Here - Sigma Alpha Epsilon 78th John O. Moseley Leadership School

in the words of our leadership school founder
I have been asked by the Eminent Supreme Archon to tell in a paragraph or two how the idea of having a training school for
chapter leaders originated and grew. That is a difficult assignment. Most movements are the outgrowth of an intense practical
experience in the furtherance of some cause and are generally born in frustration. Speaking broadly then, I would say
the school began in the disappointment of a program fixer who was charged frequently with the responsibility of arranging
schedules for fraternity banquets, conventions and other such meetings.
Always the question would obtrude, “When can we find time to have that talk on chapter leadership or the Model Initiation
or the discussion about the Ritual” The answer usually is that you can’t, not because the time isn’t there but because social
and legislative matters, and even propaganda, crowd the program, and the average alumnus doesn’t know that active men
care about serious things.
So I decided that if the day ever came when I could have
a wish, my first choice would be for the chance to sit down
for a week with the leaders of the active chapters and take
plenty of time to talk the fraternal side of fraternities. Some
of my friends said, “It will be just another convention; all parties
and sessions and no time for the thing you want to do.”
Others said, “Take a chance.” I did, and I am glad.
I’ll always take a chance with youth. When a man loses faith
in the coming generation, there is nothing left for him to
hope. There in Evanston, by the shores of Lake Michigan,
in our beautiful Levere Memorial Temple, a group representing
and typical of the American college fraternity man
assembled and, in sober, contemplative, leisurely, zealous
quietude, discussed his problems. I have seen just such a
group at many a convention during the past 20 years. I am
convinced now that youth is plastic. If hilarity is the thing, he
goes to it with a will; if study and discussion be the order
of the day, he makes his elders step to keep up. Leadership
and environment will triumph. This is the hope of the world.
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