What I wish I said at my last Chapter as a sorority president
Almost two weeks ago, I held my last Chapter meeting as the president of the Beta Chi chapter of Alpha Omega Epsilon. I wanted to make a moment out of it, especially since this was my fifth semester in that role, so the night before, I spent an hour putting together a slide of pictures.
There were so many that it took that single slide at least ten seconds to load.
When we finally got through all the business planned for Chapter, I pulled up this slide to say some parting words. Even though I wouldn’t be leaving Cornell just then, being the president of AΩE had been such an integral part of my time on campus that moving on was taking me into a new stage of my life, post-presidency. I wanted to express that to my sisters with a speech, but I hadn’t gotten around to writing one the night before.
I’m very glad I didn’t.
You see, I don’t consider myself to be an outwardly emotional kind of person. Don’t get me wrong, I experience the whole spectrum of emotion, but I don’t feel that comfortable showing sadness in public (meaning I hadn’t cried in a few years). In fact, the last time I fully cried was my last softball game as captain, I my senior year of high school.
I should’ve known that my last Chapter would see the same kind of result.
As soon as the slide fully loaded, I felt my eyes tearing up. Not only that, but as soon as I started to form words, my throat started closing, clogged with the pressure of trying to hold back tears. It got to a point where I was so determined to not cry that I legitimately threw myself back in my chair, hoping that gravity could suck the tears back into my eyes.
I managed to croak out a declaration of love for all my sisters and the opportunity for growth and leadership that I’ve been lucky to have while serving as their president, but I didn’t say everything I wanted to say. I couldn’t. I looked around the room and saw so many eyes looking at me with concern and encouragement and empathy that it would’ve taken ages to find words to describe how grateful I am to have been a part of such an extraordinary organization filled with ambitious, intelligent, resourceful, incredible women.
Although a blog post written a few weeks later can never be enough to express all of the emotions I still have, here are some of those words I wish I said:
In the first few months of my Cornell career, I felt secure. I was making new friends, taking interesting classes, and learning to be independent. I was having the time of my life freshman year, until I looked around and saw how few women in engineering I could count among my friends.
This is not to bash the men in engineering or women in non-technical fields at all. I don’t need to share a major with someone to feel comfortable calling them my friend. However, when I’d already spent my high school career being part of the minority in my STEM AP and honors classes, I wanted to find my own community on campus.
I wanted to look at the faces in my engineering classes and not only recognize but also relate to the them.
That spring semester I went through rush for the co-ed engineering fraternity on campus because I thought it would provide me with the community I sought. Unfortunately, I ended up being cut in one of the final rounds, so that dream was dashed until the next recruitment period.
In the days following, I stumbled across Alpha Omega Epsilon, a chance find that changed the course of my Cornell career forever.
Although a chapter of AΩE did not yet exist at Cornell, the student I emailed gave me all the resources I needed to get the process rolling. I knew this wasn’t an endeavor I could take on alone, no matter the amount of free time I was willing to pour into it, so I posted everywhere, asking for fellow women in engineering who were interested in joining such an organization.
After dozens of interviews, I now had a core group of ten other women to work alongside me in establishing AΩE at Cornell.
It’s been two years since that photo was taken at our installation as a Colony on September 30th, 2017. Looking at us, I see how excited we were for the future—I mean, almost all of us were freshmen and sophomores, so we still had so much of our academic careers to live out. We couldn’t wait for the growth that the next semesters would bring, from getting installed as a Chapter to recruiting three more classes of sisters, and we were ready to take all of it on headfirst.
When our first recruitment season came, I was terrified. I had been scared when I posted the interest form for the Alpha class because I was unsure if AΩE was something my fellow women in engineering were looking for, but our first official recruitment period came with so much more weight. It was our first shot at publicity on campus, the first time we (and our national organization) would see if an engineering sorority was meant to be at Cornell. I had spent so much time with the ten other members of the Alpha class that I didn’t know how we could grow past that, how we would be able to mold ourselves to an ever-shifting group of young women with different goals, interests, and passions.
Then our first information session happened, and I presented to a packed lecture hall. Our first recruitment round was upon us, and we had to scramble to book rooms to handle the high quantity of potential new members we didn’t expect. At the end of that chaotic two weeks, we had tripled our size with 19 new candidates.
On November 4th, 2018, we were officially the Beta Chi chapter. It was something we’d all been pushing towards for so long and, after an eight hour workshop/ceremony, we were finally there. We had proven ourselves to our national organization and to the Cornell community that we were an organization worth joining and being a part of, that we provided a community that was needed. With the Gamma and Delta class recruitment, that belief was solidified even more. We’re now 51 strong because of that, and have gained so much due to every new sister’s unique personality, values, and enthusiasm.
I’ve never been a perfect president, nor will anyone be. I’ve made mistakes and have been lucky enough to grow from them. I know that my leadership style has changed since I was a freshman, and there’s something beautiful about that. Although I’ve been president for the same group of sisters semester after semester, we’ve all changed slightly, whether it was by switching majors, joining a new committee, or making new friends, and each one of those changes reverberated to the rest of the sorority.
