Talk:Alpha Phi Omega/Archive 1

Archive 1

List of all-males

Do we still need to have the list of all-male chapters at co-ed institutions? I understand that even Delta has gone co-ed now. Henrymrx (t·c) 05:17, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I can't find anything on Delta's website http://www.aphio-delta.org to support that they have gone co-ed.Naraht (talk) 11:44, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

It's not reflected in their chapter website yet, but I have received confirmation from a Delta Alum and current Board member that they are co-ed as of April 2009. Dr. Cash (talk) 14:09, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

When you have an appropriate reference... :) Naraht (talk) 15:05, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

It was under my impression that if Delta were to be forced to go coed, the chapter would formally disband and file a petition to have the chapter listing permanently removed from Alpha Phi Omega, i.e. if a new Chapter started in Auburn it would not be Delta chapter. Of course that was back when I was an active alumni and kept up with such things. Personally I find this better than being forced to go coed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.6.144.51 (talk) 16:20, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

That may be your understanding, but I have seen no sign one way or another on the chapter website. According to the National website they are still active, and I have a non-public source that indicates that they have sent in the initiation fees for the spring '09 new brothers. If you would like to inquire further, please do so on my talk page.Naraht (talk) 01:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

From what I've been told by my fellow Delta brothers the chapter has not yet gone coed, thankfully. I received this information from an immediate past president and recent graduate of Auburn. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.185.121.154 (talk) 17:51, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Working on Alpha Phi Omega chapters page

Right now I'm working on a page for APO-USA chapters at User:Naraht/Alpha Phi Omega chapters. It's from a file from the national office, there are some issues such as active petitioning efforts showing up as Active. I still have to add/change entries in that column for active/inactive/PG/IG/closed. Right now I'm working on getting rid of as many red links as I can. I'm going to leave the one for Central YMCA College since there *should* be an article on it.Naraht (talk) 19:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I see several dates in there being listed as January 1, <some year>. I think the '1/1' should be removed in those cases, only listing the year. When they entered those into the database, I think they were required to put a month and day, so they just put '1/1' since they didn't know the exact month/day. For our purposes, it's better to simply put the year. If a month/day other than January 1, is listed, then it's fine to keep that, though. Dr. Cash (talk) 20:11, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree. While I know there was at least one chartering at a National Convention (Northern Arizona U). I doubt that anything in that table *really* occured on 1/1/year. One reason that I haven't touched the dates yet, is that I'm looking on taking the source back to my UNIX machine and transforming the dates to the DTS template which will allow sorting, but the rechartering dates and dates of inactivity may not be useful for that. (I'm considering making those two fields unsortable.) Also, I have to figure out how to make the Regions sortable in a reasonable way so that IX doesn't happen between IV and V. The simplest solution would be to simply have the arabic number in the column, but I *think* there is a smarter way. Yes, it would involve some massive substitutions, but that's what copying Wikipedia source to either Wordpad or worst case UNIX for use of sed, awk or perlNaraht (talk) 20:37, 8 October 2009 (UTC)+

Article for Central YMCA College created, only red link left is Frederick College which is in Virginia.Naraht (talk) 16:06, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

APO Recent Edits

It is my understanding that what was previously on the wikipedia page for APO was a factual recollection of the recent events dealing with open membership in the past couple of years. I did not find it offensive or biased. Why was it taken down? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.202.179.91 (talk) 17:17, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

The question is how much information about Alpha Delta's split with Alpha Phi Omega belongs on the Alpha Phi Omega page. While the split is a *major* part of Alpha Delta's history and should be on the Alpha Delta page, whether or not it is a significant enough part of Alpha Phi Omega's history is debatable. (note, that I'm not sure which side of the debate I'm on) In round numbers, these were 1% of the chapters in the Fraternity. (3 of roughly 350)Naraht (talk) 17:26, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Understandable, but if an organization were to create legislation that caused a part of it, however, small to leave, I would imagine that it would be worth mentioning. From what was on the page, it did not discuss Alpha Delta, simply mentioned that chapters had joined a different organization. I do not know too much about what happened before or since, but I would guess that the one or two lines that were up are probably still valid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.202.179.91 (talk) 17:31, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

The text on the Alpha Phi Omega pages does mention by name (and give a link to Alpha Delta). And as far as I can tell the information is accurate (I'm on the Alpha Phi Omega history Committee and have talked by email with various Alpha Delta brothers by email). Accuracy and Noteworthiness are equally important.Naraht (talk) 19:16, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I completely agree and understand about accuracy and noteworthiness. I would suggest that as long as the information is accurate according to APO and Alpha Delta officials, then I would say it belongs on there. As long as it remains historical and factual and does not become a biased representation of either side. From what I understand, this may be a hot topic depending on who you talk to. So, we always need to be careful with it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.202.179.91 (talk) 13:55, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Just because something is accurate does not necessarily mean it should be included. I don't want to see us fall into the trap of giving undue weight to relatively trivial information. Frankly, I think the article is too long as it is. Henrymrx (t·c) 15:17, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

It is the largest fraternity in the world for starters. But also, I mean a listing of all the national service weeks (20 lines) is probably more undo weight than 2 lines devoted to something that was directly caused by the requirement of open membership. It provides unique insight and information on the fraternity that is useful in an encyclopedic article. There are other parts of the article that do not do that and have not been eliminated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.202.179.91 (talk) 15:43, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Where to put that APO was a Point of Light?

