Initiation Curriculum Lesson 5

At the beginning of the meeting, administer QUIZ 4 to the initiates. As with the previous quizzes, have several Brothers on hand to grade these and return before the end of the meeting.

For this week’s lesson, there are two online resources that chapters may use to help teach Robert’s Rules of Order. The best way of course is to model proper use. Teach the basics and help the initiates master that before you get into the complicated aspects of parliamentary procedure. You want them to feel comfortable with it and motivated to learn more about its usage.

Phi Sigma Pi’s Parliamentary Procedure Guide has information regarding voting on initiates. If you choose to provide this document to initiates to learn from, make sure you have removed those pages before doing so. These pages can be given to the initiates following inductions or at the beginning of the next semester – a session should be planned to review Initiate voting procedures with the entire Brotherhood at the beginning of the Initiation program.

Readings from The Scholar's Province:

• Parliamentary Procedure (pg. 55)
• Alumni (pgs. 57 - 60)

Suggested Activity

As the program comes to an end, the initiates have had enough exposure to understand what the fraternity is about and what it means to become a member. The purpose of our organization is an important statement and all members and prospective members should be familiar with it. If the chapter has not given to each initiate a copy of the most recent National Constitution, it should do so now. This document is the foundation upon which our fraternity is organized and structured…in order to be a well informed member of Phi Sigma Pi, it is essential that initiates be familiar with our governing documents. Some chapters have chosen not to share this document with initiates due to a misunderstanding that it is for members’ eyes only- this is false.

Recap and Preparing for Lesson 6

The activity for the week following this lesson will be for the Initiates to review and learn Phi Sigma Pi’s purpose statement, which can be found under Article II of the National Constitution. Independently, they will be asked to reflect on their experiences and write out a personal statement on what Phi Sigma Pi means to them. You may suggest they write their own purpose statement or re-write the purpose statement based on their experiences. There are many ways in which this exercise can be carried out – feel free to explore it with creativity. This can provide insight into how the chapter is educating prospective members. It is not ONLY an evaluation of the initiate’s preparedness to become a member, but of the chapter’s ability to educate and mentor. This last point should not be taken lightly…because a poorly written statement or false assumption of what Brotherhood means reflects poorly on the chapter more so than the initiate.

The initiates should all be familiar with the actual statement though as it will be included in the last quiz set and is part of the national examination.