Old Gold Soul :: The Diary

I don't generally write about my fraternal experience in my blog. It's a rather personal thing to me and most of the time off limits. However, since my fraternity has been mentioned so much in the past few weeks lately, I wanted to share with you why I chose Alpha and how Alpha chose me.

My mom is a Delta. One of my earliest memories of my mom's life as a Delta involves me seeing these weird symbols that looked like they COULD be letters of the Alphabet, but not quite. I asked her what they meant and she said "Delta Sigma Theta -- my sorority." I'm sure I asked he what a sorority was and she probably said something like "A club just for women and girls." That was enough for me.

Later, when I transferred to Keene Elementary School, I noticed that sometimes, different teachers would wear t-shirts with the same letters on them. So I would go up to them and say "My mommy is a Delta!" and their ENTIRE demeanor changed. This one teacher, Ms. Gilchrist, had to have been the meanest lady I had ever met to that point. Well, not mean, but definitely not a friend, lol. She smiled SO WIDELY when I told her that. Well, this other teacher that was with her, Ms. Washington (the first grade teacher, not fourth) said "Oh, so you're gonna be a Que?"

Ms. Gilchrist said "YOU BETTER NOT BE!!!!"

Confused, I went home and asked my mom what a Que was. She said it was a fraternity, Omega Psi Phi.

Neat-o.

In high school, I was exposed to Greek life more, mostly through teachers. And let me just be honest -- teachers at Coolidge were PRESSED! Not all of them, but there were always a handful that just took it too far. (I found out recently that one of them is a licensed vendor for their sorority!)

By too far I mean the art teacher (who happens to be frat) made door signs for all the teachers with their names in really big letters. Instead of the school colors, he made them in that person's sorority colors. So it's like mentally, the "battle lines" were drawn in the sand any time a kid walked around the school. And (in my 14-year old mind) all the "cool" teachers were Deltas and all the bitchy teachers were AKAs.

Which actually wasn't always true -- Ms. Griffin was one of the strictest teachers in the school (higher level math) but she was so down to earth. She was also the Athletic Director and, at the time, Vice President of the Federal City Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta. Whenever we had short periods (45 minutes as opposed to 90 minutes) we knew a GREAT way to get out of doing real work. (Too bad she's moved on up in the world and isn't in the classroom anymore, I'd tell all Coolidge kids to try this out.) This plan was great when more than one student was on board:

Random student: Ms. Griffin, what does that elephant mean?
Griffin: That's one of the unofficial symbols that means I'm a Delta.
Student 2: A sorority? Don't you have to be HAZED to be a member?

Well, the hazing conversation always set Ms. Griffin off into a tangent about Greek life. It was GREAT! We wouldn't NEVER get work done on those days. We'd do the warm-up and that was it. Okay, so that didn't happen all too often, but she taught us some really good life lessons and ALWAYS told us we never ever had to be hit in order to be someones frat or soror. So responsible, that Ms. Griffin.

Then we had the AKA teachers. Let's just say I ain't like them too much.

We had more Alpha teachers than anything else, but there were only two, and frankly, I thought they were a little saditty. No, not arrogant. But saditty. We had one Que, one Kappa, and one Sigma. To be honest, the Sigma was the absolute coolest man in the school. He was the track coach, Adrian Dixon. Everyone love him and his wife Alice, who teaches business classes.

Anyway....gosh, you know how long my stories are.

So the Alpha/AKA teachers used to always plan this step show and they ONLY invited AKAs and Alphas! I thought this sucked and was blatantly biased! True, they were just exhibitions and not all-out step shows, but come on -- I was sick of seeing Alphas and AKAs at our talent shows. What about the Deltas? We liked those teachers better anyway.

So, when I became class President, we had our own talent show and we invited the Alpha Chapter Deltas and Ques. Well, in 1996-97, the Deltas were just beginning their four year suspension, so they were out. But the Ques were down! Let me tell you, those were some of the greatest guys I had ever come in contact with in my youth. They were all about mentoring youth and making them feel like yes, YOU can go to college and yes, YOU can be what you want. They were laid back, but still about business. They used the opportunity to really "Uplift" the youth.

Some cool dudes from Alpha Chapter took me under their wing as I made the transition from high school to college. Although I was at Georgetown, I knew that La'Mont Geddis was only a phone call away. And in fact, when I had an issue with one of the white boys at Georgetown, I really think I had to keep La'Mont FROM coming to campus to beat his ass. I was like "Naw, please stay at Howard, I am cool!"

So Freshman year, I am bitten by the brotherhood bug. I know that being part of a black fraternity was for me! I wanted that unconditional brotherhood that I saw the Ques from Alpha chapter exhibit toward one another. So logically, Omega Psi Phi was the first organization I researched -- and I researched it HARD.

By the end of my freshman year, however, I knew that Omega wasn't for me. There were lots of reasons why that was, but mostly, it just wasn't in my heart. I wanted brotherhood, but not necessarily theirs. Had I been in another place at another time, maybe.

All in all, and no offense to the Greeks who were at Georgetown at the time, I just really wasn't impressed. I didn't see them doing much on campus, so I couldn't make a decision on where I felt most comfortable. And forget the hype -- you can't make a life-long decision on a fraternity based on a website. So I was like "Eh, maybe a grad chapter."

When I least expected it, Alpha Phi Omega, the national service fraternity came into my life. That's another story all together, but the point is that I had finally found something to fill my time, to create brotherhood with a diverse group of people, and new people to socialize. And of course, performing service that I didn't physically see other Greeks performing, though I believed they did it.

APO and school took up lots of my time, so my "quest" for a black fraternity was postponed.

Okay this is too long now, the rest will have to be in a Part II. Maybe later!