Welcome and the Summer Council Meeting

Welcome to our new District Council blog for the coming year! Be on the lookout for new posts throughout the year about what the council is doing and why we’re doing it. We are also hoping to use this as another means of reaching out to the Brothers of the NCD with our message for the upcoming year.

Stronger Chapters, Stronger Bands. With the work of the past two years laying a strong foundation, the council and I hope to help each of our chapters improve so that the band programs at their universities may continue to prosper. Kappa Kappa Psi chapters can and do make a difference in their band programs, so strengthening our chapters will ultimately make our bands better.

Nothing helped to solidify my thoughts, the general theme, and the basic outline for the year more than our first District Council meeting on May 19. We set the ideal schedule for the year during our Joint Council meeting. While we don’t have any hosts confirmed for the block season yet, I’m sure many of you noticed Raina’s announcement of the MER date this coming fall: September 16 at Tiffin. I won’t spoil any of the great MER plans that Raina has been working on! We’re still working out the details of the spring, particularly what types of workshops we want to have to go along with the overall theme. I’m getting really excited about the content that we have been brainstorming so far! One of the things I’m most excited about for the year is the development of these workshops, and it has become the council’s goal to bring the most meaningful and well-planned workshops as possible.

All of the planning and brainstorming for the year was great, but it was even better getting to see the rest of the council again. We hadn’t all been together since our officer transition meetings following convention. We will all be at National Convention, so definitely take the time to get to know this exciting group! We can be a little crazy though. Here are some of the non-business lessons I learned from the weekend:

• Breakfast in the morning that involved lots of laughing for no reason. Sleep deprivation can apparently cause fits of uncontrollable laughter.
• Sometimes the largest drink available to go is not the best choice. "Sometimes" includes meetings.
• Christine can be 7 feet tall and have a looming voice of God presence, so watch out!
• Rod’s text message. We all learned the importance of having dollar bills in parking garages. He mentions it in a little more detail at his blog, The Governor’s Desk.

I hope that this blog becomes a useful reference for everyone in the district. Look for more posts from all the district officers throughout the year and please feel free to make comments on posts and give us feedback! We want to maintain as much communication with all of you as possible.

Hope to see many of you at Summer FUNction and National Convention!

Jeremy