When will we stop competing against each other and start working together?

Now we see everything that's going wrong 

With the world and those who lead it 

We just feel like we don't have the means 

To rise above and beat it 

It's hard to beat the system 

When we're standing at a distance 

So we keep waiting 

Waiting on the world to change 

It's not that we don't care, 

We just know that the fight ain't fair 

So we keep on waiting 

Waiting on the world to change 

Discussion during class was interesting... and I finally realized how frustrated I really am with how much sororities/fraternities compete with each other instead of actually working together. John Mayer puts my feelings toward the Greek community and its level of collaboration into concrete words. As a community, I feel for the most part we want to work together, but we don't. It's not that we don't want to change the way we interact, no one really starts the movement or not enough chapters jump on board. Chapters might want to build better relationships but might run into frustrations with their council. It's not that we don't want to implement change, it's that every time someone has tried, it has never truly succeeded to the point where the entire community is involved in the success or change.

Sororities compete with each other fiercely during formal recruitment with the best themes or decorations by keeping everything secretive. Fraternities compete to increase their membership as well... holding as many recruitment events as they possibly can in the beginning of each quarter. Wouldn't every chapter of each council flourish if we all shared recruitment "secrets" to make the process less stressful and artificial on the Greek side and make it more about the potential new member... arguably getting more members that more accurately match the right organization? 

Alpha Chi has collaborated many times in the past, and even the recent past. As a chapter, we worked closely with IFC and pulled of an incredible Walk A Mile in Her Shoes. FIJI, Fuzzie and Pi Phi put together an incredible cancer awareness program just a week ago. Why can some chapters collaborate effectively with one another, but we can't expand it to a community-wide collaboration? What is the factor that keeps us from truly working together in an interconnected network to really push Greek life to the next level? I mean, sure, everyone in their heart believes their fraternity/sorority is the absolute best organization. Why else would you have joined it? What is it about our identification with our letters that is preventing us from working with others with different letters? Can't being Greek be enough of a unifying factor to have Greek members work together on all levels (council exec, chapter leadership, and general membership)?

Ohio State's Greek life isn't truly collaborative. What could we accomplish if it was? We won't know because we are too busy waiting on something else about our system to change....