Helping a Christian College Fraternity Create a Better Future for its Members

As some of you may know, I go to The King's College in New York City. I have been a student there for 2 years now, and I have a few more years to go. What you probably do not know about the school is that it is divided into fraternities and sororities named after notable Christians, philosophers and politicians. I am in the house of C.S. Lewis, and my girlfriend is in the house of Susan B. Anthony. It's all very Hogwarts like.

Initially, I applied to the house of Ronald Reagan after my visit. I accidentally signed my acceptance letter for the house of Reagan as Scott which is my middle name. Of course, when the school did its house assignments, the admissions team didn't connect the dots between my letter and my first name, William. To them, I wasn't the same person. So, all of the Reagan guys embraced a friend of mine also named Scott with open arms, believing this Scott was the same guy who wrote that letter. And, I was placed in the house of Lewis. This is one of the unfortunate disadvantages of my Southern heritage where we go by our middle names. I didn't realize this mix-up until last summer when Scott told me about it at his birthday party out in Brooklyn. He was reflecting on how unfortunate it was that someone who was so enthusiastic to be a part of the house of Reagan did not even show up to the school. As he described the letter written to the house, I realized it was none other than mine. We had a good laugh, and I explained how much I enjoyed the culture of success that surrounded his house. It would appear the Sorting Hat had finally made a mistake.

The house of Reagan is not limited to only currently enrolled students, like my own house, but instead forms great relationships with their alumni that help support the house in their times of need. Some alumni even set up events with the current seniors in the house where they can all come together and meet alumni that work in the fields they hope to enter after graduation. These meetings can lead to jobs at firms such as JP Morgan and the New York Times. Unfortunately the house I am in and, up until this morning, was proud to be a part of has a very different take on the system.

photo of the house of C.S. Lewis 2015 in Battery Park

The house of C.S. Lewis is filled with great men of integrity, equipped with even greater minds. However, I have noticed that the upperclassmen have created a mindset that this community is only for the here and now, and they never think about a member's long-term relationship with the house or how to better the house for future members. One example of this was when I recommended a Library for the house my freshman year while participating in a business plan competition. The idea for the competition was that every house would come up with unique ways to raise funds for their house so that they would not have to barrow money from the school. In other words, the houses would become, in a way, financially independent of the school, even though we would still be tied to the school.

Ultimately, this library, kept up by our house, would have books for every class at the school. While that seems impossible, our school has 700 students, and every student who graduates from King's has to take a set of core classes that focus on Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (modeled after Oxford's PPE program). These core classes make up for half of the credits every student must complete for their bachelor's. Last year, I set out to build this library in order to help our students not personally take on the cost of the books. Basically, they rent the book from the house for $2 a book and then at the end of the semester, they would return it so the next student can use it. It's a simple and efficient way to raise money without bothering our families, who put out roughly $50,000 a year in direct expenses alone, for more money. Sounds great, right? Not a single upperclassman donated books to the library. I discussed the idea with freshmen, and they handed me books left and right. When I started, no one expected me to get more than fifteen books. Now we have a little over one hundred books donated by myself and the freshmen of the house to lend out this coming year.

Another idea we had during our business plan competition was utilizing a great student-lead magazine, the Lewis Review, the house created long before I came along. The topics ranged from philosophy and politics to economics and Christianity. There were even some fantastic articles about art here in New York. However, no one has published a single article for over a year on our site. The upperclassmen in charge of the publication deemed it not important for the house to do, even though maintaining the Review was their only job.

http://www.lewisreview.com/ Here's the link to the Lewis Review! Please check it out!

The part about my house that really bothers me though is that now our upperclassmen are posting things for our annual fundraiser. The hashtag this year is #Loot4Lewis. Read that again. That's right--#Loot4Lewis. Now I am no expert on culture and how to develop a healthy culture. However, based on my experience in high school when I was second in command of a military academy, I do know a thing or two on how to breed a bad culture. I had to continually remind sergeants on how not to rule through fear but to try and lead others by example whenever possible. I spoke out on Facebook about this and said that this may not be the message we want to send to our donors because, to me, it sounds like donate money to a group of college boys so they can blow it off on bacon and beer. Not that those things are bad, but that's what it sounds like.

And this morning, I woke up to a text from my beautiful girlfriend of two years stating, "What the fuck has your house done now?".
https://www.instagram.com/p/BIgWcd0Bs-m/?taken-by=houseofcslewis&hl=en

The link above goes to the house's Instagram page where my girlfriend found a photo of C.S. Lewis taking the place of Jordan Belfort on the poster of The Wolf of Wall street.

If you have seen this movie, you would understand that Jordan Belfort, the main character of this movie, is driven by greed to build up his lavish, lawless lifestyle. This is the inadvertent message of my house's ad. This is not a culture I can condone with fundraising for the house at all. It sends a poor message to our annual donors and an even worse message to our incoming students. I doubt the house will even reach their goals with adverts like this. So, I have once again decided to take things into my own hands.

I see a bright future for my house and my school here on Steemit . I hope you will help me by up-voting this post. I intend for all of the money made by this post to go directly into the Lewis Library so that we can cut costs for our students and simultaneously raise money for the house.

I will add that I am a trusted member of the Bitcoin community even if I have only been on Steemit a few days. If you are curious about the validity of this post, which I am sure most will be, here is my intro to Steemit.
https://steemit.com/life/@williamdevine/hi-i-m-william-and-i-like-blockchain-and-nyc
and my Linkedin.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-devine-b7aa168a?trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile_pic

I cannot thank you enough for helping me raise money for the house library. I will post a photo of it when I finish ordering the books I can with whatever we can raise here on Steemit. Let's show these guys how to fund raise correctly and sustainably.