Building Phi Delta Theta
Brooks Raiford recalls his participation in the founding of the NCSU chapter of Phi Delta Theta and the challenges associated with establishing a new fraternity.
Interview on 2012-04-27 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
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Well, one of the activities I got involved in early on
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was I was part of the founding group of a fraternity here,
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Phi Delta Theta fraternity,
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so that took a lot of our time. We were creating from scratch
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a chapter of a fraternity and part of the reason for that was
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there were already nearly two dozen fraternities on campus
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but a lot of students who were involved in student leadership in one fashion or another,
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who knew each other, a lot of us were friends anyway or at least acquaintances,
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wanted to start something that was new, that would be unique to us.
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One of the advantages of joining an existing fraternity is it's already in place;
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one of the disadvantages is you inherit whatever baggage or reputation, for ill or for good,
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that it may have, and we wanted to really do our own thing.
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It was a great experience. I think doing things like that really help you in your professional life later,
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which you don't think about at the time,
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but you have to organize a lot of the business side of an organization
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if it's not already in place. You're creating the by-laws, you're establishing the rules of the road,
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you're establishing recruitment policies and procedures, you're establishing eligibility for membership,
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you're helping set standards on what kind of people you're looking to bring in
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and how broad or how limited that's going to be.
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You are trying to build out a reputation for being strong not just in one area, like academics or sports,
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but to be really strong across the board,
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and we were able to do that very early on, so we won a lot of awards and campus recognition in the early days,
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sort of set the standard for ourselves and an expectation, and it was compelling
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to have the opportunity to do it and see the fruits of our labor pretty quickly.
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So I'd say the last thing on that is you learn very quickly that you can't be irresponsible for long
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because if you are you're letting down an entire group of people.
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If you have a job to do and you don't if affects others,
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sometimes financially, sometimes in terms of their calendar,
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sometimes in terms of their just general expectations of what they think is going to happen,
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and it doesn't take too often of making the mistake of falling down on the job
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to quickly learn that even at a young age being responsible, being reliable,
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following through on details and so on, is very important and those are terrific lessons in general.
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.
