Talk:Lambda Chi Alpha

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Baird's vs Paedagogus

I just got ahold of a copy of Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities, I found that its information disagrees with mine slightly regarding figures figuring into the TKN merger. From Baird's: LCA had 78 active chapters, TKN had 37 before the merger. After the merger, the united LCA had 106 chapters. (Note, that the online source at lambdachi.org repeates my 105 chapter number. So... now what? Does someone have to count? : / )

Answer: There were campuses that had both Lambda Chi Alpha and Theta Kappa Nu chapters (though some were closed at the time of the merger). On those campuses, the chapters had to merge into one chapter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.209.140.20 (talk • contribs)

Yes, my rather unclear question is about the 106 number from Baird's and the 105 number I had and that was repeated by IHQ.  — gogobera (talk) 05:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Also of note, Baird's says, "Lambda Chi Alpha, a fraternity based on democratic and progressive principles, was founded at Boston University November 2, 1909, by three students who had been affiliated with the local Cosmopolitan Law Club, established 1905." It then goes on to talk about the early chapters and early history. It then mentions specifically, "...Dr. John E. Mason, who almost single-handed rewrote the ritual and redesigned the coat of arms, badge and other emblems. Samuel Dyer of Maine, Louis F. Robins of Brown and Albert Cross of Pennsylvania are also honored as early workers whose contributions were especially distinguished. It is in recognition of the services of these men that the fraternity celebrates as Founders' Day march 22 of each year, the day in 1913 when the revised ritual and emblems were officially adopted."

Note that it doesn't mention Warren Cole, whatsoever. I would imagine that is an artifact of it being the 1949 edition of Baird's. I seem to remember Cole got kicked out for a while and that he was reinstated later (posthumasely?). That info should probably be in the LCA article. Does anyone know the full story? Have sources?

Lastly, Baird's mentions a few more good dates, but no information that isn't available elsewhere. It makes me wonder if all the NIC fraternities (is there a greek leter society Wikiproject for this sort've thing?) should have two pages such as: Name_of_Org. and History_of_Name_of_Org.. Vijay 03:01, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Now that I'm rereading this I'm reminded of my curiousity. What was the deal with Cole and his getting kicked out? Am I halucinating this stuff?  — gogobera (talk) 05:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Updated NEW Coat of Arms

Noticed that the coat of arms was recently deleted from Wikipedia, probably due to improper fair use abuse. I have uploaded a version I created some years ago for the Phi Tau undergrad chapter website I once maintained. Hope this helps. The page looked drepressing without it! Wrightchr (talk · contribs) 17:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The Coat of Arms is currently be created and standardized in a vector format by the Lambda Chi Alpha Graphics Committee (made up of Alumni), helping Jason Pearce and Chris Barrick at LCA Int. HQ. I would imagine that a .SVG file will be available when it is complete. Jeff R. 13:41, 26 April, 2007

Hopefully, it will have a black lion rampant, as the coat of arms is blazoned… — gogobera (talk) 01:33, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Third most men ever

Taking a peak over at the NIC page, it seems that even 250K would put LCA in at #4 these days, behind SAE, Sig Chi, and Sig Phi Ep. Thoughts?  — gogobera (talk)

I agree, also KAPsi was founded in 1911 and with 105,000 members is at 17 on the list. I edited the page to reflect that we are the youngest of the 15 largest and currently at #4. That means we need to initate 12,000 guys this semester, so get out there and rush!Airpear 17:40, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

'True Brother' Initiative

I don't have a lot of information on this summer initiative, so what I add would not amount to much. Does anyone think we should create a new setion regarding "True Brother" Initiative (ie the fact Impact's no longer being certified, fraternity eductation now truely lasting past the AM period, new rituals, etc.) Albert109 17:59, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Someone added a bit on True Brother, and since I don't like to remove things others have added, I reorganized it and added a tag for additions. It would be great if anyone had some real details that they could add.Airpear 19:00, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

An anon added that True Brother is a "direct copy" of the Army's seven point value system. The odd spacing, anon IP, and single sentence contribution made me assume vandalism; however, it seems that it's just poorly integrated into the article. The army does in fact list seven values: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage.[1] So, unless the Army took it from us… (-:  — gogobera (talk) 19:02, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I integrated the comment.Airpear 13:26, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Lambda Chi or Lambda Chi Alpha

I think Lambda Chi Alpha is more appropriate than just Lambda Chi.Airpear 14:27, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

48th or 50th edition citations

Gogo, you took out the citations I had added to the 50th ed of the paed in stead of just changing the citation to the 50th ed. I'm going to undo and correct the changes.Airpear 14:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

You can't do that: They are not the same book. The 50th was a major revision. The page numbers are not even similar between editions, and neither book contains all of the information that the other does. I've corrected the problem. — gogobera (talk) 15:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

