Citizenship

The book defines citizenship as  active engagement of the individual and the leadership group in an effort to serve that community. Because I missed a lot of last week's class i was quite perplexed as to what to write about. However, after skimming over some of the responses of my peers, I am confident that I have my own unique response.


For me, the question about how I personally show good citizenship within a fraternity community is definitely the easiest. As everyone knows, each fraternity and sorority has their own minimum service hours that they must complete each quarter. For some, these few required hours are the only ones that will be completed and after that, out of sight, out of mind. In my case, I was already regularly volunteering on a regular basis at OSU med center. Ill admit that the initial reasoning for volunteering was because it would look good on my medical school application. However, after the first day of volunteering, I feel in love with it (which is probably a good thing because that will be my career). Since then, I have since picked up a volunteer position at Nationwide Children's hospital and I am proud to say that by the time my freshman year is over, I will have accumulated well over 100 hours. 


This next question of how my chapter expresses citizenship within the Greek community, is a little more depressing for me to answer. When I first was interested in Lambda Chi, ill be honest that we could have definitely been more active in other chapter's philanthropy events. However, for me being a good citizen is more than just putting on your own philanthropy or attending fellow greek's philanthropy events. For me, these thing should be done because they are the right thing to do and therefore should not be rewarded but expected. For me, being a good citizen is about being involved past what is expected. Because of my view I am a little disappointed in some members of my chapter unwillingness to be involved. Remember when I said how some people get their bare minimum hours done then out of sight, out of mind? Well that is the attitude of several brothers. Dont get me wrong, there are some who are very involved or have too many credits to be actively involved but there are also several who are just lazy.


How does the fraternity/sorority community display citizenship within the greater university community? 
Overall, I am disappointed in the overall impact of the Greek community on the greater university community. After all, besides move-in day, rock the block, and the involvement fair all of which are set up by the university and we just have to sign up for them, what exactly do we do? We all as chapters have service hours that are required, but how many of us go beyond those? Based on the way the question is presented I could count move-in day, rock the block, and the involvement fair and say that we as a Greek community have a large impact on the university. However, I pose a question that perhaps is a little more helpful. How do we as a Greek community go above the convient citizenship and do things that perhaps aren't the most convient? After all, citizenship is something that should be well praised and I have always been taught that I should not expect or accept praise for something that is expected.