Better Than Gondor

So last night was our last meet­ing of Fall Quar­ter, as well as of 2007. It’s hard to believe it’s Decem­ber already. I’ll be grad­u­at­ing in less than two weeks! On that note, last night, I announced my res­ig­na­tion as Pres­i­dent of Iota Phi. It was a hard choice, but I believe it is in the best inter­est of the chap­ter and the fra­ter­nity. I’ve had a cou­ple of peo­ple talk to me about my deci­sion, and they ranged from very pos­i­tive to very neg­a­tive reac­tions. Per­haps I didn’t get my point across very well at the meet­ing… I’m still not very good at pub­lic speaking.

In APhiO, all the offi­cers on ExComm as well as all the chairs, from appointed chairs of sub­com­mit­tees down to the chair for CoHo hours, are all servant-​leaders. We serve in these lead­er­ship roles not for our­selves, but for the good of the chap­ter. To me, the key to the servant-​leader role is stew­ard­ship. Every one of us who has pledged for Alpha Phi Omega has found some­thing very spe­cial in our fra­ter­nity, and I hope that each of you trea­sures it as much as I do. Stew­ard­ship means that you basi­cally take care for what you love. Like in a relay race, you’ve been passed some­thing by the broth­ers before you, and it has been put in your care; you want to keep it safe until it is time to pass the baton to the broth­ers who come after you. Actu­ally, I would go beyond “keep­ing it safe” and say that good stew­ards make sure it’s even bet­ter when you hand it off than when it was passed to you.

I’ve been try­ing to live up to that stan­dard for as long as I’ve been an active, and espe­cially since run­ning for Pres­i­dent. One of my cam­paign promises was to try to inspire a new gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers to replace the cur­rent ones. Find­ing a replace­ment is a cor­ner­stone of stew­ard­ship — you must make sure that there is some­one to pass the baton to after you’re gone. This could mean get­ting a friend to pledge and replace you as an active brother, or it could mean ExComm offi­cers train­ing peo­ple in their com­mit­tees to be ready to step up into those offices in future terms.

I think although I’ve been push­ing that for the chap­ter as a whole, and with my ExComm offi­cers to some suc­cess, I per­son­ally haven’t been very suc­cess­ful in my hunt for Iota Phi’s next pres­i­dent. I’ve been in the fra­ter­nity for a long time, and every spring, there’s a wave of grad­u­at­ing seniors who we’ve been rely­ing on. They’ve been rocks of LFS, and we always say, “Oh my God, things will never be the same. The chap­ter is going to crash and burn with­out Brother So-​And-​So around any­more.” But the chap­ter doesn’t crash and burn. They have done their part to leave the chap­ter in a bet­ter place. Hope­fully, so have I.

When talk­ing with peo­ple about run­ning for pres­i­dent, the most com­mon reply I hear is, “I don’t have enough expe­ri­ence.” In fact, I hear that about almost every office. If we con­stantly told the most expe­ri­enced per­son to keep doing their job, and no one new stepped up, the chap­ter truly would crash and burn when that one per­son with all the expe­ri­ence went away. To ensure the con­tin­ued health of our chap­ter, it’s bet­ter for new peo­ple to step up and learn from the expe­ri­enced broth­ers while they are still here. Tran­si­tions are eas­ier when you still have the expe­ri­enced ones to go to for sup­port and advice. That’s why we have advis­ers. And that’s why I will be step­ping down now, even though I will tech­ni­cally still be in Davis beyond my grad­u­a­tion and the end of this term of office.

So if you’re read­ing this, and you felt betrayed or aban­doned by my res­ig­na­tion, I hope you can under­stand my rea­son­ing now.

Make me proud, Iota Phi!

Tags: Alpha Phi Omega, Health, Will N