The Warring Clans of Greek Life

by Doug Sweeney

I am always reminded of the “power of one”  when I think about a quote Ted Kennedy told folks in the St. Peter’s Cathedral during his brother Robert’s eulogy speech.  “Many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man.”

On Sunday, March 20th, I did what I normally do on a Sunday night in L.A.  Gear up for travel on Monday and get mentally prepared to go into the front lines of fraternity recruitment.  So as I packed, I flipped on HBO which happened to be playing one of my all time favorite war movies – BRAVEHEART.

As I watched the Scots war amongst themselves rather than unify and take England head on, I reflected on the battles I fight for Greek life.  Out in the field, sometimes I think many Greek communities are about as unified as the Scottish clans in BRAVEHEART.  Look around your chapter, or your campus, or your community, or your country, or even better, the world.  Don’t you think there is room for improvement?

With such vast resources available amongst Greeks, what could a better greek community on your campus look like? What could your community look like?  What could the world look like?  With all of the people, energy, education, and resources in the Greek world, what SHOULD we be achieving?  There are over 750,000 active undergraduate fraternity/sorority members.  We graduate over 200,000 Greek affiliated men and women into the world every year from North America’s colleges and universities. We have hundreds of millions of dollars that we can leverage as a community.  What if we started looking outward at how we can impact the world together instead of inward at how we can beat the Pike’s at IM bowling next week?

Does your campus greek system feels like a bunch of warring Scottish clans all too concerned for themselves to see the bigger picture?  With all the infighting and squabbling, perhaps this seems like a battle a single man cannot fight.  Sometimes, it feels like we Greeks are our own worst enemy.

Scotland went through this same hardship.  At the Battle of Stirling, it was one man – William Wallace – who stood up and spoke to all the Scots and made them believe that this was their one chance to gain a unified freedom.  And even if they lost, they will have died trying rather than live to wonder what would have happened had they taken that one chance.

For those of you reading this in college, I challenge you to embrace this fight.  You have only 4 years of college to propel your Greek community to make great change in the world.  This is YOUR one chance.  The BRAVEHEART movie quote that stings me now as I write this was when William Wallace convinces the future King Henry of Scotland to unite the clans.  He tells him simple words of timeless wisdom.  “Men don’t follow titles.  They follow courage.”

You don’t need a title or an elected position, just the courage to take action.  It starts with you, then it takes off with dynamic recruitment of others both in and outside your organization.  We have to unite the clans and grow.  From this method of growth and empowerment, people begin to empower themselves and others to make positive change in their campus, community, state, country, and world.  This is what William Wallace did to Scotland.  In death, his message of freedom recruited more men than he did in life and Scots changed the world – they won their freedom.

The same can happen at your campus.  It’s an uphill battle.  And it cannot be done by your peers, or your mentors, or even us.  Will YOU have the courage to lead us?

The first step to helping our fraternity/sorority community better realize their collective potential is to recruit more high quality individuals into our ranks – people who can understand and act upon our world-changing potential.