Greetings from Binghamton, NY! It is the end of day 6 on the road and I am starting to feel it. This is the end of my first day at SUNY-Binghamton. Operationally, they are the worst performing chapter in my region. I swear I have gone over chapter reporting, submission of reports, and deadlines about 100 times with these guys and they just don't get it. Yeah, its pretty much a train wreck here. I thought that the chapter had 18 men, but when I showed up today I found out that due to inaccurate reporting the chapter only consists of 10 men. The campus has about 12,000 students and about 40 fraternities. Some I have never heard of. The campus doesn't get what a "values based fraternity experience" is, unfortunately. The men know that they have to recruit this year or else they are going to fizzle, but I just don't know if they are organized enough OR understand the amount of work it is going to take. When you are only 10 men strong and haven't really recruited for 2-3 years, you have no visibility on campus. Why would I join Beta at Binghamton when there are 39 other options, and most likely they are more organized and offer a better experience. We'll see what happens, I'll be back in 15 days to do training for the advising team.

Last night I drove 2 hours north to meet with the District Chief, Bob Burwell. I had dinner with him and his wife at a famous place called "Dinosaur BBQ". Wow was it good! It definitely reminded me of Kansas City. I had ribs and pulled pork.....so good! Then I drove two hours back to my Motel 6. I was encouraged to find some man getting arrested for drug possession when I pulled back into the Motel 6 parking lot and I thought to myself,"...that's about right."

Tonight I'm staying with Binghamton's chapter counselor, Tom Bucker. He is a dentist and works in town. As soon as I'm done with my last meeting tomorrow, I am going to head out to Boston. I'm hoping to get a good portion of my trip out of the way. Friday is supposed to me my one "Day Off" for the week, but as seems to be the norm, I will spend the entire day in a Starbucks getting my reports submitted, because I literally have not had time this week. Saturday I'm heading to Maine with Ben Swartz, the District Chief there. It should be a good time.

That's all for now!

-T