The places where I added information and cited to it is from the 50th ed of the paed online. I removed any edits I had made to the 48th edition citations.Airpear 13:06, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Of course, they are. Sorry. I've grabbed a PDF of the 50th, and I'll check to see what info can be cited from it. It would be best to cite info from a source that's easilly publically available, anyway. So, well, it's more work to update the citations, but I hope it's worth it. — gogobera (talk) 13:54, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Chapter List

I took the chapter list off of the page because the chapter listing has it's own page. It is pointless to have the chapters lsited on this page while there is also a page for the chapters alone. Acidskater 10:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Lambda Chi Alpha isn't the youngest of the 20 largest social fraternities. I don't know for sure who is, but AEPi for instance is 11th largest and was founded in 1913

Mottoes

Would we like to see our Greek phrases written in their original polytonic greek form? Most browsers display it correctly. I'm sure some older browsers won't, but I don't have any to test with. For reference: Λάμβδα Χῖ Ἄλφα, and Χαλεπà τà καλά. This is how Jack Mason and Warren Cole used them in our coat of arms and in letters to each other and with other brothers of the fraternity. The polytonic form of Greek was simplified to a monotonic form (fewer accents) in the ’80s, but is still used (in Greece) by some who consider the change a break with tradition. Of course, it also used by anyone studying the Ancient Greek literature our mottoes originate from.

Per Crucem Crescans and Vir Quisque Vir are Latin and, as far as I know, are correctly displayed. — gogobera (talk) 01:58, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Per Crucem Crescans and Vir Quisque Vir are correct. Origionally for TKN it was Vir Quisque Vir Est. but the est. was dropped, because it was unneeded. I don't think that it is necissary to add the polytonic form of the greek phrases, but I do understand your argument. I just think it is unnecissary.Airpear 13:21, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

My understanding of the TKN motto, was that it would be more correctly translated as "Every man is a man." Whether "est" was dropped because it was redundant or because it was a better translation of the desired English, I do not know. — gogobera (talk) 22:24, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Est is not required in Latin in some circumstances. I have forgotten the term for it, forgive me the last time I took Latin was 6 years ago.Airpear 14:37, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Copyright

This is the discussion that has been going on in my chat page. I believe it is more relevant here.

A lot of your recent edits are good; however, a significant number have been lifted directly from the IHQ site. As far as I'm aware, IHQ has not released this text under any licence. As such, and until we can get confirmation otherwise, I'm going to revert the edits that I believe infringe on copyright. For more information, please see wikipedia's copyright page. Feel free to continue this discussion here, rather than breaking it over onto my talk page.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by gogobera (talk • contribs).

It would help if I knew who you were.Airpear 18:52, 14 August 2007 (UTC) I have seen your revert and undid it. A reversion is extreme. Edit the text that I have added. Anything from fraternitymanuals.com is under a creative commons license. As far as anything from lambdachi.org it may be licensed under creative commons, I am not sure. Either way a revert is extreme and undoes a signifcant ammount of editing and work unrelated to the offending sections.Airpear 19:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC) Sorry, I was in the process of writing out more of what I was thinking after I realized I hadn't signed my comment, but hadn't finished before you posted. (In the future, you can use the page history to determine who a comment has been left by, even when unsigned). I agree that a reversion is extreem; however, reusing copyrighted material is expressly not allowed on wikipedia, due to its illegality. I would have prefererd to retain all the other excellent work, but I was unaware of any way to do that without going through manually removing entire chunks of the page. I felt it would be easier to re-add the good edits, rather than risk leaving in copyrighted material.

On the other hand, I was unaware that the Paedagogus was on <FraternityManuals.com>. That site is run by Jason Pierce, a Lambda Chi working with IHQ. Anything on that site, then, I would presume has been officially released under the CC Wiki licence. Anything written on <lambdachi.org> is not, though. (Note the copyright 2001 notice on the bottom of all pages.)

Unfortunately, I believe that much of the history section of the Paedagogus is also posted on <lambdachi.org>, and not in a "way that makes clear" that it may be reused under any licence. This conflicts with the terms of the creative commons licence and puts the text in a questionable legal position. And, after checking it out, while there is a link to the 50th edition PDF, it doesn't seem to actually be available.

Seeing as you believe that a revert is "extreem," please remove the questionable text until it can be confirmed that it has been released under a license compatible with the GFDL. — gogobera (talk) 19:31, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

There's no 50th edition PDF, but there is a plain text version. I guess we can leave the text up there. The next step is to entirely change the tone from "informational brochure published by LCA" to "encyclopedia article written about LCA". — gogobera (talk) 23:04, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

The 50th ed of the paed is available as a .pdf and as a wiki. The link on fraternitymanuals is bad, but it is still published. As to the copyright on the website I believe it applies to the site not to the content but Jason would have to answer that for me. I believe that it has been released under Creative Commons.Airpear 01:27, 15 August 2007 (UTC) Here is the link to the 50th ed paed on fraternitymanuals.com: http://www.fraternitymanuals.com/images/3/31/Paedagogus50th.pdf.

