Our Mission

Phi Gamma Delta's Mission Statement is:

Phi Gamma Delta is dedicated to developing men of character within the academic setting, with the aim that they will become fully contributing members of society. In pursuit of this mission, the Fraternity promotes five core values:

Friendship, which brings us together and is the basis of our brotherhood.

Knowledge, the primary reason our members attend college and the key to a fuller, richer life.

Service, in recognition of our obligation to give back to the campus and community that foster our growth.

Morality, our commitment to do what is right in all our relationships.

Excellence, the achievement of the full potential of the chapter and the individual members.

There are definitely ways in which my chapter is both congruent and incongruent with our mission statement.

Friendship: In my opinion, friendship is by far the easiest core value to live by and there is a simple reason for this: friendship is fun. Brotherhood/Sisterhood is one of the main reasons why college students join Greek life. Having that special bond with a group of people you can't EVER have with anyone else is something appealing within itself. I think that our chapter exemplifies this value very well and this is a strong way in which we are congruent with our mission statement.

Knowledge: This is one of the things most of our chapter values above all else. Knowledge is something that is very important in the life of a FIJI. Having a strong, academic background is something that is very important to our chapter and gaining knowledge is something important that can never be taken away. The drive to constantly be learning new things and being intrigued by the world around us is another strong example of how our chapter is congruent with our mission statement.

Service: Giving back to the community around us is something that is emphasized a lot throughout Greek Life as a whole. Philanthropy is a way to actively work together in order to do good for others and help improve the community around us. In our chapter, we have constantly been working over the past year to make our philanthropy event bigger and better. We do a Rivalry Run with the FIJIs in Michigan the week of the OSU/Michigan football game. This requires all of our members, along with their members, to run the game ball from one stadium to the other. Our chapter has been fundraising for almost a whole year for this event. We have also recently changed our philanthropy to the Stefanie Spielman Fund, an organization that is a staple within the Columbus community in order to give back to the local community.

Morality: This is definitely one of, if not the, hardest value to live by. This commitment to always do what is right is hard. It is constantly testing us as individuals, as well as a chapter as a whole. Having a strong sense of morality helps to guide us to live our lives in a dignified manor at every moment possible. Now, obviously people make mistakes and sometimes better judgement is lost. But, morality is more about living up to and learning from your mistakes. It is about making the right decisions whenever you can, and when you make that mistake, realizing that you did, fixing it to the best of your ability, and learning from it.
 

Excellence: Excellence is about living life to your fullest potential. It is about doing the things you do well. Excellence is about PASSION. Excellence is not necessarily about being the best at everything, but being YOUR best at everything. It is about commitment to anything you do, whether that be academics, extra-curriculars, jobs, social life, etc... Being excellent is about doing something with the highest intention of doing it to the best of your ability. Excellence is probably the hardest value to constantly work towards. It involves a level of commitment that many people are not willing or wanting to put into EVERYTHING they do, but I believe that when you strive for excellence in every aspect of life, the rewarding and fulfilling feelings are well worth it.

Quote of the week:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Aristotle quotes (Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scientist and Physician, 384 BC-322 BC)

freerice.com

I'm sure most of you, if not all, have at the very least heard of Freerice.com, if not been to the website. This website was the first thing that came into my mind when I saw the blog prompt for a very simple reason - they got straight to the point. For those of you who don't know much or really anything about Freerice.com, here is some history. When this website started in 2007, it asked users vocabulary questions that would progressively got tougher with the amount of answers the user got correct. In exchange for each correct answer, rice was donated to the World Food Programme. The website was donated to the United Nations World Food Programme in March of 2009 and they launched an updated version of the website last month, expanding the question asking to other subject areas including math, chemistry, and art.

I chose Freerice.com because there values are very clear and simple. This website was founded on two main values: promoting education and helping others. Freerice.com is promoting education by providing a form of free education to everyone and anyone willing to accept it. The website started out by helping users expand their vocabularies and even adjusted the word difficulty based on the level of the user. Freerice.com has shown its commitment to free education by expanding the choices on their website to include other subjects. They are also helping people around the world by trying to end world hunger by providing free rice to those who need it.

Clearly, educating people and ending world hunger are two things that Freerice.com is PASSIONATE about. Their website is based on a very simple concept, but it works. This focus on their passions has allowed Freerice.com to be extremely successful, donating over 83,000,000,000 grains of rice to date! Now, if you haven't picked up on this yet, you should use one of my many links to Freerice.com, visit the website, and earn some free rice while your procrastinate through your studies.

Quote of the week:
"Continue to surprise those who would put you in a neat demographic. Be insistently curious."
-Dr. E. Gordon Gee

What Are My Values and What Do They Mean to Me?

