PKT25: Chapter & Elections
Now that we've run through the pledge program, I'll go back and fill in some gaps. First up, the chapter meeting.
Chapter lent its name to the Chapter Room by virtue of being the room where the chapter meetings were held. Meetings were basically always on Sunday night after dinner. I gather this was pretty much the default for the chapter meetings of every fraternity on campus, with the end result being that there were almost never scheduled events anywhere on campus on Sunday evening. Very occasionally we'd have a chapter meeting on another day, usually if elections had gone long and needed to be finished, and once or twice to handle an emergency situation.
The Sergeant-at-Arms had the task of setting up the chapter room for the meeting. This meant taking most of the tables down, sliding one table to the doors by the porch and and arranging the chairs in a ring around the room. The table was reserved (from left to right from the perspective of the audience) for the Treasurer, Secretary, Vice-President and President. The President would gavel us in and away we'd go.
A note on the gavel. The President was presented the gavel when he was sworn in and used it to start and end the meeting. Between meetings, the President usually hid the gavel somewhere in his room out of sight because some brothers enjoyed stealing it. I feel like there was an entire etiquette around gavel theft that I've forgotten. The disappearance of the gavel didn't lead to meetings being cancelled or anything like that, but it did occasionally lead to Presidents gaveling in the meeting with a shoe or other gavel substitute.
The President ran Chapter using Robert's Rules of Order. I've never actually been at a meeting outside of fraternity functions that was run by Robert's Rules of Order, so I can't say that we did it perfectly, but we sure made the attempt. During chapter meetings the Vice-President was the parliamentarian and was the final word on what was permissible. The secretary, unsurprisingly, kept minutes, which we put on our internal website in the days before Google Drives. The Treasurer didn't specifically have a role during Chapter and sat up front mostly as recognition of the importance of his role. The Sergent-at-Arms sat by the door to the hallway, answered the doorbell if it rang during the meeting, and brought candidates back into the room after voting was concluded.
Every meeting was basically the same. We'd start with officers reports, which frequently talked about upcoming house events and other concerns. From there we'd move to old business (if any, which there usually wasn't), then new business. New business was whatever was necessary to keep the chapter running. This might be changes to the constitution and house rules, or it might be addressing some piece of campus news that we had to adjust to.
Before we adjourned, we'd appoint "Beavis" for the week, which the dubious honor of someone having done the stupidest thing in the past week. As with gavel theft, my exact memories of how Beavis worked have faded, but my recollection is that each Beavis picked the next week's Beavis from any nominees presented. Or maybe we had a Beavis Chair who picked all semester, having earned that role by doing the stupidest thing in the prior semester? I can't recall anymore. It was mostly an opportunity to tell funny stories about what had happened that week. I have no idea if Beavis has persisted to this day, but if it has I expect the name has changed to some more up-to-date pop culture symbol of stupidity.
We would end the meeting with "Pass the Gavel," where every brother was allowed to say whatever they wanted, whether silly or profound or venting. Then the President would gavel us out, and most of us would disappear to get some studying done. The Sergent-at-Arms would then reset the room.
Elections happened at the end of every semester, typically over two or even three Chapter meetings. We elected every single officer every single semester. At one point we considered electing Presidents and Treasurers to serve over a calendar year (January-December) to ensure some continuity of office in those key positions, but we never quite pulled the trigger on that. Anyway, Elections were solidly "new business." We'd open each role for nominations and seconds. The candidates were asked to leave the room, and then were brought back in one at a time to gave a brief speech about why they wanted the role and what they planned to do with it. They might answer some questions, then they'd be escorted out and the next candidate would come in. If a candidate couldn't make it because they were on co-op or something, someone would read their prepared statement. Then the chapter would discuss, and vote.
Quite often, the discussion was brief. Some positions would only have a single candidate and be elected by acclamation. For more important offices, we usually had at least two candidates, even if the second was just running so that we had a choice instead of rubber stamping someone just because they ran unopposed. A few times that second candidate unexpectedly won.
Elections could be pretty brutal. If you'd screwed up repeatedly in a prior role, people would ask about it, especially if you were running for an office that had more responsibility. The whole run up to elections was often far more political than any job I've ever had. A fair amount of time in December and May was spent talking about chapter politics, and I certainly was part of that. A few times I got manipulated pretty hard (in retrospect, obviously) and other times I did the manipulating. It gave me a keen sense of how to appeal to other people, which has in fact come in handy at work. Particularly contentious elections could last forever. I've been told of at least one that went eight hours, although thankfully I wasn't in any single meeting that was that painful.
