somewhat embarrassed when the opening session on Friday showed a video of his acceptance speech in Nashville, which was to be his speech on Saturday. His dinner speech was well done (though somewhat shorter than planned - heh). Awards went smoothly.

Overall I would say that the 400 undergrads in attendance got their monies worth. There was a great deal of information interchange and many informal conversations over meals and in passing in the hallways. There appeared to be few, if any, problems with noise on Friday night, and many departed after the banquet on Saturday with an impending snowstorm predicted. Those who did remain partied until early Sunday morning when they were noisy when returning to the hotel and their rooms.