2005 ADG Red Carnation - Volume 80 Issue 3

Text Box: At the most recent Convention, the National Assembly elected from Rho Chapter, Caleb Finch as your 2005-2006 National Student Representative. Caleb brings a wealth of chapter experience to the position and is poised to represent you, the active brother. Also this Convention we saw Alex Razzook switch Council positions to become the current Vice President of Finance. This position was held by Mike Blackstock, who took over the position until Convention. We are indebted to Mike’s service. With the shift of Alex to the Department of Finance, Jason Breton of Psi Chapter was selected to finish the term as Vice President of External Affairs. The Department of External Affairs continues to be an important position, with the upcoming expansion efforts at USC and SUNY-Oswego, a long with 7 distinct groups of interest that have contact ADG National since Convention. Jason has handled himself well and will continue to move the fraternity forward through the Department of External Affairs. Bryan Lind is the Past National President, Art Taylor the Vice President of Internal Affairs, James Smith as your National Executive Vice President and Derrick Cabrera is the National President. This Council laid out the plan for the Culture Change that must occur for the Fraternity to move forward in the 21st Century. The Council will be the standard bearer, but it must also be the job of every active and alumni member of Alpha Delta Gamma to carry the standard of ADG and implement Culture Change. This change in culture will not happen overnight, but progress has been made and we must strive harder to ensure that it does happen. Submitted by Jim Smith, Kappa Alumni

Text Box: ADG will be dead in five years. Some may argue that there will still be a couple of chapters and some alumni strongholds, but as far as I’m concerned, we’re dead in five years. How has this happened you may ask? Quite simply for two reasons: (1) Our failure to sustain adequate growth and (2) Our failure to fulfill consistently our values and our obligations. Each and every one of us is now faced with a difficult decision. Do we (a) disband the fraternity or (b) change the course of inevitable history. Not all of us will agree and some may leave sooner than others. Those that remain will either succeed or “who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that is place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat”, so said Theodore Roosevelt. The good news is that we have our values already and we know what they are. The earnest effort needed by all of us is to sincerely live out and execute those values 100% of the time. In doing so, I’m asking all AlphaDelts to join in a New “PACT” for ADG. This PACT returns us to the core set of principles that will guide us throughout the rest of our lives. These are unique and must be chosen, accepted, implemented and we must all resolve to execute them. I once went to a class on powerpoint presentations and was blown away when the instructor asked the very first question of the class. He simply asked, “What are you passionate about everyday?” I’ll be honest; it wasn’t about formulating power point presentations. What the instructor asked us to do in that class is what I’m asking each and every one of you to do for yourselves. What is it that you are passionate about? Hence, the P in PACT. When you hold this concept in your heart and your mind, it easy to bring it out in the everyday actions that you do. Now like many in college, myself included, I wasn’t sure what I was passionate about. If we are at this point, then we need to think that out and determine how we want to live and invest our lives. For many, I suppose that they use the Fraternity as a wading pool to get through college. These men who don’t understand what they stand for, do not know what they are passionate about, they are dormant in their goals and their aspirations. We must purge ourselves of these men or these attitudes. This brings me to the A in PACT. A is for attitude and it is how we go about living our lives through our values and our intentions. Attitude is not something that is unattainable, but few recognize that is a trait that must be developed, cultivated and refined. We develop attitude through habit. Our habits, good and bad, can limit our ability to become effective and successful. If we were to survey the habits of our membership, what would we expect the results to look like? Would we be happy? Stunned? We must ask ourselves, what are the results we wish to see? This also leaves us with two options. We can reform those whom we already have and take the stand that ADG can mold new college recruits with these traits or we can recruit them directly. I believe they are out there, and I believe that our unique values and traditions will be effective in attracting them. However, in the short term, we must revamp and remake our current membership. Action in our attitudes will give us the potential we need to succeed. Our individual ability to execute goals will increase and the prosperity of this fraternity will also grow. Once we have trained our membership and developed our habits, revamped our attitudes, we will then see the change in Culture (i.e. C in PACT) that must take place. through our alumni ranks and simultaneously inwards to our new generations. Many fail to admit the shortcoming of our fraternity, fewer will debate them, and fewer still will try to change.

Those that change now will allow us to sustain this growth both outwards through our alumni ranks and simultaneously inwards to our new generations.

If we have developed and harnessed our passions, realigned our attitudes, changed our culture, we have only left, to transcend above and beyond. What we all need to be aware of is the positioning that we must do for this fraternity. We should understand the change we need to make. We have a timeline and an infrastructure to manage this change. The rest is positioning ourselves with the right opportunities and simply acting on them. We must not be afraid to part with those who will most restrain our initiative to make positive change and adapt. We must not be afraid to part with that inside ourselves that restrain our initiative to make positive change and adapt. We do this now so that others may be able to do this later. God bless you all, and I look forward to seeing you in five years.

Submitted by Alex Razzook, Kappa Alumni