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13th Annual Greek Leadership Conference

Remarks - Ann Weaver Hart

February 5, 2005
Strafford Room, MUB

Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to join you today. First, let me say congratulations to all of you on your election to leadership roles in your chapters of the Intrafraternity Council and the Panhellenic Council. You are the leaders of the Greek community at UNH, and by being here today, you are showing that you take that leadership seriously.

I appreciate the theme of this year’s conference, “a little less conversation, a lot more action.”  As President of the University, I spend a great deal of time in meetings with various constituency groups,  both internally within the University and University System, and externally with state leadership, business leaders, and many other groups. I agree that we tend to spend too much of our life talking about doing the things we want to do, rather than actually doing them.  In that spirit, I am not going to take up much of your time this morning with a long speech. 

I do want to applaud the members of the UNH Greek System for your hard work and all that you have accomplished over the last year.  The Greek community has made great strides in changing the image of the Greeks at UNH and in Durham.  Since August, not one alcohol-related outdoor event has occurred on chapter property, and this has made you better neighbors and members of your

community.  This must have required significant commitment and follow through from leaders like you, particularly as you dealt with the expectations of incoming students and returning alums. Your hard work has certainly paid off.

Your leadership in promoting responsible celebrations of the Red Sox victories in October resulted in outcomes that we all can be proud of.  I am relying on each of you to continue that leadership Sunday when we all expect to celebrate another New England victory in the Super Bowl.  I believe that UNH has turned a corner in the way we choose to react publicly to great victories or disappointing defeats, and the Greeks should be very proud of the role you have played in that progress.

Your success in charitable works and fundraising is another accomplishment which should make you proud.  Your work for St. Jude’s Hospital and New Hampshire State Police Cancer Research Charitable Foundation is an example of what can be accomplished by a group of students harnessing their energy and talents for the good of others.  The fact that you all had fun doing it is an added bonus.

And finally, the All-Sorority GPA for Spring semester 2004 was highest in 13 years.  It just goes to show you, smart women see the value in sororities.

In the entry way our home just across the street on Main Street, my husband, Randy, and I have hung one picture, an old poster he bought as a teenager.  Hard rock climbing was his passion and Yvon Chouinard was his hero.  The black and white photo shows two now very old-fashioned climbing boots, crampons strapped onto the soles, strongly planted on a precarious ice outcropping, alpine mountains out of focus in the background.  The boots belong to Yvon Chouinard, who became a legend among climbers in the Yosemite of the 1960s.  An itinerate blacksmith, he spent the early years of his young adulthood “sleeping on the shores of mountain lakes and trying out new passages up the polished rock walls of Yosemite” (Csikszentmihalyi, 2003).  In those early days of climbing in the U.S., Chouinard found it difficult to buy European climbing equipment (as did Randy), so he decided to make his own.  He started selling pitons and snap rings from the back of his beat-up station wagon at campgrounds.

In his wonderful book, Good Business:  Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi tells how Chouinard began to realize that he was helping to ruin the mountains he loved “as the sport of climbing grew popular”, and “the majestic rock faces became pitted and scarred from the hardware hammered into them.”  He knew that he could and must do something, so “he invented a new way of climbing with gear that could be placed into already-existing cracks and removed easily afterward, thus keeping the mountains clean.”  And the Patagonia Company was born.  Just as Chouinard changed climbing around the work, you can invent a whole new way for Greek life at UNH to build fraternity and community.

Mike Csikszentmihalyi uses Chouinard, the star climber and inventive businessman, to illustrate a construct of human achievement and accomplishment called “flow”, first introduced in his book by the same title about peak performance in athletes.  Flow is experienced when someone is performing well, and Mike has found that “in whatever context people feel a deep sense of enjoyment and performance, they describe that experience in very similar terms, whether they are meditating, running a race, performing surgery,” or leading an organization they love.  He says that the analogy people use to describe “flow” is of being “carried away by an outside force, of moving effortlessly with a current of energy, at the moments of highest enjoyment.”

Leadership in a group or organization that is meaningful and important to you can be a flow experience, a time when you find yourself periodically and genuinely enjoying the moment and feel your capacity and achievement expanded as you experience your efforts succeeding.  Eight conditions, in varying combinations and relative importance, are salient features of flow.

You are all here this morning because you are committed to being strong and accomplished leaders for organizations you value and to which you are willing to devote your time and efforts.  The skills you learn here, and in the months to come, will make you better leaders, enhance your contribution to others, and, I hope, engage you (in Mike C’s words) in “leadership, flow, and the making of meaning” toward ends that ultimately contribute to the quality of your friendships, your fraternal commitments, and your communities.

You have much to be proud of over the past year, but now is not the time to simply revel in your accomplishments.  Real leadership is not about achieving personal or organizational glory, it is about marshalling each person’s talents and abilities for the greater good.  As Harry Truman said,  “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” 

So, I challenge you as leaders of the Greek community and as individuals, to take it to the next level in 2005.  Make a commitment to continue to advance the Greeks’ role as academic, service, and program leaders across campus and around our community.  Continue to live out the founding principles of your organizations and find new ways to demonstrate the positive impact the University of New Hampshire has on our community and our neighbors. 

With that goal in mind, I will end my talk and let you get to the work that brought you here this morning.  Have a great day, do good work, and kick off a groundbreaking semester.  I look forward to learning about more of your accomplishments in the coming year.