Executive members from the Office of Greek Life attended the Association of Fraternal Leadership & Values four-day conference over the weekend in St. Louis.
The goals of the conference were to educate new executive officers on their positions, further conversations concerning scholarship and service and to present important networking opportunities, AFLV Executive Director Mark Koepsell said.
“In the film ‘Animal House,’ you see friendship, but you don’t see service, scholarship or standards,” Koepsell said. “You see friendship through communal beer drinking. People know and understand that’s not what it’s about.”
The AFLV conference sought to ensure fraternities and sororities were living the ethical values upon which they were founded. Such ethical values comprise the core purpose of sororities and fraternities, Koepsell said.
“It is safe to say there are places where the purpose has strayed,” Koepsell said. “We want to bring sororities and fraternities back to their core purpose through training in things such as leadership. They can bring this leadership back to campus and be exemplary figures in their communities.”
Such leadership training consisted of keynote speakers and break-out conversation sessions, yet the schedule of the conference also focused around 27 unique pathways. Each executive member of every Greek Life Council present had the opportunity to choose a pathway to follow. The pathways were longer, more targeted and served as a position-based training ground for attendees from all campuses, Koepsell said.
MU’s Panhellenic Association Spokeswoman Crystal Richardson attended the conference and followed the public relations pathway.
“I have an entirely different view of Greek Life now,” Richardson said. “Mizzou is unique and we have to maintain a positive image to people who might not understand.”
She said gaining adequate understanding requires good communication.
“Misconceptions come from miscommunications,” Richardson said. “We have to start highlighting the good things we do and we have to start re-engineering the conversations Greeks have with non-Greeks.”
Part of these improvements will depend upon the MU community knowing the good things happening in MU Greek Life.
“We need to take more time to put the good things out there,” Richardson said. “For example, our GPA is consistently above average. Being Greek contributes to who you are on campus, and who you will develop into.”
However, Richardson said, the best part of the conference was coming together with the other MU Greek Life Councils.
“It was the first time (the Interfraternity Council, the Panhellenic Association, the National Pan-Hellenic Council and the Multicultural Greek Council) got to go,” Richardson said. “All four of us came together to uphold (scholarship, leadership, sisterhood, brotherhood and service).”
