Yes, the rumors are true.

Another long but informative article by

Kerry Gilliard
Zeta Phi Beta Sigma Times Webmaster

My Frat and Sorors as well as all other greeks reading.......

 It is my hope that this letter reaches all of you with all things being well in your regions, chapters and personal lives. First off, I'd like to give a great big ZEEBLUEPHI to all the frat and sorors in the Virginia area that we got to chill with at the 83rd Annual Regional Conference in Richmond, Virginia on the weekend of April 10-12. Y'all definitely gave us somewhere to get our PAR-TAY on after we were done with meetings (especially our beautiful sorors at Tau Theta [Univ. Of Virginia] whom myself and about 15 other bruhs drove 150+ miles round trip from Richmond to Charlottesville to visit and congratulate on the new additions to your chapter as well as to support your party for Spring Fling- we all love y'all!!!).

In fact, since I mentioned sorors of UVA, I'd be remiss in not mentioning all the beautiful ladies of Phi chapter (Virginia State), Nu Chapter (Virginia Union Univ.) who we chilled with at the Arthur Ashe Center Stepshow on Saturday night as well as frat from Triple Alpha Chapter (Virginia State), Nu Chapter (Virginia Union), frat from Old Dominion Univ. (Which one of y'all had the video camera? That tape from the party could be incriminating when I run for office in the next few years.....*grin*)----in fact, I might as well mention all the brothers I ran into like Bro. Christian Gonzalez from Theta Gamma up in NY (who kept me and the other bros. Party steppin/walkin' through the party at the Arthur Ashe center all night), Bro. Baruch Yehudda who is just all around cool, my NUH Terrell Campbell from Zeta Lambda (--Instant Message From BluFunk195--), Bro. Abby Raymond from the Great Great Lakes Region whom we all accepted and ADOPTED for the weekend as a member of the Eastern Region, Bros. from Mad Mad Mu Psi who came down, Bros. from the newly chartered Alpha Zeta Alpha, Alpha Pi Alpha and Sigma Sigma Sigma Chapters, Pi Mu and Rho Omicron Chapter, and of course our local brothers from Delta Delta, Theta Omicron, Alpha Mu , Gamma Lambda and the whole RACK of both graduate and undergraduate bros. and sorors that made Eastern Regional Conference 1997 a weekend to remember!!! I'm still hoarse from it all!!

Memories. Reading all of this, you are either one of three things now:

1. Bored stiff and about to scroll down and click on the Times main page button

2. Thinking this is SOC or meetgreeks with all them shoutouts I just gave

3. Wishing you were there and thinking of old memories of your own collegiate days

Well, heck, doesn't it provoke them old memories? Doesn't it bring up some of your best memories in your organization where you just had FUN and really enjoyed the true bonding of brotherhood and sisterhood?

Well surprise, if we don't wake up (both undergraduate and those graduates that support undergrads) and handle our business, there won't be anymore memories to be made by future generations of frat and sorors. Directly from the mouth of Carter Womack as well as several Regional and National officers present at our Eastern Regional Conference, there was a recommendation standing before Pan-Hel on a National Level to abolish undergraduate intake.

No, I didn't stutter. You read it correctly- the NPHC has heard/is hearing/is considering that ALL NPHC organizations abolish undergraduate intake. In english, no more undergrad chapters. Anyone who wants to be an Sigma, Zeta, Que, Alpha,Iota, or whatevah---see your local graduate chapter.

Now that 90% of you reading this are pissed off or sitting there in shock with your eyes and mouth hanging wide open saying "nawww, dey can't do that", let's take a peep at the reasons behind this novel little idea.

Let's say the XX chapter of Kappa Phi Eta fraternity has a line. During the course of pledging activities, #1 gets his arm broken by a brother who takes things too far and allows the pledgee to fall, thus causing the injury. K Phi H gets sued by #1's parents (medical expenses and damages), the University (since it happened on university grounds) and criminal charges are brought forth by the State against individual members. K Phi H also has to pay for it's own legal counsel, usually a local attorney in the same state or city as the University, outside of the frat (most of the time), to handle the case. K Phi H's paperwork allows the case to drag out for three years, resulting in a settlement against them for $650,000. Point 2- K Phi H does NOT have liability insurance- most companies are not willing to take a risk like a fraternity or sorority because of such high incidences of hazing and the way the media has blasted it out of proportion even worse than it already is. The money for legal counsel is then drawn from:

1. The general fund for the fraternity

2. Social Action and Community Service Funds,

3. National HQ building funds (K Phi H doesn't own their building yet),

4. Mentoring Program funds

5. Membership Dues, which get increased to help cover the costs

6. (Insert your fund here).

