About the Author
Keith D. Garcia currently serves as the Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life at the Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Garcia also teaches within the Leadership Minor at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and travels the country supporting campuses, fraternal organizations, and community groups in tackling issues related to leadership from a lens of justice and equity. He holds a master’s degree in educational administration – student affairs from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the City University of New Yori. He is a member of La Unidad Latina, Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity, Inc., serving on Board of Directors and as a representative to the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations.
Transcript
Dr. Rafael Matos (RM): This what we’re talking about: freaking out. We’re exploring topics that maybe we’re freaking out about but probably shouldn’t, or things that we’re underestimating, and maybe we should make a big deal out of. So today I have here my friend and colleague Keith Garcia, to give us his perspective on the topic of change. Keith, why don’t you introduce yourself?
Keith Garcia (KG): Hey first. Thank you, Rafael, for the invitation. Grateful to be here with you and happy to contribute to perspectives. It’s the place that I wrote my first article professionally in the field, so I’m happy to be a part of it. My name is Keith Garcia. Utilize he, him pronouns. I am fortunate to serve as a director of fraternity and sorority life at Northwestern University. I am also a Hermano of La Unidad Latina, Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity Incorporated and currently serve as the president of our Gamma Zeta graduate chapter in the city of Chicago.
RM: Fantastic, fantastic. Well, welcome Keith. Today, we’re going to talk about change, which is a topic that all of us have to deal with, right? We talk about the pandemic, how it’s changed the industry. So whether you’re on a campus or working at a headquarters, change is something we’re constantly dealing with. So let’s get into it. You’re going to talk to us about change. So what is your position on change?
KG: I think one of the things that I learned early in my career, particularly as a graduate student who had to navigate I like to remind folks that I had four supervisors in four semesters of graduate school, that the only constant is change. And so many people are understandably sometimes hesitant or resistant to change. I think our field and all of the things that come with like rich tradition in fraternity and sorority life and things of the sort lend themselves to a pretty strong aversion to change. And so I think my position is that, like we need to not freak out about change, and that folks need to and indeed, if they want the fraternity and sorority experience to continue to thrive and be a relevant experience to new generations of students and ever evolving collegiate context, they need to embrace it and the things that come with it, and lean into understanding what it means to be a fraternity or a sorority in the new world in which we live, post pandemic, evolving demography shifts on college campuses, evolutions and how students readily and outwardly identify those are all things we should be working to embrace. So I think that we need to stop freaking out about change and cultivate an environment where it’s a more welcome aspect of our experiences.
RM: So thank you for sharing that part. So that’s very, very interesting. I definitely see it on the headquarters side right. Like, change can be a scary thing, but as you’re talking about freaking out and just people just having these responses to change. Like, what are some examples you can give of like when you when you see people freak out about change?
KG: Yeah, I think the most ready one that I’ll just name it, and it kind of captured everyone’s attention very recently, given the discourse that was happening at Alpha Phi Alpha’s (Alpha) convention is change around policies as it relates to gender in the context of fraternity and sorority life, right? Or what it looks like to be inclusive along the lines of things like trans and queer identities, gender expression. You know, fraternity and sorority is a pretty CIS het (hetero) space, and the idea that we should be considering or making space for the diversity of how people express their genders or how they identify in the context of these pretty rigid definitions and perspectives on fraternity, sorority, I think, I think that, for me, is probably the one that is most relevant, telling about other aspects of how people struggle with change, and how it speaks to some of the things that people freak out about, right? As it relates to the situation with Alpha, I remember having a conversation with somebody who was telling me that, you know, they struggled with the idea that, you know, Alpha was going to allow trans membership, because so much of how they described themselves was rooted in these notions of like mankind and and those types of things, right? And so I’m like, Yeah, then create an expansive understanding of what that means, right? Like, it doesn’t mean abandoning who you are and who you serve. It means broadening your understanding of who falls under that umbrella. You know, somebody was just like, how would you feel if LUL no longer used Hermano to describe its members,right? Like, isn’t that a point of pride? And I shared readily. I was just like, listen, I while I understand and can appreciate where you’re coming from, I don’t share the same concern. I know that I have brothers who do right, brothers who be like, What do you mean? We’re not going to use Hermano, or how we spell it, or how we talk about it, might change. I don’t share the same concern, but I get where they’re coming from. I think you have to do the work of helping people to understand how to expand their imagination about what it means for those aspects of change to permeate their orgs. So, you know, I think campuses, depending on where you are, I don’t want to say every campus, but I think campuses have been better positioned to be able to try to support that type