The most important thing a person can do when dealing with anidiot is have the courage to confront them, co-founder ofCAMPUSPEAK said Tuesday.
"I guarantee you you're going to have idiots around you yourentire life," T.J. Sullivan said. "A lot of you are going to dateidiots, a lot of your are going to marry idiots ... and a lot ofyou are going to give birth to idiots. Getting up the nerve [toconfront them] is the tough part."
Sullivan's presentation "Confronting the Idiot in yourOrganization" was sponsored by the Panhellenic Council,Interfraternity Council and Student Organizations and Activities.The event was geared toward fraternities and sororities but theevent was open to anyone, said Kate Powers, Panhellenic graduateassistant for the Office of Student Organizations andActivities.
Confrontation is threatening, Sullivan said. The main reasonpeople choose not to say anything to the idiots in their lives isthey assume someone else has already done it, he said. Thisphenomenon, called the bystander effect, is what Sullivan said getspeople in trouble.
Once the decision to confront is made, the decision of who willdo the confronting is next.
Men look at who is in the job position designed to handle suchmatters and women suggest the idiot's friends, Sullivan said. Theperson who jumps at the opportunity is not the person who shouldconfront the idiot either, he added.
"You're trying to find the person who cares more about theperson than why he's being confronted," he said.
Sullivan advised students making the confrontation to make alist of the negative behaviors and to think about how the idiotaffects him or her. This will make it hard for the person beingconfronted to get defensive and to give empty retaliations.
"If you say 'you do this, and you do this and you do this' thenthey'll say 'no I don't, no I don't and screw you,'" he said. "Ifyou have a full minute of how it makes you feel then you're readyto go."
Of all the advice given, Powers said the most important to herwas that people have to take the initiative and that lack ofconfrontation is a problem among greek organizations.
"One of the biggest problems in every greek system isconfrontation, and if the members are confronting the problem thenour office or administration doesn't have to," she said.
While none of the material he presented Tuesday was originallycreated by Sullivan, he said it's his presentation of the materialthat makes him valuable.
"Most [information] is based from very basic confrontation 101type stuff," Sullivan said. "What I'm good at is putting thatadvice in a way [the audience] will understand. I'm not a creatorof information. I'm a delivery person."
Sullivan said he wanted to deliver the point that deciding toconfront the idiot is an important act of friendship. He gave anexample of one of his famous friends, which he left nameless, whois an alcoholic.
"I had 100 people tell me I had a problem and 100 times I toldthem to go to hell but for some reason, when person 101 came up andsaid something, it just clicked," Sullivan paraphrased his friendas saying.
Even if the confrontation doesn't prompt change from the idiot,that confrontation has paved the way for future people to interveneuntil one day, the idiot just finally understands, Sullivansaid.
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