PHI PSI AND FATHERHOOD

Brian Anderson and Matt Kelley (both Butler ’00) recently talked about their 20+ years of friendship and how their participation in Phi Kappa Psi shaped who they are as men, leaders, and fathers.

Matt: We met living on the same hall in our freshman dorm at Butler, and we were in the same pledge class at Phi Psi. We were also both religion majors, so we became pretty good friends during our college years.

Brian: Yes, although when we graduated and went off on our own life journeys, I don’t know that either of us realized we’d remain as close as we have.

Matt: True. Social media started a few years after we graduated, and that made it easier to keep up with one another. Our mutual interests kept us in touch, and, of course, becoming girl-dads. When you and some others started the Dads with Daughters Facebook page, and it started to grow into the tens of thousands of users, you invited me to be on the team to try to keep the page from going off the rails.

Brian: Those early days of the Facebook group were crazy because there were all different kinds of people, and not all of them wanted to keep things in the spirit of dads supporting one another. We had to quickly decide on community standards, ways that people from all different social and political backgrounds could be together and build each other up as fathers.

Matt: It makes me think of doing Rush every year in college. Sometimes our bid sessions would go late into the night. Our chapter had a rule where the vote had to be unanimous for a guy to get a bid. Of course, every active brother couldn’t meet every potential pledge, so we would say “trust a brother” about some guy you didn’t necessarily get to know, but what did that really mean? There was a lot of discussion and debate.

Brian: Guys we invited to pledge could be the leaders of the house within a couple years, so those bid sessions were where we shaped what we wanted the Brotherhood to be like after we graduated. 

Matt: Working those things out in a relatively lower stakes environment was practice for how we would try to shape other communities like Dads with Daughters, places where we worked, and even our own families.

Brian: It also showed us about learning from the wisdom of our elders. Several older alumni who served as advisors would be in those bid sessions with us late into the night (way past their bedtimes!), and they would share their wisdom to help us through, especially when things might get heated.

Matt: I remember some big disagreements about some people and we had to make decisions based on very limited interactions, and that meant we had to live with our decisions and learn to build community.

Brian: Yes, and looking back, during our junior year of college, the September 11 attacks, and the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars happened. I remember some guys ready to enlist while others were bitterly opposed to the wars. We were all in our early 20s and not always good at communicating respectfully.

Matt: We learned how to deal when things didn’t go the way we wanted. Going into our senior year, there were positions we both wanted in the house, and we both lost those elections. We weren’t terribly gracious in defeat in the short term, but we didn’t take our toys and go home, either.

Brian: Since then, we’ve both had experiences of not getting jobs we thought we deserved, or things with kids not going the way we wanted, and we’ve both definitely matured a lot since our early 20s!

Matt: I agree, and I’m grateful we both signed our bid cards and joined Phi Psi together all those years ago. It’s led to some incredible personal memories and professional achievements. Can’t wait to see what we come up with in the next 25 years!

The Rev. Matthew L. Kelley is an ordained United Methodist minister and father of three daughters. Matt serves as a hospice chaplain in Louisville, Kentucky. Brian Anderson is a husband, dad of two daughters, a gender equity advocate, and author of “Fathering Together: Living a Connected Dad Life.” Brian works for Inner-City Computer Stars as the Director of Foundation Relations.