of change, just because, you know, we aren’t the arbiters of membership, right? That’s a decision that gets made in the context of an organization, but I understand why it’s a challenge for organization staff to reconcile with that, but I want to give kudos to like the groups who have done that work, right? You know, arguably, culture based fraternities and sororities and like NALFO and NMGC and in spaces like that have been better positioned. I think the relative youth of those groups lends themselves to their ability to kind of lean into change in those ways. I get that it’s a more difficult politic in an NPHC context, or it’s a more difficult politic even in an IFC or Panhellenic space. That doesn’t mean because it’s difficult, you don’t do it and you don’t try to make the the change part of who you are, but like kudos. I remember when LUL was exploring our policy around gender, consulting casually with Stevie Tran about how the language we used looking to what SigEp (Sigma Phi Epsilon) did when they decided to make a change about language as it relates to their membership. And you know, I remember when Alpha Chi Omega affirmed a different kind of approach to inclusion as it relates to gender in their context, and people freaked out and were like, I can’t believe that this is what we’re doing, but the fact that there was room for them as an organization to say readily, I’m going to look up what their motto is, because I think it’s Real Strong Women is what Alpha Chi Omega says is, yeah,they say Real Strong Women is who they are, right? As Alpha Chi Omega. It’s dope that in the context of Alpha Chi Omega, Real Strong Women includes trans women and non binary folks, right? So those are, those are some of the things that I think are the most ready examples of, like, where people really freak it’s, it’s, oh my god, we’re changing what gender means, to an extent, we’re also expanding our understanding of what gender is and the fact that these constructs are meant for us to interrogate them more regularly.
RM: Yeah, thank you for sharing. I think that that is such a great example, because I think it I think we can say that we’re okay with change, but I think when you talk about a subject like that, that it then it forces us to really dig deep into why. Why is it we can change certain things, but maybe this we don’t want to change, and you start to touch on some of those things for this particular topic where we talk about inclusion of transgender individuals, right? And I think in general, you mentioned a few things. But what are some of the reasons you think that individuals may fear change, right? Or organizations or campuses may fear change and may freak out about it.
KG: I think a lot of times people are concerned about what they don’t know, right? So, like, if you don’t have proximity to either, in the case of folks whose gender might be different than yours, you don’t have regular proximity to trans folks. You don’t have regular proximity to queer folks. Or in the context of experiences, I didn’t go through that that feels or looks different than the thing that I experienced, it’s okay to have curiosity and maybe a level, a minute level of skepticism of what the implication or impact of that might be on something you hold really dear, right? Like we all love our fraternities and sororities, that’s why we’re so intimately involved in the experiences associated with cultivating, cultivating them, and in fact, where you meet the most resistance is from the people who are deeply committed and involved and want to be there, right?
But I think that that that, and I mean this generously, the ignorance and lack of proximity to those individuals or experiences is often the cloud over the opportunity for change. It’s like, it’s going to rain on me if we do this, I don’t want to get wet, right? Like, no, you know, there’s, if it rains on you a little bit, that’s okay, right? There’s, there’s a bit of a dew point in the parade route. You’re going to be fine. Um, you’ll build the same resiliency that everyone else has built in the context of these groups as they’ve evolved. When our organizations went from small, campus based organizations to national and international networks, and how we experience growing pains. We went through all of the things that show that if we want to be the organizations we say we are, if we want to serve the communities we say we want to serve, then that might include folks that we haven’t thought about including in the past. But you know, I get why people might be fearful and why that lack of proximity or just ignorance, general ignorance, or somewhat innocent misunderstanding of people’s lived experiences might have it’s still important to lean into it. It’s still important to think about what it means. Because honestly the biggest concern I have, the thing that we probably should be freaking out about, that we aren’t, is what it means to remain stagnant as fraternities and sororities while the world continues to turn, right, I’ve seen the impact of fraternities and sororities, lack of desire to move on issues that the generations of students who populate our organizations care about. So this, this being among them. So it’s just one of those things where I’m like, I’m more afraid and I think we should be freaking out more about not changing than I am about us freaking out about change itself and what that change might entail.
RM: Yeah, absolutely, I think sort of reminds me of the work I do at Medill and teaching students and studying your customer base and how you then upgrade your business to sort of meet the demands of your current customers. And then that tends to be a hard framework for us to think about, because essentially, I’m selling you a product, right? I can’t put it on the shelf, but this is what I want you to have, and you gotta, you gotta upgrade and make adjustments to it to meet the current demand. So how do you then pivot to overcome this fear of change? And then a follow up to that would be, how do you then you pivot, you overcome that fear, and then how do you prepare your organization or your campus, you know, whatever your enterprise is, to be able to adequately make the change you’re seeking to make?
