—— Benefits of Honor Societies ——

Reprinted from Pi Sigma Alpha Newsletter, with permission.

President's Remarks

Christopher J. Bosso, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Programs, Department of Political Science, Northeastern University

Welcome to a new academic year. It promises to be an exciting one, in no small part because it's an other presidential election cycle, always a great time to organize events around the primary elections. I encourage you to apply for a Pi Sigma Alpha Chapter Activity grant if you need additional financial support to sponsor an event.

My relationship with Pi Sigma Alpha goes back a few years. I was active in my chapter as an undergraduate at the University of Akron, and as a faculty member served as advisor to the Delta Gamma chapter at Northeastern University in Boston. As a member of the national council and as president-elect I have had the honor of offering the keynote speech at induction ceremonies on campuses around New England. All of this reflects my own belief in the importance of organizations like Pi Sigma Alpha.

Americans have a long history, of creating a broad array of fraternal, social, religious, political, and honorary organizations like Pi Sigma Alpha. In fact, there are today several dozen distinct college honorary societies. Some, like Pi Sigma Alpha, focus on a specific discipline, others address a broader constituency. The very idea of an honorary society is itself a peculiarly American invention, reflecting a broad cultural impulse to join with others who have similar interests, goals, or, even achievements.

This is nothing new. Indeed, the framers of the Constitution belonged to any number of groups, clubs, and organizations. Many were members of the Order of the Masons—whose symbols, by the way, adorn U.S. currency. They belonged to patriotic organizations like the Society of Cincinnatus, political clubs that were the precursors of the parties, mutual aid societies that provided for a proper burial, built libraries, hospitals and schools, and any number of social clubs of varying purposes and degrees of exclusivity.

The notion that citizens in a free society could associate with one another in such a manner was taken so seriously that it is enshrined in the Constitution. Look again at the First Amendment. Not only does it prohibit Congress from abridging the freedom of speech, religion, or the press, it also proscribes the making of laws that infringe on the rights of citizens to peaceably assemble.

As I tell my students, the right of assembly is a foundation for civic life in a democracy. Indeed, one reason that Americans create and join so many groups of all kinds is because, well, we're allowed to do so more or less free from government intrusion.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who toured the young nation in the 1830s, saw in Americans a people freed from the shackles of Old World class structures and driven by a pervasive belief that hard work and living a moral life were keys to personal success and, even, a just society. Above all, he was struck by the degree to which Americans created and joined a wide range of groups. He wrote:

"Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form . . . associations of a thousand . . . kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general, or restricted, enormous or diminutive . . . to give entertainment, to found seminaries, to build inns and churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries, to found hospitals, prisons, and schools . . . Thus, the most democratic country on the face of the earth is that in which men have . . . carried to the highest perfection the art of pursuing in common the object of their common desires and have applied this new science to the greatest number of purposes."

Is this the result of accident, or is there any necessary connection between the principle of association and that of equality? Tocqueville knew the answer. This freedom to associate was and so remains an elemental part of the constant nurturing of civic life and so critical to fueling the very ideals that feed the democratic impulse. Without it, the ideals of liberty and equality prove illusory, and democracy itself cannot flourish.

It is too easy to scoff at many of these organizations as undemocratic or exclusionary, as mere adornments for one's resume, or as just plain silly. And to be honest about it, some are all of these things, just as they were in Tocqueville's day. But easy cynicism about organizations, particularly about honorary societies like Pi Sigma Alpha, is unwarranted for several reasons:

Induction into an honor society is recognition of personal effort and achievement. No matter how blase we think we are about such matters, we still care that somebody, somewhere recognizes the work we've done. It matters to us, whether we admit it or not.

Such recognition is also affirmation that work, not just the simple luck of family lineage, still matters in American life. Without that belief in hard work and merit, the American democratic ethos loses much of its potency and, indeed, its legitimacy. Even admitting that the deck is more than occasionally stacked, a widespread loss of faith in the possibilities of the American dream corrodes the very values upon which the system itself is based.

In my own case, and despite the skepticism that comes from a lifetime studying politics, I still hold fast to those values. My father was an automobile worker, my mother a homemaker. My grandfathers were immigrant coal miners and ditch diggers, and my family to this day still contains more than its fair share of people who work with their hands.

I still remember the pride in my parents' faces when in high school I was inducted into National Honor Society and, later, into various honorary societies while in college. We did not yet have the luxury of taking these kinds of recognition for granted, so each one was some cause for parental celebration—and not a little bragging to each and every aunt or uncle whose misfortune it was to ask how I was doing in college. It took me a while to understand that this was more than the usual parental pride. Here I was a college student—a rare thing in my family 25 years ago—and it was a big deal for a working class family whose own roots in the American soil were still rather young.

So to be inducted into an honor society was not just a personal matter: it also honored my parents, and theirs. It honored their work and their sacrifice as much as my own, and it affirmed for them and for all of my extended family a faith that tomorrow would be better than yesterday.

It affirmed the American dream. Stories such as ours nurture that dream each day.

Beyond personal stories such as my own, organizations like Pi Sigma Alpha also matter to the civic life of this country. The nation's social capital, that fabric of belonging and civic participation that is the foundation of democratic life itself, is nurtured in such organizations.

For example, on many campuses the Pi Sigma Alpha chapter is the organizational home for a wide array of activities tied to the understanding of politics and the promotion of public service. Nationally, the the sixty-plus honorary societies foster learning, support participation in public and professional life, engage in innumerable charitable, and public service activity, and provide countless opportunities for those who seek to better themselves through scholarships, training, and, yes, even networking.

And why riot? All of this, in ways large and small, promotes civic life and encourages the habits of communal action. Those who become even modestly active in such organizations tend to be more active in the society at large. For this reason, if no other, we should encourage more participation in organizations like Pi Sigma Alpha, not less.

So my request to you is to join even more organizations as you proceed in your careers and lives beyond the university.

Go ahead, be members of professional organizations, neighborhood associations, town historical societies, craft guilds, environmental groups, sports leagues, amateur choirs, and social clubs.

Go ahead, become an Elk, Moose, Odd Fellow, Shriner, Mason, or whatever other fraternal society strikes your fancy. Go to meetings and wear the funny hats, use the secret handshakes, and raise money for charities.

Go ahead, join groups that promote whatever causes you find worth promoting. If you believe in a basic constitutional right to bear arms, go ahead join the National Rifle Association. If you have problems with the NRA's opposition to the regulation of firearms, join Handgun Control. I may not agree in the goals or causes promoted by some of these groups, but I'm glad all of them exist, and I'm glad that Americans join them.

Above all, as they say in the commercial for the cruise lines, get out there. Be part of something, no matter how silly or serious, major or trivial, local or national. Be part of something. You, and your nation, will be better for it.

And you may just have some fun along the way.

Have a great year.

 

Bosso, C. J. (2003). President's Remarks. Pi Sigma Alpha Newsletter. Fall, 2003, (p.2). Washington, D.C.: Pi Sigma Alpha .