Living your creed seems to be the catch phrase of the decade for Greek letter organizations. But how often do we dig deeper into what that really means?
Each creed is a set of principles, a lofty set of guidelines to live our lives by. Kind of a "do this, not that". They are beautifully written and chapter members, including myself, hold them near and dear to our hearts. However, when we preach about how each member of our beloved organization should live out the creed, we tend to leave it at that and skip the harder questions...like what happens if we do not? What happens if one of our brothers or sisters or even us does something that is not a reflection of the organization's guidelines or values?
In recent news, almost every time someone did something that was not in line with what a Greek letter organization stood for they lost their letters and were removed from the organization. It is a PR move, a good PR move even but at what cost? We tell everyone about how our organization is like another family, but would you leave your family out to dry at the first major mistake they made? Is that something that our founders would be proud of?
If I were a potential new member it would make me more apprehensive to join an organization knowing that one wrong move can completely shatter this lifetime commitment that I have made. Mistakes are inevitable and I'm sure almost every member of a Greek organization has done something they are not proud of at some point or another, something that probably does not align with or goes against a line in their creed. Most of the time these actions are never brought to light, but when they are we act as if we could not relate, as if we could never imagine being in the same situation. We could have never sent that snapchat, that email, taken that picture. But in reality we could have and many actually have, but they were just lucky enough not to get caught.
Change in anything does not happen overnight, I get that. However, I hope one day as I prepare my daughter to go through recruitment, the organizations we all love so much are more accepting of mistakes and are willing to love our members through them instead of really taking the easy way out and kicking them to the curb. Families are imperfect, relationships are imperfect, and Greek Life as a whole is imperfect. I think it is time we embrace those imperfections instead of trying to hide them, because I think that is the true meaning of being able to live your creed.