We'd always close Elections with the election of the Sergent-at-Arms. Since their role was basically "set up the room and tear down the room for Chapter" (and often brothers would help them do it), the electoral stakes were pretty low. Some genius in the hazy past had decided to make people care for this role by changing the terms of the election for Sergent-at-Arms. Instead of nominations and speeches like every other role, the electoral process was incredibly simple:
- Each person who wanted the role would do something utterly ridiculous (and quite often disgusting) at the meeting.
- The membership would vote on who most deserve the role.
Thankfully, my mind has mostly blanked out most of the Sergent-at-Arms "speeches" I saw, but I think it's safe to say that the consensus most amazing "campaign" any of us ever saw was the brother who loaded up on beans prior to the meeting and then proceeded to play a harmonic by farting into it. He actually got noise out of it, and I'm confident in saying that nobody who was present for it will ever forget it, no matter how hard they try.
Chapter was only open to brothers. Pledges got to attend after a certain point in the pledge program, but were asked to step out for specific parts of the meeting. Occasionally an alumnus or the Chapter Consultant would attend, and even more occasionally a guest might appear to discuss a specific topic. Chapter didn't happen during the summer, only during the fall and spring semesters.
And that's how I spent my Sunday nights for most of five years of college. It was the only time that I was guaranteed to see virtually all of the actives at one time, and while most of my best memories of the fraternity were not during chapter, it kept the house running quite successfully. I learned a lot about running a good meeting from Chapter, and let me assure you that this is clearly not true of most people based on my coworkers and other activities. It might have been worth it for that alone, as that one skill has been a major help at my day job.
The Ohio Alpha Beta Chapter of Phi Kappa Theta
The House Tour Outside,
Main Floor Bedrooms,
Main Floor Public Rooms,
Basement Public Areas,
Basement Private Areas,
2nd Floor Big Bedrooms,
2nd Floor Small Bedrooms,
3rd Floor First Hallway,
3rd Floor Second Hallway,
Attic & Errata,
House Tour Commentary: Joe & Laura & Astrid,
House Tour Commentary: Jackal,
House Tour Commentary: Susan,
House Tour Commentary: Assorted
The Pledge Program Schedule, Curriculum & Black Books, Big Brothers & Pledge Pins, Paddling, Initiation
Semesters Fall 1996
Events Detour, Blackout, Boo at the Zoo, Chapter Meetings
Other Full Series, My Rush Experience, Chapter History, Family Trees, National, Greek Life at CWRU
Additional Commentary Black Books, Boo at the Zoo & Blackout
Chapter lent its name to the Chapter Room by virtue of being the room where the chapter meetings were held. Meetings were basically always on Sunday night after dinner. I gather this was pretty much the default for the chapter meetings of every fraternity on campus, with the end result being that there were almost never scheduled events anywhere on campus on Sunday evening. Very occasionally we'd have a chapter meeting on another day, usually if elections had gone long and needed to be finished, and once or twice to handle an emergency situation.
The Sergeant-at-Arms had the task of setting up the chapter room for the meeting. This meant taking most of the tables down, sliding one table to the doors by the porch and and arranging the chairs in a ring around the room. The table was reserved (from left to right from the perspective of the audience) for the Treasurer, Secretary, Vice-President and President. The President would gavel us in and away we'd go.
A note on the gavel. The President was presented the gavel when he was sworn in and used it to start and end the meeting. Between meetings, the President usually hid the gavel somewhere in his room out of sight because some brothers enjoyed stealing it. I feel like there was an entire etiquette around gavel theft that I've forgotten. The disappearance of the gavel didn't lead to meetings being cancelled or anything like that, but it did occasionally lead to Presidents gaveling in the meeting with a shoe or other gavel substitute.
The President ran Chapter using Robert's Rules of Order. I've never actually been at a meeting outside of fraternity functions that was run by Robert's Rules of Order, so I can't say that we did it perfectly, but we sure made the attempt. During chapter meetings the Vice-President was the parliamentarian and was the final word on what was permissible. The secretary, unsurprisingly, kept minutes, which we put on our internal website in the days before Google Drives. The Treasurer didn't specifically have a role during Chapter and sat up front mostly as recognition of the importance of his role. The Sergent-at-Arms sat by the door to the hallway, answered the doorbell if it rang during the meeting, and brought candidates back into the room after voting was concluded.
Every meeting was basically the same. We'd start with officers reports, which frequently talked about upcoming house events and other concerns. From there we'd move to old business (if any, which there usually wasn't), then new business. New business was whatever was necessary to keep the chapter running. This might be changes to the constitution and house rules, or it might be addressing some piece of campus news that we had to adjust to.
