ALPHA PHI ALPHA FRATERNITY, INC, MU LAMBDA CHAPTER
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The Scale of Brotherhood IMDP VS RECLAMATION
A SENIOR BROTHER’S PERSPECTIVE By Brother Ryle Bell
The initial reason for the creation of IMDP was the elimination of violations of pledging. Alpha’s Internal Review Commission which functioned in the 1990’s concluded that one of the ways to protect the fraternity from lawsuits resulting from violations of pledging was to remove the process from the chapters and elevate it to a place where it could be overseen by “responsible” brothers. Thus, chapter initiations were terminated, and the cluster format of intake was introduced. Pledging became a thing of the past and “intake” was created in an attempt to control “underground” and illegal activities. While the IMDP process is better than chapter pledging, it has failed to eliminate underground and other illegal activities. There are several reasons for this, chief among them is that many brothers have scant respect for any process that they feel does not allow them to “make brothers right,” whatever that is, and their disdain for following and obeying a corporate edict. In addition, chapters and brothers, that violated the edict were rarely disciplined commensurate with their violations. This, along with the attitudes of some regional district and area officers, who clung to the idea of having brothers “made right,” generally meaning being made the way that they were made, has doomed the new process to limited success. This then leads to the question, is reclamation a better way to go than the infusion of new brothers through the IMDP process? This
presents an interesting conundrum as both methods present challenges that are difficult to navigate. Unfortunately, we must accept a given in this equation and that is that the fraternity’s budgetary process is inextricably bound to membership numbers. Without a continuing influx of new brothers or a very supportive membership it is very difficult to maintain financial solvency to allow the fraternity to function in today’s national environment. Having accepted this premise, we can now look at the effort to maintain fiscal autonomy for the organization. Reclamation involves luring brothers back into the organization to help defray the cost of running the organization. The problem is that there are various reasons why brothers disassociate themselves from the fraternity. Some do, because the programs that are pursued have little or no interest for them; some because of the cost of remaining financially active as they try to build personal lives and careers, some because of conceived religious contradictions involving the poem “Invictus,” and some because they had no right being in Alpha in the first place! To really reclaim a brother, therefore, his personal grievance must be addressed permanently, or he will walk away again. In reclaiming those that do not belong in continued on the next page MU LAMBDA TORCH 2022
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