I agree that all the history section needs to be rewritten, but truthfully I have looked at the page so much that I can't think of different wording at the moment. My paed and my history are all packed up for moving so I can't reread them and I don't have a copy of the Expositor to read. I would like for anyone so inclined to rewrite the sections, but try to add more detail than is currently there. Eventually I would like for us to be a featured article and that will require substantial work.Airpear 13:48, 15 August 2007 (UTC) For the time being I will finish up the list of chapters page.

Improving our ranking

I would really like to see us improve our ranking, but to do so we need to better format the page and include more information. Our history is almost non existant on the page and we have very little information of substance. I just looked at AKA's page which is up for review and they have a much fuller page. A lising of former Grand High Alphas would be a start. I would update the page, but I'm in the middle of moving and my history and paed are packed up. EM1843

Having spent more time reviewing other greek organization's pages we lack a clear organization to our page. We should begin with an introduction followed by a history page. We need a detailed narrative of our founding and growth. The TKN merger sercion should be incorportated in to this. I would suggest the following time periods: Founding, TKN Merger, Post War, Transition to Associate Membership. We also should high light the programs we have developed in the past such as LEAP, Leadership Seminar, and now the TBI. SigEp has a detailed description of their Balanced Man program and PIKE highlights PIKE U. EM1843

Brothers,

I changed up the organization of the page to flow more smoothly and added some additional information from lambdachi.org's history page. I hope that we can fill out the rest of the history section and then begin working on expanding the other sections. I hope you all like the changes that I made. EM1843 Airpear 17:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I have changed up the name of the rose and updated our colors to the 2007 standards announced by Lambda Chi at http://lambdachi.org/publications/graphics/2007colors/default.asp. I also tried to start rewriting the history sections that I pulled from HQs website. I can't seem to get a good image of the badge or AM pin but I think they should be added with a brief discription and images. If anyone can pull the ones from the logo sheets they look really great. [User:Airpear|Airpear]] 18:42, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

If no one has any objections I am going to increase our page rank to a B. I can't get any meaningful commentary from the project and I believe it warrants at least a B if not A status.Airpear 20:22, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Number of Chapters

The front page of the article insinuates that LCA has over 300 chapters (having chapters at over 300 schools). Because fraternities tend to be sensitive about where they rank in terms of size (number of chapters or initiates), I think it would be best to qualify this statement, so I have added text indicating this this number (300) includes inactive chapters. I hope everyone is okay with this. QuinnHK 21:41, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The front page doesn't insinate anything. LCA does have over 300 chapters. Further in the article there is a link to a list of chapters that describe which chapters are currently active as well as a reference for why a chapter is closed if one is available. This list is more through than any other fraternities list. If anything the intro is not the place for a description. Either the number should be changed (which would be inappropriate, because they are still considered chapters) or there should be no explanation.Airpear 00:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

When the NIC or FLA talks about the size of fraternities, chapters generally refers only to active chapters. Saying that LCA has over 300 chapters is misleading. Even the LCA website (http://www.lambdachi.org/fraternity/) qualifies what they mean by 300 chapters: "...and has held subsidiaries (called chapters) at more than 300 universities." QuinnHK 19:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Cleaning up the talk page

If no one has a problem with it I would like to clean up the talk page by removing any discussion that is more than one year old. If something is still relevant we should keep it.

You may want to consider archiving the page instead of deleting. Subpages keep all the info available. There's a sort've unspoken (as far as I'm aware) idea that nothing in Wikipedia should be lost, so either subpages or permanent links are necessary when you archive old info.

But yes, the page is a bit cluttered. If it's bugging you, by all means, clean it up. — gogobera (talk) 15:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I created an archive page and have added MiszaBot to auto-archive anything over 180days old. If it doesn't work correctly I will delete the bot. I am also going to add an archive box length. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Airpear (talk • contribs) 13:46, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

Sections to Update

Below is our list of current sections along with if I think they need editing or not. Feel free to comment and if you would like to work on a section put your user name next to it.

1 Creed (no work needed)

2 History (needs lots of work)

2.1 Founding

2.2 Expansion

2.3 Theta Kappa Nu

3 Associate Membership and Fraternity Education (needs lots of work)

3.1 Associate Membership

3.2 Fraternity Education

3.3 Hazing

4 True Brother Initiative (will need more work, but will have to wait until we have more information)

5 Symbols (needs more symbols added e.g. the seal)

5.1 Brotherhood Badge

5.2 Associate Member Pin

6 North American Food Drive (needs to be completely rewritten) Airpear 23:15, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

7 Notable members (no work needed)

8 Chapters (no work needed)

8.1 Chapter locations

8.2 Chapter naming

9 Headquarters Locations (I'm not a fan of the website used but I think this can wait)

10 Notes and references (no work needed)

11 External links (no work needed)

Airpear 21:00, 29 August 2007 (UTC)