Despite some loose bricks, we're a pretty solid foundation

This week's blog sort of goes along with the goals we outlined for ourselves last week in class. I'm going to g oin a reverse order and begin with strengths and ways to improve the community because I feel as though being on PHA exec. our main priority is improving the community versus our individual chapter.

Strengths of our Greek community: I think that as a whole we have a lot of unity when it comes to non-Greeks/outside personelle trying to put us down. Everyone knows we get a bunch of craps for specific stereotypes but that typically is only a select few and a good number of us like to show that we are more than just partying/hazing/yada yada yada. Also, another strength is our grades. We as a Greek community have a higher GPA than the rest of OSU undergrad which says a lot and helps to breaking the stereotypes.
Ways we can change: I think a big thing is having more respect from chapter to chapter within the community. Sometimes we get caught up in the "I only want to have socials with the best fraternity/hottest sorority". I know personally we had a tg with a fraternity who thought that my sorority was an academic one, not social, and none of the guys were excited to go. But once everything got going, the guys had a freakin blast and now we do a lot more with them. If we could just kick out those shallow thoughs runing through everyone's head, out community would be freaking awesome and more internally cohesive.

Strengths as a council: Our PHA council rocks. Period. We have an awesome group of girls for exec and for our directors. We have continual communication. We have an on-going brainstorming process of new and improved ideas of how to make everything bigger and better. We are close as a whole, but by the end of our year I can't even imagine what it's going to be like. I honestly feel I'm going to have some of my best friends when this is all said and done. We have much respect for one another and never put each other down.
Ways we can change: We have developed lots of goals and ideas so the best way for us to change is to actually enact them and get them implemented into our council and community!

Strengths of my chapter: My chapter has come a loooooong way in the past few years. I was blind to it going through recruitment, but we wre very disorganized and not a lot of unity was in place. But the past two years in particular we have had a bomb set of officers that have turned this sorority around. Change begins with good leaders and that is exactly what we have. Also, we have one of the more diversified chapters on campus which I love because let's face it, the real world is full of people not like you. Shocking I know, right? Another thing is our grades. We have significantly shifted our focus to the core values of our chapter, and one is grades which we have tremendously improved upon.
Ways our chapter can chage: Although we have come a long way, there's always work that can be done. We are working hard to break out of our little "cliques" that we have and branch out more. It's not that we don't like other people, we just get comfortable with routine and we want to change that up a little. Also, we are working on increasing the size of our already awesome philanthropy and trying to become more active on campus, outside the Greek community.

Welllppppp, there it is. My evaluation of our community, council, and my personal chapter. Improving is a process that can go on forever. However, establishing a solid core of individulas is the first step into enacting all of our possible changes and keeping our strengths in place and I do believe that our group of counicls is just those people to make great things occur over the next 44 weeks....and I'm STOKED about it :)