Stand for Sigma Nu in 2020
Conversation
By Drew Logsdon (Western Kentucky)
For many, this time of year holds a special place in our hearts as a time of celebration, recognition, and reflection. We celebrate the ending of a year and the coming of another. We celebrate all that we are grateful for. Many of us celebrate the great moments of our faith, while a good number of others take part in other cherished cultural traditions. Perhaps most of all, we celebrate the thought and firm belief that man is not forsaken and that we have only grazed the edge of our true potential in this great world. We celebrate our achievements, reflect on our losses and failures, and recognize that the start of a new year marks the start to a world of possibilities for us to reach what Past Regent Joe Gilman (Morehead State/Georgia) described as Semper Ad Altum – Ever Higher.
With the year now behind us, it is also appropriate that we celebrate our great Legion of Honor. This great brotherhood has stretched across generations and continents and has not only lived another year but has thrived to push us into the start of another.
But we should always recognize that much is still to be done and accomplished.
As we celebrate 151 years of our great fraternity, we remain confronted with those who tear down the foundations of human decency and respect to replace them with malice. The cultural ill of hazing that plagues our society’s organizations and teams exists under the false premise that one should be subjugated to another. It is a premise that has been debated many times and defended out of ignorance. As members of an organization built upon the principle that men should no longer be beholden to the whims of children (for the perpetrators are far from anything else) it is our duty to lift the veil of ignorance and shine a light as bright as our beloved White Star on the damage and destruction that hazing causes.
Let us reflect on Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol, specifically the foreboding warning that the Ghost of Christmas Present extends. He reveals a boy described as ignorance and a girl described as want. “Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”
Ignorance is our greatest foe in this new year. It is from ignorance in which the resolve of those who would disingenuously call themselves Knights of the Legion of Honor is fostered. They are our true traitor knights. They take our solemn oath to stand for our values of Love, Honor, and Truth, but they do not embrace those values in their hearts or minds. They speak of Love as they silently watch their candidates suffer torments and juvenile pranks in their distorted version of “pledging.” They speak of Honor as they distort themselves in what they believe the lowest common denominator thinks is popular. They become so focused on gaining fleeting recognition from social media that they forget why fraternity exists in the first place. They speak of Truth as they dishonestly wear the letters that so many before them have given soul and spirit to preserve.
It is also in ignorance that we find our doubters and nay-sayers who demean the fraternal movement and view only the weaknesses of a few while casting a blind eye to the strengths of so many. They view a world without fraternities and sororities as one free from all the social ills they see, but they do not see how fraternities and sororities are the furnaces in which the steel of values, citizenship, leadership, ethics, and the lifelong ties of lasting and loving friendship are forged. But we have not washed our hands in this struggle, for those who have wronged our values have given the critics the stones to cast from their glass houses.
I challenge every member of our great and distinguished brotherhood to reflect this season and then stand.
Stand for Honor and live up to the worthiness of the oath you took upon your initiation and never cease to remind yourself of them.
Stand for Love in a world that has far too few examples of it and volunteer at a local community service organization to assist in erasing want.
Stand for Truth and challenge those who would dishonestly wear the letters of Sigma Nu while they exemplify all that we do not stand for.
These actions do not require a great deal of effort. They only require that you do something.
It is unlikely we will ever reach a utopia, but if that remains our end destination then each year we shall come closer and closer. And a world closer to that destination today is better than yesterday.