"Perseverance" - Alvin Chen - Spring 1998

When I spoke at the Spring '98 initiation banquet, I described the theme of the semester as perseverance. Though the TBP chapter was riding on a large wave of enthusiasm,a number of unforeseen circumstances made the semester more difficult. Various obstacles required the officers to put in extra time at a moment's notice, but we were able to pull off many successful events, regardless of the personal difficulty. As I mentioned, TBP had a very energetic officer corps and a motivated group of candidates. We began a Bent polishing event that semester, building up a sense of community within the Cal Tau Bates and working on a sense of pride in TBP membership. The event lasted all day, and we had officers, members, and candidates staying around for long hours to help out and to simply congregate. That they were proud to see TBP's symbol gleaming surprised a number of them.

Events like Bent polishing were the key to TBP's growth. We could have members and candidates feeling a part of some larger organization, whether they dropped by our table at E-Week or flipped burgers for us all day long. I really tried to build on Tai Ping's drive for community, and we managed to pull it off, despite unexpected personal problems, event cancellations, and other strange circumstances.

Finally, seeing the large group of energetic initiates at elections prompted me to push for a major changeover in the officer corps. Many of us had been involved with TBP for years, and it would have been easy to stay on as officers Knowing that the 2000 convention was approaching, I wanted to fight additional stagnation, so I asked continuing officers to consider stepping down from their positions while staying involved as members in the next semester. The new officer corps saw a great number of new faces, as well as the return of initiates from semesters past. This semester, various members managed to attend random TBP events, though some of my suggestions for getting members more involved were not fully implemented. Hopefully, as we build a greater sense of community within the membership, being an officer will no longer be seen as the only way to stay involved with Tau Beta Pi. I think that we're already moving toward this situation, but it would be good to keep this momentum going through the 2000 convention and beyond.

--Alvin Chen, alchemy@po.eecs.berkeley.edu