KG: Yeah, I think one of the things, so I was fortunate to contribute a chapter to the book Moving Cultural Based Sororities and Fraternities Forward. And the subtitle is Innovations in Practice, right? So like, clearly, I am committed to the concept of doing things maybe differently than we historically have. And the chapter that I did was about attending to intersecting identities and culture based sororities and fraternities. And one of the examples that I talked about was this, right, like, how are you examining the notions of gender within the context of your organization?
How do you do that? Right? I think one, we all exist in an educational context, and I know that in the world we live in today and the climate that we navigate, we navigate people’s perceptions that their opinions are factual statements, we still have a responsibility to educate folks and to engage in the educational enterprise associated with educating people about what it is that we’re looking to change. Right? You can’t move past things, or you can’t move around things. You have to move through them. So as it relates to addressing fear, I think curiosity like, what are your concerns? What is the thing that has you resistant to doing something different than the way we’ve always done it, and meaningfully working to try to address that concern. I also don’t think it’s appropriate, or, quite frankly, smart strategic, to disregard people’s fears. You know, knowing why someone fears something, understanding what the premise of their fear is is actually incredibly useful information when trying to help someone move through their concerns, showing people that you care about the things they have to say, Listen, it’s hard for me when I have to have conversations with folks about strongly held positions I have and they think differently than I do, and it’s easy to devolve that dialog. It’s so easy to to maybe make them a caricature of ignorance or a lack of education. It’s a lot harder to hold a bit of empathy to try to open up myself to hearing things that might make me uncomfortable, because maybe they feel bigoted, or they feel targeting, um, but again, if my intent is to try to help somebody navigate their concerns about something that I honestly understand, like it really isn’t that scary, and if we can get you to the other side of not being afraid of this, we can have a conversation about what the change is going to actually look like and what It might be to to do it, you gotta, you gotta expend the energy there. So, you know, I think you, you have to invest in understanding why people are, are afraid of the thing, what are the underpinnings there? What’s the context? And that doesn’t mean you have to agree with why they hold their fear. That doesn’t mean you have to necessarily validate why they hold their fear, but having that information means that you now know what tools you might need to utilize to effectuate change. And so you know once, once you have that, then you move in the direction of saying, well, listen, I understand this, and I can appreciate these concerns, and so as I think about what it looks like to make this change, I want to directly address those things, and I want to speak directly to what that means. And you may or may not appreciate the answers that I have right some of the answers may still frustrate you or upset you. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to go in this direction. It means you might trail us a little bit behind as we make these changes, but the invitation for you to join us along the way is there and it’s open, right? And I extend the invitation for you to continue to inform how we think about this, for you to be shoulder to shoulder with us as we affect change as we do the work, but keeping that door open for someone even as they maybe struggle with what that change is, I think, is another critical piece. So you know, for for me at Northwestern specifically, I think about what we’ve had to navigate in the course of the past four ish years right post pandemic, navigating abolished Greek life and people’s opinions about the fraternity sorority experience information was and continues to be my greatest resource and tool. Right when students are like, we should get rid of fraternities and sororities because they’re irredeemable. They can’t change. There’s nothing that you can do. Reform has failed. I’m like, well, that’s not true, and here’s countless examples of how fraternities and sororities have pivoted and made change that’s meaningful. Here’s where those intransigent issues you feel strongly about exist, and I want to acknowledge those. And here are examples of where those things exist beyond the confines of this experience. And I think that if we want to work to address those issues, I agree we should partner to address them, but displacing them from this place and just having them happen in another place is not a sufficient response for me.
And in my view, it’s not a great – it doesn’t account for what gets lost, right? So when students are like, get rid of Greek life. I’m like, I see what Fraternity and Sorority Life has done for. For my students, I’ve seen the challenges that come with this experiences. I’ve also seen all the other things that have made it so that a student can persist. Have made it so that a student feels a sense of belonging. Has made it so that a student literally survives and continues to live in challenging experiences and contexts. So, you know, information has given me a really great kind of grounding in my ability to have those conversations, you know. So making sure that you can share that, that you can tell your story, that you know how to navigate the narratives that people might have about what the change might come with are important, because if you can’t, you know, the storytelling aspect of this, the narrative part of this, the helping people to understand what it is, what you’re going to do and what you anticipate as a result of what you’re going to do, all that matters. Because again, the more you can demystify that other side of what change might look like. You know. So if people want to know what happens in a world where you allow trans membership, here’s what it looks like. Here are examples of fraternities that have already done it. Here’s where they’ve made some changes, and here’s where they did it. Here’s where that has benefited them, and here’s where it’s created some difficulties. There are so many examples, and all the credit in the world to the ones who wade into the water with no example about how to make that change, but particularly as it relates to like this subject around things like, you know, trans identity, queer identity, like making here are the examples of what it looks like for an organization to continue to thrive as it continues to evolve and become a more inclusive context for folks. So, you know, I think you the first part is you. You invest in understanding people’s fears. You invest in understanding what the underpinnings of that are, you leave the door open for their ability to continually engage and to express and communicate to you where they’re uncomfortable as you continue to affect that change, I think it’s important that you are affecting the change, and you do the work, and then you demystify what those things are for folks. Again, we’re in the business of education, right? Like, here’s what it looks like, here’s what we’re learning. Here’s where we have an opportunity to learn more. And, you know, maybe that opportunity to learn more gives us some recalibrating that we need to do, but we’re going to continue to kind of turn the wheel so that those are the things that I would think about.
