Rebuilding Brotherhood

By Helena Walker Historian, Delta Chapter - KKΨ University of Oklahoma

Hello from the Delta chapter at the University of Oklahoma! Like everywhere else, COVID-19 was a devastating blow to the brothers of the Delta chapter. The phrase “these are unprecedented times” got ironically repetitive. Like many chapters, the Delta chapter hit a bit of a lull during the 2020-21 school year. Everyone struggled from virtual fatigue, and to many brothers, virtual chapters during this time felt like a mere impression of what it was before. Some experiences like the degrees were explained virtually and never experienced by member candidates that year. Service opportunities were limited and requirements all around were lessened to accommodate the strain of a global pandemic (rightfully so). At the Delta chapter, we experienced a lull in brotherhood. The incoming class of that year especially had some difficulty connecting, initially.

But the pandemic wouldn’t last forever. We were faced with questions moving forward: How do we get back in the swing? How do we incorporate members who had never experienced KKY before the pandemic? How do we maintain, excel at, and improve traditions that have taken a two-year hiatus? How do we gain the connection and brotherhood that we all sorely missed during the 2020-21 school year?

The chapter agreed that a focus on the brotherhood pillar would help all aspects the chapter wanted to improve. Vice President of Service Brooklynn Briles draws a strong connection between brotherhood and service, “brotherhood relationships are the building blocks for having an organized and loving chapter. When you take those relationships and you pair them with service opportunities to better our experiences then the outcome is pure joy from creating lifelong memories with your brothers.” Many brothers were drawn to KKY for its welcoming community. Community is a fundamental human need! The great thing about KKY is it combines our need for community with action-oriented ideals like service and musicianship that will increase our capacity as brothers and as people. If the pandemic showed us anything, it is that people don’t like to be alone. Brooklynn closed her comments on this question by drawing a parallel to that idea. “Brothers don’t enjoy working in isolation, so we need to work together. It is the people in our chapter that push us to reach our goals.”

Improving brotherhood within the chapter naturally has consequences on the community around us and on the recruitment process, both for the better. Brooklynn reflects on the ways that the chapter has changed throughout the years: “It was nerve-wracking to think about how I would fit in with the different cliques and subgroups in our chapter. However, over the years I feel as though I and many other brothers have consistently tried to make newly inducted classes feel welcomed in such a loving chaotic environment by providing a special place in all of our hearts for every brother.” The key to brotherhood is empathy. It is essential that brothers meet brothers where they are at. As Brooklynn shares, applying empathy at the chapter level has changed her experience and opened up the chapter to recruiting diverse quality membership candidates.

The key to recruitment is a chapter that is bought into the values of KKY. Jack has noticed that after the pandemic, members are eager to reconnect with one another and excited to be at chapter in person again. It is simply a matter of involving members in the recruitment process that makes the difference. This recruitment season (2022-23), Vice President of Membership J Badillo (yes, that is his full first name) implemented chapter involvement in the recruitment process and in roundtable. The executive committee made a point of tying the eligibility of our potential candidates very closely to the values of our organization, which led to a greater emphasis and regard towards these values by active brothers. With an outlet for their energy, chapter members were great advocates and ambassadors for the Delta chapter. Jack agreed with this sentiment, stating that he believes a key aspect of the process is, “encouraging fellow members to help recruit… people. [You] can’t do it on your own.” J, Jack, and the rest of the executive committee have worked hard to emphasize effective communication, and this emphasis has led to greater success in the realm of recruitment. The brothers want to help, so providing them with outlets to do so results in an enriched recruitment process. By improving our brotherhood, the Delta chapter was able to extend that brotherhood to the community and was then able to draw in a quality class of new membership candidates.

Jack also wanted to emphasize the importance of recruiting in a diverse manner. It is critical that chapters expand their horizons and actively seek to recruit brothers unlike themselves. Jack wanted to ensure “we are not recruiting the same type of person over and over. Each recruitment season, [we need to] focus on diversity within the chapter and the new membership class.” When brothers are openminded during recruitment, it allows the chapter to recruit members with untapped potential—potential that may not have initially been interpreted as valuable, but after exposure, proved to be so.

Thanks to our focus on recruitment, we have sixty-eight active brothers and thirty-nine membership candidates. The size of our chapter has led to a lot of unique factors. Discussions can be long sometimes, but having a diverse scope of opinions in the room is valuable in a manner that outweighs the alternative. That said, we are not recruiting for numbers or a high score. It is true that managing many brothers comes with unique challenges, but as president Jack Swearingen puts forward, we are looking for candidates that exhibit the pillars of Kappa Kappa Psi. We look for quality candidates, and quality has no specific quantity attached. Jack has expressed that he never wants to cap membership potential because too many quality candidates should not be the only thing holding a quality candidate back.

Brotherhood is a tricky pillar to address because the path to improvement is different for every chapter, but all three members of the executive committee that we interviewed had some advice that has helped our chapter. J put forward that “commitment trickles down.” It is imperative that committed brothers and executive team members set the tone for the chapter. Members must step up and embody the traits they want the chapter to gain. Jack suggested that one way to promote brotherhood was to allow space for fun. Even as president, he proposes that it is important to balance business with pure fun brotherhood. Brooklynn reminded us that it was not a perfectly smooth road to work on brotherhood. “I believe that patience is a fundamental virtue for cultivating growth within your brotherhood relationships. Patience often requires that we persist despite failure.” It took a lot of committed consistent effort and sometimes, failure in that aspect to get where we are today. It was sometimes a tedious process, but it was worth it.