No Greek House Should Lose Another Member
September 5th 2015 was the worst day I’ve experienced in my four years at college. I woke up to my good friend and our chapter president, Ryan Drvol, saying that one of our members, Clay Real, had died. I’ve never felt so numb. I could see that my feelings were imitated by most of our eighty members as I joined them in the kitchen for one the longest days I’ve ever had.
Clay had been at a party the night before, went to bed, but then never woke up.
In the months that followed, our chapter was faced with a multitude of challenges: we were suspended by the University, our freshmen class forced to move out of our chapter house, 2500 hours of community service had to be completed and a reputation, that so many alumni had built for more than 100 years, was greatly damaged. This doesn’t even begin to explain the personal hurt that so many of our members and Clay’s family were dealing with.
We are still working through this tragedy, but in the months following, we quickly realized that this could have happened to any house on campus. We wanted to do something to make sure this never happens again.
We have worked with our Greek Affairs department and other Nebraska Greek students to start moving toward a safer campus, and we wanted to create something that would reach farther than just our campus. That’s where we came up with the idea of a campaign on social media. #BeSocialBeSafe
#BeSocialBeSafe
What is this campaign NOT about? This campaign is not about making FarmHouse look good. It’s not about earning pride for individual members. It’s not about a ‘good’ feeling from having posted something positive. It’s not even about making Greek’s look good.
This campaign is about Greek brothers and sisters making safe choices. It’s about no family getting a phone call as terrible as the Real family received. It’s about no chapter having to experience what FarmHouse has had to go through. It’s about not losing anyone else.
Each post highlights a FarmHouse member sharing what we’ve learned from the past year. If this campaign results in even one safe decision, that otherwise wouldn’t have been made, then it has been a success.
Our goal is for this effort to reach as many Greeks as possible.
Want to help? We’d love it. Here’s some ways to do it:
1) Share the posts. One of the easiest ways to help us is to simply share our posts on your personal page or your local Greek Chapter’s page. I’d encourage you to personalize it, why is the #BeSocialBeSafe message important to you?
Facebook: FarmHouse Fraternity University of Nebraska – Lincoln
Twitter: @FarmHouseUNL
Instagram: @FarmHouse_UNL
2) By being social. We’ve never wanted this effort to be about stopping anyone from being social. I don’t think people learn anything by telling them to just stop, or to make a bunch of new restrictions. I also think that college is a great place to learn to socialize and network, a valuable skill to develop. Life is a lot more joyful when you are surrounded by good people. So I encourage you to grab some friends and go get ice cream, head downtown, play mini golf or plan a party – just be safe when doing it.
3) By being safe. This is the big one. There are certain parts of our current college social culture that put our students in danger. Our social choices should never get to a point where we either ignore or don’t care about the safety of ourselves or our brothers and sisters. Don’t be afraid to step in when the need arises. I never want another chapter to have to experience the hurt of losing a member. A great resource to check out would be: www.fipg.org. If you have any questions about this please feel free to contact me at [email protected]. I’d love to talk to you about what we’ve learned.
I believe in the Greek System. I believe in the personal growth that college students can receive from fraternities and sororities, but I also don’t turn a blind eye to the general public’s negative view that fraternities and sororities have earned. I understand that Clay’s death has probably added to this reputation. But I have not yet given up hope in the potential of our Greek student leaders. I know our brothers and sisters have what it takes to move our Greek culture forward. I’ve already seen great changes being made on our campus, but we still have a lot of work to do. It’s not something for a few chapters to do, we need everyone to buy in. So let’s keep working. Let’s set the tone for our universities. Let’s show our campuses that we are the leading example of how to #BeSocialBeSafe.
Brennan Costello
FarmHouse Vice-President