Before we adjourned, we'd appoint "Beavis" for the week, which the dubious honor of someone having done the stupidest thing in the past week. As with gavel theft, my exact memories of how Beavis worked have faded, but my recollection is that each Beavis picked the next week's Beavis from any nominees presented. Or maybe we had a Beavis Chair who picked all semester, having earned that role by doing the stupidest thing in the prior semester? I can't recall anymore. It was mostly an opportunity to tell funny stories about what had happened that week. I have no idea if Beavis has persisted to this day, but if it has I expect the name has changed to some more up-to-date pop culture symbol of stupidity.
We would end the meeting with "Pass the Gavel," where every brother was allowed to say whatever they wanted, whether silly or profound or venting. Then the President would gavel us out, and most of us would disappear to get some studying done. The Sergent-at-Arms would then reset the room.
Elections happened at the end of every semester, typically over two or even three Chapter meetings. We elected every single officer every single semester. At one point we considered electing Presidents and Treasurers to serve over a calendar year (January-December) to ensure some continuity of office in those key positions, but we never quite pulled the trigger on that. Anyway, Elections were solidly "new business." We'd open each role for nominations and seconds. The candidates were asked to leave the room, and then were brought back in one at a time to gave a brief speech about why they wanted the role and what they planned to do with it. They might answer some questions, then they'd be escorted out and the next candidate would come in. If a candidate couldn't make it because they were on co-op or something, someone would read their prepared statement. Then the chapter would discuss, and vote.
Quite often, the discussion was brief. Some positions would only have a single candidate and be elected by acclamation. For more important offices, we usually had at least two candidates, even if the second was just running so that we had a choice instead of rubber stamping someone just because they ran unopposed. A few times that second candidate unexpectedly won.
Elections could be pretty brutal. If you'd screwed up repeatedly in a prior role, people would ask about it, especially if you were running for an office that had more responsibility. The whole run up to elections was often far more political than any job I've ever had. A fair amount of time in December and May was spent talking about chapter politics, and I certainly was part of that. A few times I got manipulated pretty hard (in retrospect, obviously) and other times I did the manipulating. It gave me a keen sense of how to appeal to other people, which has in fact come in handy at work. Particularly contentious elections could last forever. I've been told of at least one that went eight hours, although thankfully I wasn't in any single meeting that was that painful.
We'd always close Elections with the election of the Sergent-at-Arms. Since their role was basically "set up the room and tear down the room for Chapter" (and often brothers would help them do it), the electoral stakes were pretty low. Some genius in the hazy past had decided to make people care for this role by changing the terms of the election for Sergent-at-Arms. Instead of nominations and speeches like every other role, the electoral process was incredibly simple:
- Each person who wanted the role would do something utterly ridiculous (and quite often disgusting) at the meeting.
- The membership would vote on who most deserve the role.
Thankfully, my mind has mostly blanked out most of the Sergent-at-Arms "speeches" I saw, but I think it's safe to say that the consensus most amazing "campaign" any of us ever saw was the brother who loaded up on beans prior to the meeting and then proceeded to play a harmonic by farting into it. He actually got noise out of it, and I'm confident in saying that nobody who was present for it will ever forget it, no matter how hard they try.
Chapter was only open to brothers. Pledges got to attend after a certain point in the pledge program, but were asked to step out for specific parts of the meeting. Occasionally an alumnus or the Chapter Consultant would attend, and even more occasionally a guest might appear to discuss a specific topic. Chapter didn't happen during the summer, only during the fall and spring semesters.
And that's how I spent my Sunday nights for most of five years of college. It was the only time that I was guaranteed to see virtually all of the actives at one time, and while most of my best memories of the fraternity were not during chapter, it kept the house running quite successfully. I learned a lot about running a good meeting from Chapter, and let me assure you that this is clearly not true of most people based on my coworkers and other activities. It might have been worth it for that alone, as that one skill has been a major help at my day job.
The Ohio Alpha Beta Chapter of Phi Kappa Theta
The House Tour Outside,
Main Floor Bedrooms,
Main Floor Public Rooms,
Basement Public Areas,
Basement Private Areas,
2nd Floor Big Bedrooms,
2nd Floor Small Bedrooms,
3rd Floor First Hallway,
3rd Floor Second Hallway,
Attic & Errata,
House Tour Commentary: Joe & Laura & Astrid,
House Tour Commentary: Jackal,
House Tour Commentary: Susan,
House Tour Commentary: Assorted
The Pledge Program Schedule, Curriculum & Black Books, Big Brothers & Pledge Pins, Paddling, Initiation
Semesters Fall 1996
Events Detour, Blackout, Boo at the Zoo, Chapter Meetings
Other Full Series, My Rush Experience, Chapter History, Family Trees, National, Greek Life at CWRU
Additional Commentary Black Books, Boo at the Zoo & Blackout