Implementing Social Change

Although I was not one of the presidents who decided to place a ban on tabs at socials, I was involved in implementing this change.  During Homecoming Week, our president had to go home for family reasons.  She asked me to keep an eye on things, especially our social events.  She had received some information that there was going to be a private party with one of our partners, which would break PHA rules.  While she had squashed the first one, she had received a lot of backlash and believed there would be attempts for more.  She was right.  I had to stop a large group of girls from going to a house so it would not be seen as an AOII party.  Furthermore, we had a social at a bar later that week at which our partner decided they were going to have a tab.  Although our social chair had told them tabs were not going to be used, they still had one and we had to try and get our girls to not use it, which was an extremely difficult task.

I was hassled by the girls a lot at the time because they didn't understand why they couldn't go to the party and why they couldn't use the tab.  Looking back, our president had never clearly explained to them the reasons why before I had done so those nights.  Of course the girls would resist, they thought they were simply being told no for no reason.  I felt like such a bad guy, like a party pooper, because I was ruining one of the most fun weeks in the quarter by telling them they couldn't party the way they wanted to.  After Homecoming Week, we asked Sharrell to speak at chapter to help explain these decisions.  The girls asked a lot of questions, but afterwards they understood the decisions and had brainstormed ideas to prevent these occurrences from repeating themselves.  I learned that sometimes people are unaware of your reasoning.  When I receive resistance in the future, I am going to make sure that people are aware of why I believe things should be done this way.  This gives them the opportunity to see my side as well as the opportunity to work out a compromise.