I'm sort of torn where the fact that APO was a Point of Light should go. ( http://archive.pointsoflight.org/awards/dpol/winner.cfm?AwardNum=2397 April 14th, 2003) ideas (or put it in :) ) Naraht (talk) 14:16, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I've put the Points of Light announcement in the Programs section, and cleaned up the references there a bit as well. WTF? (talk) 21:57, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Any suggestions on how to improve the article? It failed GA apparently because too much of the information was from internal sources. I may be able to add or change some references to Scouting or Boy's Life magazines. Also, what's your opinion on splitting the large majority of the APO-Philippines stuff to a separate article?Naraht (talk) 22:09, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I think it failed GA because it wasn't really ready for it and it was nominated in a drive-by nomination by an editor who wasn't a major contributor of the article. I've seen a lot of the Scouting and Boys Life stuff in Google Books searches for "Alpha Phi Omega", and it seems like those are reasonably third party citations to use for a lot of the historical material.

I'm not a huge fan of separating tons of stuff out into separate daughter articles. APO-Philippines still falls under the larger category of Alpha Phi Omega, which is what this article is about. Plus, if we're having a hard enough time finding third party references for this article, doing that for an APO-Philippines article can only be about 10 times worse! WTF? (talk) 00:02, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

APO-Phil is going to be pretty difficult to get good third party sources for, but at least there are some references for it as opposed to most of the Philippines Fraternities and Sororities. The question is not whether APO-Phil can be turned into a GA, but rather would the article without APO-Phil be closer. (If of course it makes sense to split it out. But there certainly wouldn't be one article for scouting in the USA and the Philippines)Naraht (talk) 02:54, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

List of Founders?

I think that given the fact that the initial 6 advisors are all listed, that the other 13 founders should be added. If so, should we do it in text or as a bulleted list?Naraht (talk) 16:17, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Scouts Royale Brotherhood

My personal opinion... SRB should not be mentioned on this page, OTOH a mention on the History of Alpha Phi Omega in the Philippines would be quite reasonable if decent sources could be found. I googled for "scouts royale brotherhood" and 1975. I found no hits in the first 100 that would consider a reasonable non-primary source for the year that it was founded. If *that* can't be found, what is the possibility of getting good secondary sources. (And yes, this does have the standard issue of references for fraternities in the Philippines being *considerably* more difficult to find clean references on than US fraternities for several reasons. :( )Naraht (talk) 18:22, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Links

It appears that all of the apo.org links used as reference citations are now no longer functional, as the national fraternity has launched a new design the website. One big issue seems to be that there no longer appears to be a comprehensive list of chapters on the site, though there is a "chapter finder" tool. That can, of course, confirm that a chapter at the school is or has existed, but it's still not a list. WTF? (talk) 18:42, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

If you don't select any filtering criteria, you get everything (including the kitchen sink, alumni chapters(!?!), and extension efforts.Naraht (talk) 21:09, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

They seem to have fixed the alumni chapters thing and it now says "alumni associations", which is correct. There's also a nice google map there, too! WTF? (talk) 18:50, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

But no information as to whether the chapters there are active/inactive/PG/closed or whatever. Also there are several missing in the general search, for example within 10 miles of downtown DC (20001) should include George Washington University, but that one is missing. It does show up when you select it directly. Even with the map, massively inferior.Naraht (talk) 14:56, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

The Student Chapters selection doesn't include Alpha Chapter, for example, so I would assume that it only includes active chapters. I am not sure why they list "Extension Groups" and "Petitioning Groups" separately, since PGs are, by classification, extension groups. It would be nice if they included the inactive chapters, too, but perhaps they decided not to include that, since the list is public, they don't want to overtly advertise all the schools there used to be chapters at? WTF? (talk) 18:26, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Superfluous Information

I think one of the major problems with this article is that it's too long. There is a lot of information here that just isn't going to be of interest to a general audience. Things like the list of National Service Week themes and the list of National Office locations do not need to be on here. That information could be moved to one of the APO-centered wiki projects out there.

I realize that most of the editors of this article are fraternity members like me. This information may be of great interest to us and to other members of the Fraternity, but I think that it very unlikely to be of interest to a general audience. That general audience is the intended audience of this encyclopedia and we should tailor the article to that.

Thoughts? Henrymrx (t·c) 01:15, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think pure length of the article should be necessarily looked at. Alpha Phi Alpha for example is more than twice the size (101K vs. 48K) more or less. Also, the moves around in the Land Bank building probably are of interest to few outside the Fraternity. (and not that many within(!)). I'd like to see the 2013 & 2014 service week themes added if the others are removed.