RM: I agree with you. The hardest part, right, of doing this work is having to understand the other perspective that I’m actually arguing against, or maybe on the opposite side of, because it entails I have to develop or understand, but I do agree with you, right? Like, if I know why you think two plus two is five, it’s, I mean, agree with it, but I sort of understand the path you took to get to that point, then I can help you understand, actually, for right? And I want to oversimplify, but I do like that, right? And that’s a very important point to highlight from here. And I like the telling your story, because I think that’s what helps to humanize something and and and if you whatever that change is, I think when you make it more human, more accessible thing, people really can get behind it and be supportive of implementing that change. Well, what are some closing thoughts that you have in terms of, how do we make a change? How do we really overcome this fear of change? And how do we make change and a regular, normal thing, right? Normally in quotation marks.
KG: I think one of the things that I’ve been having some conversations around so we are in a particular timeline in our country, as we approach November, and a lot of people have a lot of opinions about what fraternities and sororities can or should or shouldn’t be doing in this timeline, and I’ve engaged with another organization outside of work that’s deep in the weeds as it relates to this, but specifically in the context of fraternity and sorority affiliates, and working with fraternities and sororities more readily. And one of the things that I’ll share is that what all we’re asking people to do, right from the perspective that I’m I’m engaging in, is to take ownership of who they say they are. So you say you’re a leader, you say that your organization leads, that it’s on the Vanguard, that it’s here to be of service, that it’s here to commit in particular ways, to the advancement of the communities that we represent. Awesome, step into that. I need you to because if you wont someelse is going to fill the vacuum, and again, I want fraternities and sororities to remain relevant, having conversations with those folks about how the changes that we’re seeking, or how this need for them to assume leadership is rooted in who they are is rooted in the principles that they espouse, is not divorced from the tradition of the organization, but in fact, is evidence of that traditions continued existence. Um, are, are some of the things that I would challenge people to consider, right? You know, I think about Panhellenic organizations, and I think a lot of times they get a really bad rap, because on social media, they can be presented sometimes as really frivolous experiences, right? Admittedly, I hate things like Rush Tok, etc, and what they come with. But the reason why I’m such a champion for the sorority experience and the Panhellenic one, more specifically, is because I understand its roots, right? Like I understand what it grew from. I often challenge Panhellenic women I work with to remind themselves that their organizations or women’s empowerment groups, right? Like you exist in service of creating a context where women can thrive in places where they were not thought of when those contacts were developed. Don’t lose that. Don’t lose it, because it is not only a grounding force. It is also a driving force. If you can put what change is going to look like through the ringer of the context of your organization’s principles, who you say you are and who you want to be, I’m almost certain that nine times out of 10 that change is going to come a lot easier to you than it would otherwise, because it will be something that you can strongly stand in, passionately defend and position in the context of your organization, your campus, etc. So, you know, reminding people who they are, who they you know, my my line brother said this to me years ago, and it stands out to me as something I actually created a whole presentation around this that I call mind the gap, and the presentation is about closing the gap between who we say we are and who we actually are.
Fraternities and Sororities talk a real good game. Some of us are really good at living and walking the things we talk a lot of us have some significant work to do about closing that gap, and I would argue headquarters, campuses are all alike, right? I often tell folks that I enjoy the context that I work in, because I typically will take whatever the rhetoric is that someone has presented to me and use that for the basis of accountability. So if you’re saying this is who we are, and I feel like we’re not acting in accordance with what it means for us to be those folks, then we need to work to try to figure out how to right the ship, and sometimes that’s going to require us to take a hard look face some hard truths about what needs to change in the context that we’re currently operating so that that will be my offering as a closing thought is, you don’t have to go far to find the things that are going to help you be successful in effectuating change. They’re closer than you think, and if you can, you know, put together the story that helps to make the linkages between the changes you want to make and who you say you are and who you want to be, I think you’ll be exponentially more successful.
RM: That’s a serious nugget of knowledge. I really appreciate you dropping that that knowledge on us this episode. Keith,I want to thank you for your time. As always, it’s a pleasure to connect with you to our listeners out there, thank you for tuning in. We will catch you on the next episode of perspectives. Thank you very much.