So for all you undergraduates wondering where the majority of your dues go, ask your brothers or sisters on other campuses who screw it up and make your organization look bad- they go to cover the legal costs associated with hazing. No, I'm not BSing you (those of you who know me or met me at Regionals know I keep it REAL...). And even if our National Officers were to take paycuts (for those of you with some paid national officers), we'd all still be up dookey's creek without a paddle or toilet paper- legal costs just to handle the paperwork alone run in the ten thousands- EACH case. At last check (correct me if I'm wrong) AKA has SEVEN lawsuits pending; Sigma has a few in the works (especially in light of the Athens, GA incident); KAPsi, for those of you who've just sobered up, just kicked out 2.25 million (YES MILLION for those who've been buried under a rock), not counting all the legal fees associated with the case; and the list goes on and on.

Let's get back to K Phi H. I forgot to mention K Phi H's membership consists of approximately 125,000 members. As with every organization, you know all these people ain't financial. In fact, most are wondering where their dues go, so most don't pay. Dues are $90 per year undergraduate and $170 per year graduate or member at large. Approximately 3000 graduate brothers have paid dues for the year and 4000 undergraduate brothers have paid their dues- do the math. The rest either haven't paid, or don't intend to or have disassociated from the organization. The 7000 that have paid equal up to $681,000 from dues. Now, let's check back- how much was that settlement for? That leaves $31,000. One full printing, mailing and distribution of the K Phi H National Magazine costs $30,000.

Printings, mailings and correspondence from the National office of K Phi H run $999.90 for the year, if they conserve on paper. That leaves a dime---speaking of which, someone just called up K Phi H's Executive Director talking about being hazed by brothers of the YY chapter of K Phi H and people ending up in the hospital.....resulting in ANOTHER lawsuit......and the cycle begins again.......and K Phi H hasn't even paid it's employees that work in the office yet.....

In his state of the region address, the Honorable Bro. Marvin "Doc" Cheatham, 19th Eastern Regional Director of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.said these words:

The strongest Sigma leader that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting is the Honorable R. O. Sutton 17th National President. Bro. Sutton cried out at a Conclave that "mother is sick."

Today my brothers, I cry out that father is dying..did you hear me??!? FATHER IS DYING!!

Unlike mother that needed some green blood, father has a serious infection. An infection that once we treat it in one area, another infection crops up somewhere else. We've been fairly successful in our treatments, but we assuredly haven't found the cure, and in some cases we have been reluctant to inject the fluid really needed.

Hazing and illegal intake activities are killing us.

Some of us, I am reluctant to say, feel that everything should come easy for us and that there should be no struggle. Frederick Douglass once said "....if there is no sturggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of it's many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moraland physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand."

 

Brothers, we have been delaying and delaying the inevitable. We must expel these hoodlums and we must put in place standard punishments and fines, YES FINES, to rid father of these infections. An old English proverb states "One of these days is none of these days." Or as Thomas Fuller said "What may be done at any time will be done at no time." Or as Edward Young wrote, "Procrastination is the thief of time."

I am the product of a collegiate chapter. I am not in favor, at this moment, of amputation to save father, but the infection is doing father so much harm that soon we may not have any other preventative measure to save father other than to amputate. I will fight against those today that are suggesting that we eliminate collegiate intake, but I will not fight too much longer. To paraphrase Fannie Lou Hammer: " I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired" about hazing and illegal intake.

Most of us reading this, are sick and tired of hearing about it as well. Your chapter might be one of those that "handles it's business" with NEVER getting anyone hurt, or never getting the chapter in trouble in regards to pledging and those other chapters around the area or even across the nation that just SCREW it up for everyone are the ones you need to go check. Or maybe it's your chapter- you know, those one or two brothers who are all about bullying and "controlling" the pledgees due to their own low self-esteem which they hide......and they screw up, and YOU have to pay for it.

