on openness and community building
from the perspective of my fraternity, but easily generalized
ATO is open in the same way that America is open. It was founded by people who realized that they had a lot in common. People who empathized with each other over a shared distaste for certain dogmas. It was open in the sense that it was the antithesis of the close-minded incumbents. People bonded over being open to new ideas. They established a society around this sense of openness: a place where they could set their own rules and do things a little differently.
For everything that has ultimately become great, there exists some period of time during which openness played a pivotal role. Openness is the fertilizer that allows incredible communities — and eternal friendships — to form. Great communities, through experiences worthy of lore, continuously define the values that members choose to live by.
Just as companies and nations go through various stages of growth, fraternities evolve and change with the times; else they fade into oblivion. As ATO solidifies its identity, members naturally become attached to their interpretation of our values; fearful of losing that which makes this place so special.
The most common — and often fatal — oversight is assuming that openness and “who we are” are one and the same.
Openness both creates and destroys communities. Low barriers to entry increase demand, but decrease retention. We assign value to things as a function of the time we’ve sunk overcoming the barriers to get to that thing. Openness brings people together, but it doesn’t necessarily keep them together.
It is the responsibility of a society which has deemed itself confident enough in what it has become to transition away from the openness it was founded upon.
We need to be a little more closed and exclusive now if we want to maintain the legacy that we’ve built. We want a cohesive family that gets along, helps each other out, and feels comfortable together.
Maintaining the value of brother- and sisterhood will, more often then not, look like being exclusive and elitist — the opposites of open. However, they are actually critical to boosting morale and excitement — from both members and guests — around ATO events.
All of the above is just to say that, perhaps by revisiting the decision to identify by our openness, we will discover that we’d be better off creating some sort of structure around our parties: systems, guidelines, and restrictions on who we invite and let into our house.
I’d suggest we seriously look into a ticket system for parties. This is an important way for us to have leverage over curating the kinds of vibes that we want at our parties — both big and small. It would help ensure that ATO is, for many, their favorite and go-to place to party on campus; not just a reliable plan B.
Hosting mixers will become a more regular and less awkward thing for us if we build them into this kind of structure. We could have parties that open up at a certain time to people with regular tickets, but invite those that hold one of “the golden tickets” to a special pregame mixer extravaganza.
The pregame will naturally fade into the party, setting the mood as we start opening the general admissions doors. The pregame allows the membership to actually get to know some of these people before the party becomes chaos. And then the party grows, as it naturally should, but only after members have had a chance to “mix” during the pregame.
The general admissions tickets are the most open our parties would get. This way we know that everyone who has a valid ticket actually cares about the house, probably knows a lot of us, and will bring good energy to the party. It’s ultimately up to the discretion of the people working the door to decide if someone can come in, and whether to begin letting people enter without tickets.
I think this would pave the way and allow us to do some really innovative things, socially. ATO will earn a reputation as a place people genuinely love spending time. ATO as a social gathering spot touches far more people than ATO as a membership does. Both are equally important communities. We want our members to have fun and our guests to have fun. (The two often end up being codependent.)
