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JerseySmarts.com

No Longer the Province Archon for New Jersey

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Last month I made the decision to step down from my biggest volunteer role with Sigma Pi Fraternity. Since August 2006 I’ve served as the Province Archon (Regional Director) for New Jersey for Sigma Pi Fraternity. It is a huge job that has so many details and points of interest that to list them all here would take forever. Briefly, a Province Archon has to visit his chapters once per semester (there are 8 groups in New Jersey), hold a workshop for the entire state each year, organize regional alumni events, attend nationwide events, and (of course) help to mentor the young leaders around the state.

It was a very rewarding job, but a very time consuming one. I really liked giving presentations at the workshops and making the visits to my chapters, but with increased responsibility at my job and the local college assigning me more courses to teach as an Adjunct Professor, I was no longer able to give this volunteer position the attention that I feel it deserves.

There is a great new Province Archon in New Jersey and he’s going to do an amazing job. I’m still involved with my fraternity as a Trustee on our national Educational Foundation. The goal, as always, is to rise to the top of the Foundation and serve as its Chairman at some point in the near future. It is in this position that I believe I can affect the greatest change on the fraternity as I work to increase donations and build our national endowment to a level where we can begin to reverse the recent trend in national fraternities of raising their membership fees. I want my fraternity to stay affordable for all of the current undergraduates and all of the potential new members who have yet to enter college. It’s going to be fun!

Another One Bites the Dust

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The Daily Record ran a story this morning about the Headquarters Plaza Fitness Club abruptly shutting down in Morristown. This echoes the same out-of-the-blue closing of the Ocean Fitness Company – both gyms were owned by The Fitness Company, a group out of Holmdel.

There is something up with The Fitness Company organization. They aren’t returning phone calls and they aren’t refunding membership fees even if you joined an expensive plan the day before they closed up shop. It would appear that a bunch of greedy punks are running the show over there – or at least a bunch of greedy punks took over the company and are now running it into the ground. This is a shame for many reasons, not the least of which is the community aspect of health clubs. The Ocean Fitness Company was more of a place-based company than it was a branch of the The Fitness Company. In fact, two years ago it changed its name from “The Fitness Company” to “Ocean Fitness” to reflect that fact.

The same is true of all gyms and health clubs. The people who go to these places form friendships and expand their personal networks. To see such innate community building torn apart because of some person’s greed is a shame, yet par for the course in New Jersey.

Here’s hoping that someone investigates the sudden closing of these clubs and that those who have been screwed out of a great deal of money join together and sue those who took that money.