Prompt 2

"What are your values and how do they define you? Where do they fit in terms of your council’s values? In terms of the community’s values?"

Here are my values in a bullet form:
-revolutionary leadership
-community
-service

I feel that these three values have become more meaningful with my involvement with Greek Life this past year. This past year I was President of MCGC (Multi-Cultural Greek Council and the main purpose that I had was to build community. The reason that I wanted to create community in MCGC was due to my experience in MGCA (Mid-America Greek Council Association, now AFLV,in February 2009 and UIFI (Undergraduate Inter-Fraternity Institute)in September 2009. Both of these experience brought me close to individuals from different councils and I wanted my council to experience the same kind of bonds with other councils. Along with the friendship that I established at these leadership conferences was that I was able to develop my leadership skills and gave me time to reflect about my values.
The reason that I value revolutionary leadership is that it does not support the status quo. Being a person of color and not having much it terms of social-economic status, I looked up to activist within my community that were outspoken and challenged others. I would even say that my personality has always been one that wants to challenge the process and be the trail brazer. At these two conferences I realized that I needed to embrace this quality of revolutionary leadership and create change within the OSU Greek community.
To me community has always been special to me because I was not only raised by my parents and other members of my extended family, but by mentors and friends. Without these mentors in life I would not be in college right now and not overcome the different challenges that I have had in my life. As for my friends they helped me get through the bad times and even housed me when I needed help. With this type of background I have always valued community over individualism. I do not like the word individualism that much in than I believe it is a concept that we over emphasize in our American society.
Throughout my lifetime service has been encouraged through the various organizations that I have been apart of, but I have always been self-motivated to take part in service due to my value of community. As a member of the community I should hold myself responsible by helping others.
My three my values are compatible with the mission and goals of council, but I would say that revolutionary leadership is not clearly articulated in our bylaws and Constitution. MCGC is a new council and is experiencing its growing pains by developing new policies, adding new chapters, trying establish itself as a strong governing council, and becoming relevant to Greek and OSU community as strong student organization. As a young organization MCGC is has the great potential of developing into a premiere organization at OSU in the future, especially with the trend of many multicultural Greeks increasing nationwide. With a strong foundation and excellent leadership MCGC can have a strong impact on the OSU community.