Passion

Loyalty

Morality

Balance

Passion is probably the value that is most important to me and this is for a very simple reason - if you have no passion for something, then why are you doing it? I love to continually ask myself and others "Why?". Why do I ask this, you say?? Because I am very passionate about passion and I am curious as to what others are passionate about. I think that you can learn so much about a person through what their passions are and some of the best conversations I've ever had were while discussing others' passions. I love being able to see the fire in people's eyes while they are discussing the things they love doing. Passion is something that I have found is a common bond among many students involved in Greek Life. There are so many people who are bursting at the seams with passion for their chapter and I love that. 

Loyalty is probably another obvious, yet important value. Loyalty is something that I take very seriously. Loyalty to me means much more than just the task of keeping someone's secrets. It requires a delicate combination of friendship, dependability, and honesty. Being loyal means being there for someone when you are needed as well as when you are not needed. It means exemplifying friendship throughout the fun times, being dependable during the tough times, and being honest all of the time.
 

Morality is a value that is often more behind the scenes. Unlike passion and loyalty, morality is not something that you are constantly displaying to others. To me, morality involves personal decisions you have made about how live your life and how you choose to interact with others and the world around you. Having a strong set of morals is something that helps to keep me leading the life I would life to live. It is  constantly tested through all of the choices you make. It can be anything as simple as picking up and returning something to someone that they have just dropped on the street. It can also be something as tough as trying to always be honest with your parents or saying no to peer pressure.

Balance is also on my list of values because I think that balance is important to living a healthy lifestyle. You can't have too much of one thing, whether that may be good or bad. Balance is about being able to get your work done and they being able to let loose and relax after. Balance is about having a good set of values that works together in order to help you get the most of what you want out of life. Simply put, it's about being sensible, yet taking a risk. 

Doing this blog post reminded me of a video I saw a couple months ago. It is a video from The Stefanie Spielman and the James and I really love the emphasis on passion in this video and I would encourage all of you to watch the video and take away some of the phrases in this video and try and see how they fit in with your values and how it can be applied to everyday life.



 

Finally, I would like to end with a quote. I'm a huge quote person, so I am going to try and end each week's blog post with a sort of  quote of the week.

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

-Calvin Coolidge (30th President of the United States)

A link to share

As I was bored in class this morning, I decided to go on my phone and check twitter to see if anything caught my eye. While perusing through the tweets, I saw one that said "A must read for all Greeks" so obviously I read it (thanks to Kristen Rupert for the find!). It was a link to a blog called "Fraternal Thoughts" which I am sure some of have heard of. I loved this post and I definitely think it is something everyone should read and I encourage all of you to also read it.

http://fraternalthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/10/knock-on-fraternity-house-door.html

I found this post to be very inspirational and I think that it is something through the midst of recruitment could help bring people down from pedestals they may have built for themselves. It is a good way to help people stay open minded and focus on the person and their values, rather than their appearance, culture, socioeconomic status, etc..

HOWEVER, something that really disturbed me was an anonymous post from a self-proclaimed "strong" woman. She commented on this blog saying,

"I think something that should be added to this is "I'm a woman." I am a current member of a CO-ED Fraternity. I am not in a Sorority, I am not in a Frasorority. I am in a FRATERNITY, and I am PROUD OF IT. Because only strong women pledge Frats.

Other than that, I love this article :)"

Now, I really don't like to rag on people. I don't want to throw more hate and bickering into this world. But, this woman is severely ignorant with her argument. This blog post mentioned the speaker being neither a man or a woman. She is incorrectly assuming that Fraternity automatically means man. I don't think that she is aware that most sororities use the term fraternity in the name of their organizations. So, if she wants to add "I'm a woman," it would only be fair to also add that phrase subbing in man, transgender, neither, and all of the above. I think that she is as degrading to women as chauvinistic males are, if not more degrading. She blatantly undermined the value of ALL sorority women because they are in sororities. I guess she is a stronger, more valuable asset to society because she is mighty enough to have pledged her co-ed "frat." I am more than happy for her to be proud of her fraternity, I just think that she could use a little less ignorance in her thought process. I'm sure that somewhere beneath the degrading and name-calling, there was once a good thought, but it definitely didn't show.

Who am I and how do I want to change the world?

Hey Everyone!

My name is Elias Nader, Eli for short. I am a third year Psychology major. I was born and raised in good old Cleveland, Ohio. For a little insight as to "Who I am" I guess my interests and hobbies would probably be the way to go. In my spare time, I like to play soccer, run, cook, and play cards/board games. I also love traveling and "the arts." I am also a member of FIJI (or Phi Gamma Delta).

I would like to change the world by being able to enlighten people about different cultures. In my opinion, there are many people that are ignorant about other cultures and make certain assumptions about those cultures. I would love for people to want to learn more about others and really gain an understanding into the lives of people around the world. In addition, it would be even more ideal for fortunate people to want to help those less fortunate in the world. I would love to be able to take part in this myself and then also be able to share my experiences in order to encourage others to do the same.