As a non-member, I think it's utterly ridiculous to list every theme for National Service Week since 1983. The average person checking Wiki doesn't care at all. If they do, that's what the national website is for. Also, wouldn't it be WP:COI for members to edit this article? Luthien22 (talk) 15:03, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure that information is directly accessible on the National website right now, I don't think the references there are to the current version of the website, they may need to be altered to use a copy on archive.org. And yes, I do have a COI, but I share the fact I'm a brother on my user page. I'm actually an alumnus whose been involved at some level since I graduated in 1990.Naraht (talk) 18:25, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Some constructive criticism

I didn't see this article before the failed good article review in 2010, but it looks like it's gotten at least a bit better on the sourcing since according to an email I got from Alpha Phi Omega (they were trying to recruit me) this article contains good information that isn't on their official website (woo hoo!). That being said, I have a few points of constructive criticism that I'd like to bring up since I don't feel comfortable editing this without any prior knowledge of the organization, as I'm sure there's a lot more qualified people out there who will probably jump on it the moment they see this.

1) After reading the article a couple times, I still have no idea exactly how the fraternity was affiliated with the Boy Scouts. Was it a stamp of approval, a gold star, the authority to change bylaws... to me it's unclear since I know nothing of the topic.

2) The last paragraph in the section "Membership in Alpha Phi Omega-USA opened to women" sounds suspiciously as if it was almost lifted word for word from the original source "Torch and Trefoil" which is a publication by Alpha Phi Omega... it just smelt of promotional tone. However, I don't have access to the source, so it'd be great if somebody checked that.

3) It seems logical to me that the article about the bylaw change that resulted in the formation of Alpha Delta would have a link "See more: Alpha Delta" or "Main article: Alpha Delta". It's important enough to Alpha Delta's history that it should have a more significant link than the in-line one already present.

4) Although National Service Week is important, I really don't think listing every theme since 1987 is really necessary. Frankly, I just scrolled past the list without reading it.

Other then that, looks pretty good. If you see any edits by me, chances are they're copyediting for tone or grammar, since I did see a few things towards the end that needed grammatical fixing. Farewell! Luthien22 (talk) 15:00, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

1. The reference to the sentence "Early in his term (October 1931), Alpha Phi Omega was formally recognized by the Boy Scouts of America." says what happened, but that reference appears to be dead, if I can find a live version of that reference, perhaps you can suggest a better explanation.
2. Some of it is a quote, the quote that starts with (And includes the following points:)isn't ended anywhere (I think it should be at [18]). If that is pulled out into a block quote, it might be clearer what is and isn't. And I'll check the source for both 18 and 19.
3. It wasn't a bylaw change, it was a tightening of an existing policy. While it is important to Alpha Delta's history, it is fairly minor in Alpha Phi Omega's. It caused arguably a loss of 4 chapters out of more than 350 active, so no more relevant than including the SUNY schools getting rid of Social Fraternities should be in the history of Kappa Sigma.
4. Maybe change it to a collapsed list? I'm not sure that I would be a neutral editor on this since I've spent time trying to get all of the information.
5. Also, let me know any reference to the National website that comes up wrong, I think a lot of these need to be tied to a specific date on archive.org, the National website has changed almost completely at least 2 times over the last decade.Naraht (talk) 18:25, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I just removed the list of National Service Week themes, as there really isn't a need to have it here. I am also affiliated as an alumnus with the fraternity, and there is no reason this can't be undone if someone objects. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:06, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Additions: Regarding 1970 and gender equality

For the points in @Jrhmdtraum:'s posting.

• First we need actual references for this. "Data supported by the National archives, zeta chapter archives and letters of Earle Herbert" simply too broad and needed in article.
• Minutes/proposed bylaw amendments from 1970 would be useful, do the T&Ts at www.apoarchive.org say anything?
• First official female needs references. I have contact with someone who has talked to a woman initiated in 1950 as one of the charters at Central State University.
• spelling, etc. Title IX is always used with the roman numeral
• Stating that it was definitively the tax exemption seems strange when focusing on the *internal* pressures above.Naraht (talk) 14:45, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I support Naraht points on this matter. The edits also add little to the encyclopedic nature of this article. — Lentower (talk) 08:15, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Revert add back of only cited sentence

@Jrhmdtraum: I reverted your add back of your only cited sentence:

• This article does not need this level of detail, especially as Alpha Delta National Fraternity has it's own article. (I will probably come back in a few days, and trim the Alpha Delta text further.)
• It claimed Drexel's chapter was inactive, but the citation pointed at a different university, whose chapter is active.

For the other chapter:

• Not being on a list isn't conclusive. A source that said the chapter went inactive is needed.
• Service fraternities are often not listed with other Greek organizations, but viewed as service groups, and listed elsewhere.

— Lentower (talk) 17:38, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

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Alpha Phi Omega: Epsilon Mu Chapter listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Alpha Phi Omega: Epsilon Mu Chapter. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Naraht (talk) 22:08, 11 April 2019 (UTC)