Voting Delegate
These are the two people chosen to represent the chapter at the National Convention and Regional Conference. These people are tasked with voting in the chapters best interest to help form national and regional policy. If the chapter is together, they vote on it and submit it well abead of time. If not, some poor active gets conscripted into being it upon arrival at the convention.
National Convention
The big covention every 2 years. Technically, each chapter only needs to send a voting representative (preferrably 2) to the National Convention to vote on national issues.
Reference Committees
There are roughly 15 reference committees that hold meetings during the first two days of the convention. Each committee needs one representative from each Region. So there is a pretty good chance a delegate will wind up on a committee. These committees will sift through the various pieces of legislation and craft them for the legislative session to vote on.
Pros
- You can see how policy is formed and condensed to general consumption.
- You can meet some cool people
- If you are on the right committee you get to do cool things like help suggest where the next convention should be
Cons
- If you are on the wrong committee you can be stuck helping decide things that not many people really care about and are horribly detailed and inane, yet do serve a purpose.
- You won't get to see much else of the convention since you will be in committee the first 2 days, and the legislative session the last 2 days of a 4 day conference.
- If there are some disputes, you may not get much sleep either.
Legislative Session
The last 2 days of the conference where all the voting gets done. The generally can last a long time, and the conference will not end until it has voted on everything. It is rather exclusive since only voting delegates, national officers, regional directors, conference chairs, and alumni delegates are allowed on the floor. Everyone else gets to sit in the observation area. Parliamentary Procedure runs the session, so know it, or get ready for a crash course in it.
Pros
- You get to vote on national policy, elect the national officers, and choose where the next convention will be.
- You get to learn parliamentary procedure very, Very, VERY well.
- You get to pass notes, just like in grade school, but you won't get in trouble with the teacher.
- Since breaks are few and far between, non-voting delegates from your chapter will send food out to you on the floor.
- Since breaks are few and far between, non-voting delegates from your chapter will find interesting ways to smuggle refreshments out to you on the floor.
Cons
- Sleep? what's that?
- Lots on inane debate.
- You get to learn parliamentary procedure very, Very, VERY well.
- Some of those very funny moments are only hilarious because of severe sleep deprivation.
Defining Moments
- Your first amendment to an amendment. They won't let it get any further than that.
- When the chairs finally get tired of all the crap and start shutting down people at the microphones.
- Interesting Debates: These typically happen every conference over some of the thornier issues in the fraternity. Be prepared to hear the word Tradition a lot and sometimes in very imaginative ways.
- The during the motion to get rid of the Gentleman's Agreement
- The the motion to drop any affiliation with the Boy Scouts.
- The motion to change the Toast Song.
- The person who tries to amend the recommendation on where the next national convention will be from the recommended city to their preferred city.
Region Meeting
- After the National business is finished, Regions have seperate meetings to conduct their own business. Genreally, this is limited to three things:
- People making announcements.
- Voting on who the Region Chair will be for the next two years.
- Voting on the host of the next Region Conference (and sometimes the dates).
Regional Conference
Regional Conferences have pretty short legislative sessions primarily due to the small number of delegates, and the relatively small number of issues needing to be dealt with on the regional level.