Building Balanced Men

Yeah- I wasn't kidding in class.
Our mission statement is 3 words.

It was officially changed last May from "Building Balanced Leaders for our World's Communities" to the three worded: "Building Balanced Men". Funny story about the change: we were doing a mission statement activity at BGLI and myself, along with the two brothers working as group leaders, were thrown off when we saw the three worded statement on the wall... we actually thought that BGLI had made a mistake- nope... our mission statement had changed since we left columbus.

The Balanced Man ideal comes from an initiative created by our national fraternity in 1991 to attempt to eliminate any opportunity for hazing. Bye bye pledge model hellooooo Balanced Man model. What does that mean? Instead of a "pledge" process- SigEp has single-tiered membership. Upon accepting my bid I was a full member. We have to work our way through three challenges: Sigma, Phi, and Epsilon. Upon accepting your bid you go through Sigma ritual, then after a quarter or so, once a member has sufficiently learned local and national history of both our organization and greek life in general, you interviews for Phi- if you "pass" the interview- you go through Phi ritual and become a Phi- Phi is a much longer challenge made to make a SigEp into a Balanced Man having both a Sound Mind and a Sound Body and after learning the true meaning of our cardinal principles: Virtue, Diligence, and Brotherly Love. After you think you have become a Balanced Man, you interview for Epsilon... now... I was downstairs studying during an Epsilon interview tonight- I couldn't hear what they were saying... but the interview went on for 2 hours. We take becoming an Epsilon pretty seriously. Why? Because Epsilon ritual (after "passing" epsilon interview) contains all of the remaining secrets not part of Phi or Sigma rituals...

That's right... I've been a member of my chapter since January 15th and I have not "gone through ritual". I couldn't tell you what our symbols mean... because I don't know. I like our system- it ensures that a brother has proven themselves as a SigEp man and is ready to go through ritual to understand why being a Balanced Man is so important.

The Balanced Man symbol (and the pin for Sigmas and Phis) looks like this:

Our pin (when becoming an Epsilon) looks like this (you may have seen it on my laptop):

Colors: Purple and Red
Flowers: Violets and Roses
Crest:

Check this out: the new asics commercials are based on the Balanced Man principles of our fraternity- the guy in charge of the ad campaign was a SigEp alum



Eh- who needs a long mission statement when three words can cover so much right?