Citizenship

I must say, citizenship is not something I often think about. Even when I am doing something in the sense of "good citizenship," I am not fully acknowledging what this is or what this means. To be truthful right off the bat, I am not sure that myself, my chapter, or the Greek community at large truly embodies this "citizenship." Sure, we put on community service events, we have our annual philanthropies, and we try to 'bond' with the community at large but are we doing these because we have to or because we want to? Are we putting on these events and putting effort into fundraising for charities because we have a true connection to them and want to be good citizens who better our communities?

In terms of my own display of citizenship, I feel that I do display it within Delta Zeta and to my chapter members, but I do not feel like a truly active citizen within the larger society. This upsets me but I have never really reflected too heavily on it before. (Hillary Doyle won't stop interrupting this blog post. She doesn't understand the true meaning of citizenship and is acting in a reverse context. She is just sitting here drawing pictures of Kristen and uploading videos of her in a moon bounce on the Hillary Doyle Delta Zeta youtube channel. Sigh, some people!) As a leader in my chapter, I truly do look out for the interests of my chapter members and do whatever is within my power to see that all that I can possibly do gets accomplished. So do I have a sense of citizenship as an individual within my own chapter? You bet I do!

Does my chapter display citizenship within the Greek community? This could go either way. Citizenship is providing something to the community, giving back to the larger entity that you are a part of. While we do have philanthropies and attend community service events, but why do we do these things? Do we do this because we need to reach a number of community service hours each quarter to avoid fines or is it because we genuinely want to give back to the community? I do not want to generalize to all my chapter members however. Some genuinely do attend and host community service events with the intention of supporting their fellow Greek members and helping them raise money for their respective philanthropies. In terms of displaying a more meaningful, direct citizenship to other chapters in the community, I do not really feel that we do.

Does the Greek community as a whole display citizenship within the greater university community? I think that we like to think that we better the world and I am sure that some of us do. I am sure that some of us prove to be good citizens out in the real world, the world beyond fifteenth street, but at the end of the day, is that really what our Greek community is about? Or is our Greek community one that cares more about partying and being paired with the cool kids for Homecoming and Greek Week?

This blog prompt  is a hard one to tackle because I do not like making generalizations. I certainly do not want to lump the entire Greek community together under the one umbrella of general statements (statements that I must say are not that endearing). If any Greek members are out there displaying citizenship to the wider world, it definitely would be the members of this class. For leaders within this chapter are more than likely leaders in other organizations as well and carry their philosophies of leadership with them on a day to day basis. The original assignment for this class was to go out and change the world. On the first day, we set about trying to find ways to better the greater community. Surely we can do this but it is hard to mobilize such a large, diverse group of people. It is ever harder for the greater community to want to accept our 'help' and 'citizenship' if we continue to make fun of them for being 'GDIs,' or not being like us. It is hard to think that a group of people who use such words seriously would really want to go out and put effort into bettering the world around them.