Being the president of the Beta Chi chapter of AΩE for almost three years has been an incredible opportunity. It’s allowed me to be at the helm of history on campus, to be a founding member of the first and only social and professional engineering sorority at Cornell. It’s given me so many situations to grow and learn as a leader, a sister, and a friend. It hasn’t been without its fair share of challenges and frustration, but each of those moments proved to be necessary in the long run, to better myself and to better the organization as a whole.
Although there’s no way I could explain everything I’ve learned, here’s a quick overview of what lessons have meant the most to me:
There’s a right way to give criticism
Criticism is imperative for any group of people to improve. As president, I was responsible for the whole chapter, and therefore I was constantly jumping in and out of Slack conversations and meetings in order to get updates, ask questions, and give opinions. However, when people are as passionate about their projects as each of my sisters are regarding AΩE, I realized that the wrong phrasing can close someone off to your criticism entirely, no matter how helpful it may be.
That’s why whenever I give constructive criticism to someone, I try to make it just that: constructive. I attempt to phrase it in a way that emphasizes the current strengths, while also detailing potential weaknesses and ways I’ve thought of solving them. I give room for disagreement on the behalf of the other side, because being president doesn’t mean your opinion has to be held in the highest regard.
It’s still a work in progress for me, but these are some of the small steps I’ve taken to give constructive, well-thought-out criticism.
Getting honest feedback is the best way to learn what’s going right and what can be improved
As I mentioned before, being president doesn’t mean that you’re right 100% of the time. I have my biggest growth moments when someone comes to me of their own volition to give their opinion on a bylaw or event, whether it was something I spearheaded or not. Throughout the semester, I had an anonymous feedback form just for that—it would automatically ping the executive board Slack channel with information about the issue and where the person wanted it to be discussed (i.e. a board or Chapter meeting).
In addition to that, after my first semester as president, I sent out a semesterly feedback form and held one-on-one meetings with every sister in leadership. This information helped answer general questions about how connected sisters felt to the sorority, what resources they wish they had, and what events were helpful/not so helpful. The best part about having semesterly feedback was the opportunity for analysis. I asked the same core questions every semester to give data trends about how we’ve changed on each front, to see what overarching goals might need to be on the table for future semesters.
The best discussions happen when everyone has a voice
Chapter is the time where the entire sorority comes together, both to bond and to conduct business. When it comes to those business discussions, which can be on anything from our points system to what our merchandise should look like, I’ve tried my best to make sure everyone can feel comfortable expressing their thoughts. I know that there are naturally quieter people in the room or people whose opinions have already been said or people who aren’t particular to one side of an issue, so not everyone will always want to talk, but it’s been very important to me to make sure they feel like they can.
A few semesters ago, another sister suggested holding Chapter in a U-shape so that every sister can look at whoever’s talking. When we were just the Alphas, I used to start Chapter with a random question that everyone would answer, and I brought that back this semester. It’s important for committees to give updates on what they’re working on and wondering about, but that information didn’t always have to come from me, so I started calling on those sisters in leadership to give updates themselves. Simply hearing different voices over that one hour span can make everyone feel like Chapter is less like a lecture and more like a collaborative meeting, which is my hope.
No leader truly leads alone
The Beta Chi chapter is my baby, and there’s no getting around that, but like with any pet project (or even real human baby) there are things that happen that are out of your control. Last year, there was a time when I wondered why I even started AΩE in the first place if all it was going to do was devolve into the stereotype of Greek life, where there are cliques and unspoken rules and exclusivity. I started to retract into myself and in that moment, I knew I needed to take a step back, remove myself from the emotions, and lean on others.
I reached out to other sisters to hear their opinions. I talked to our Chapter Advisor to see the best course of action. I held a board meeting where the sole agenda was ensuring inclusivity, not simply implying it. I may have been president, but that didn’t mean I had to make the decisions by myself, especially when they would end up affecting so many more people than just me.
It’s been a long road, and now I’m finally at the end of my term. This isn’t a goodbye; it’s a hello to the next stage of AΩE. I’m so proud to have been able to call myself your president, and I’m even more excited to see what the next generation of leaders can do to our sorority.
To the 10 Alphas, 19 Betas, 8 Gammas, and 13 Deltas; to the underclassmen, upperclassmen, and alumnae; to the sisters whose paths would’ve never crossed with mine and the sisters who believed in me enough to join; to those who supported me unequivocally and those who gave me helpful, constructive criticism; to all of you who never fail to light up my day with a smile, a free bagel, a tug onto the line for free boba, a Vine compilation, a dinner on West, an arts and crafts project, a conversation at midnight in Duffield, a trek through the snow on Day Away; to all 50 of you who I’m grateful to be able to call my sisters:
Thank you for everything.