Soror Nakisha Thomas, Former National Undergraduate Member-at-large for Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. Pointed out to me that part of the reason for the 1990 decision (actually, it was an 89 decision) which many of us (including myself) were not aware of is that the National Association of Colleges and Universities (pardon me if I have the name of the group wrong) had all met back in the later 80's and were discussing kicking ALL the black greek letter organizations OFF their campuses. So the with the end of our organizations in sight, the NPHC presidents acted in what they felt was the best interests of all our organizations. Mind you, they only put a band-aid over a gunshot wound when they did it, but it's done and we now have to deal with it.

I could argue at length (and for another 23k of space on this page) about the fact that the heart of the fraternity and sorority lie on undergraduate campuses and that our organizations will NOT function effectively without them and eventually die out along with the fact that graduate chapters as a whole DO NOT actively recruit new members, and eliminating undergraduate intake would thin financial membership within the organization to dangerously low levels, but that would be pointless. These things are a given. What I am about now is solutions.

First off, as I've recently stated several dozen times and as undergraduate Sigmas will read in the collegiate newsletter, THE NEW LIGHT (which goes to print around the 12th of this month and should be in your hands before you leave for Conclave):

It begins with getting our chapter brothers not only financial but active (and there is a difference). Are you a brother or just a member? Do you contribute or do you just belong? Whether or not you realize it, undergraduate members comprise the largest voting block for the fraternity. Soror Leslie Rhines Joseph, National Third Anti-Basileus for Zeta Phi Beta, wrote me and told me that Undergraduate Zetas comprise FIVE TIMES the voting block for the body of the organization than graduate members do. If this is true of our sisters, it most certainly is true for us. If you aren't financial, you don't have a voice in the fraternity. You become a man sitting in the outside the door, mumbling and complaining to yourself about your problems and the problems inside the room and not doing a thing to solve the problem.

By the same token, being financial is NOT enough. We must also be ACTIVE in our local (campus) and graduate chapters. Go sit in on your advising chapter's meetings and participate. Give suggestions and advice on issues which affect your chapter- after all, it is your chapter!! What man lets someone else decide what goes on in his home besides a child? But if you are a man, you are not a child. So act like it and get active in the frat. Financial but not active equates to a man sitting in the back of the meeting once again complaining to himself- no one hears his voice. Sit in the front where you can be seen and speak loudly and clearly. Articulate your views. You'd be surprised how many people will have your back (and I learned this firsthand recently at my graduate chapters' meeting).

No money, no vote, no voice. Simple.

Next up, we- undergraduates and those graduate members who support us, need to get ORGANIZED. A lot of you reading this have your own personal internet access- DUH!!! If you're on AOL, let's form a chatroom. If you're not on AOL, everybody download an Internet Relay Chat Client (IRC) and let's meet up on a channel somewhere on the net. We can also head over and make a private room on WBS-Net--a web based chat system. Need help getting that stuff? Just ask!!

Next on the list, we need to SPEAK UP. You can hold your views all you want, but are you willing to open your mouth when graduate members and your advisor comes around? I'm gonna take it one step further- there's no doubt in my mind that 90% of you reading this PLEDGED. Not intake, PLEDGED. There came a time (many times if you were pledged correctly) when your courage and intestinal fortitude were tested- this is one of your time. If you responded correctly, you put your fears aside andcompleted the task at hand. PERIOD. Now is one of those times. What are you going to do?

Final step- on the real---DEMAND, not request, not ask, DEMAND graduate chapter accountability. I was thoroughly DISGUSTED at our regional chapter conference this past April when one graduate member REFUSED to travel to visit his undergraduate chapters ONCE A MONTH because they were over 100 miles away. In contrast, one younger undergraduate chapter advisor who had FOUR chapters all 100+ miles apart from each other told us that he BROKE HIS NECK to spend time with them EVERY OTHER WEEKEND. If undergrads don't fulfil their responsibilities as a chapter, the chapter is suspended- the same should be done at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Remember, we (undergraduates) do comprise the larger voting body.

In conclusion of this nice little essay, I can't stress how important this issue is to the existence of greek letter organizations as a whole, not just Sigma and not just Zeta. A lot of you reading this have never had the nerve to stand up to your graduate advisor or your advising chapter, even in the face of outright injustice being done against your chapter. Well now it's time to put up, or shut up- SPEAK UP!! If you decide to sit back and not object, then you have no one to blame but yourself for your lack of action.