Iota Kappa - Spring 2012

The Iota Kappan

APRIL 2012

Our First Chapter House

FALL RECRUITMENT Fall recruitment was something that our chartering status of our chapter was hinging on.

We needed a good amount of quality members who are to be devoted to the fraternity. This is the first time we have ever done a real rush week so everything was improvised as we went along. Rush events included Vas-o-melon (capture the flag with a greased up watermelon), a poker night, a game of football, s’mores by our fire pit, and an invite only spaghetti dinner. Apparently our quirky combination of competitive spirit and friendly attitudes is a great mix to bring a heap of amazing guys. Twenty-seven to be exact! When November 11th came around we initiated twenty-four of the fall Mixson class along with seventeen members from fall and spring of 2010 and 2011. All forty-one members were initiated by the Zeta Phi chapter, Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

PI KAPPA PHI, IOTA KAPPA 1031 20th Street Greeley, Colorado, 80631 WWW.UNCOPIKAPPS.COM

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1

The Start of it All The national office came out to UNC in the fall of 2010 to start their expansion on our campus. After many rounds of presentations and handing out bids, there were eighteen committed members of the Associate Chapter of Pi Kappa Phi. We moved into our first chapter house in June of 2011 and that really started it all in terms of coming together as a real fraternity with a common meeting area. The men who stayed in Greeley over summer worked very hard to make the best looking letters on this campus and we are so proud of them!

Chartering Banquet The day after our initiation, November 12th, 2011, our chartering banquet was held at a local restaurant with a large ballroom named Zoe’s. The banquet included a great-tasting array of pastas and salad, an amazing speech given by our president at the time, Kevin Schoewe, a custom rendition of The Rose delivered by our four sweethearts, and a delivery speech of our charter by our two charting officers Frank Parrish and T.J. Sullivan. That night was unlike any other because of the love that was shown between everyone from the hard work every single person put in to get to this point. Everyone involved with obtaining our charter from the national office and becoming the Iota Kappa Chapter of Pi Kappa Phi was in attendance and it would not have been the same without every one of them there.

Push America First Annual Date Auction th

On February 13 , 2012 The Iota Kappa chapter held their first ever Date Auction where our gentleman were auctioned off for dates such as going to the Museum of Nature and Science, Dinner and a Movie, to a trip to the Denver Zoo, to a Girl’s Night style sleepover (from one of the more gender friendly members), or even just a cleaning day for the girls who need a little TLC in their chapter houses. Our goal going into the night was roughly $450 because we had no idea what to expect considering it was our first time we have done this event.

The night started off with the first “Item for Sale”, Kyle Norman, going for $45 and needless to say we were all pretty excited about that. The next line of men went for anywhere between $35 to $75 and the room was getting wild. The first intermission had a performance from our very own a capella that is named “Freaks and Greeks”. They performed the timeless hit, “I Want it that Way” by The Backstreet Boys to a tee. The night went on and a few members went for $80 and $90 but we couldn’t seem to break the $100 threshold until one of our most well-known members went up with his date being Bazookas (an infamous drink widely known in the Greeley community). There was a bidding war between two beautiful ladies and the winner was our gorgeous senior sweetheart, Krystal Duff, winning with a final bid of $210! She seemed to set the bar at an unreal height because the last ten or so members all went for over $150! The highest price for a final bid went to Matt Scott, a new member, and he went for $350 for a trip to the Denver Zoo to see the penguins and a Dinner at the winner’s choice. After some calculator math from the cash payments and credit card payments, the final tally was counted. We made just over $3500 that went directly to Push America. Our first Date Auction was decided to be an annual thing every spring semester due to its extreme success!

PEDAL FOR PUSH In early October, the crazy men of the chapter heard about a Push America awareness event where a chapter rode bikes for an entire day.

We have always had a one-up type attitude so we decided to ride two bikes for five days straight! That is 120 hours per bike, so we rode for a total of 240 hours in two, three, and some insane cases rode, six hours shifts. We rode through the night and had our own little camp site outside of the University Center with various visitors coming to support us in the wee hours of the night. This event was ultimately for pure awareness but donations are always accepted and we ended up making about $300 in donations from interested bystanders. We managed to not stop once from switching riders, rigs falling apart, intense winds, and tired bodies. All in all, this event was nothing short of a success in getting our vision to aid people with disabilities by using our abilities to raise awareness!

BEST BUDDIES SOCK HOP DANCE In late April 2012, we are partnering with an organization on campus named Best Buddies. Best Buddies partners people with disabilities with a citizen in the community and basically be their best buddy.

We are cosponsoring a 70’s style sock hop dance in the ballrooms on campus and inviting everyone around to hopefully make that night a night they will never forget! While this is not a Push sponsored event, all of the proceeds will go directly to Push America!

Winning, it’s What We Do

Intramural Champions For the eighteen or so months we have been on campus, we have been involved with one season of Flag Football and two seasons of Basketball. We are undefeated in all three seasons of the two sports bringing home three championships. The Flag Football championship ended up being our Pi Kapp A-team versus our Pi Kapp B-team. Two years in a row, we played Sigma Chi in the basketball championships.

Spring of 2012, we came back from an 8 point deficit with about a minute of regulation left to tie the game. We ended up winning the game in overtime with a final score of 42-33 bringing home back-to-back championships. Basketball this year was much more of a challenge because one of our premier three point shooters, David Burkel, tore his ACL playing football in October. That called for Zach Peterson to step up and become our LeBron in combination with Matt Loranger being our D-Wade.

PI KAPPA PHI, IOTA KAPPA 1031 20th Street Greeley, Colorado, 80631 WWW.UNCOPIKAPPS.COM

LETTER FROM THE ARCHON Greetings, It is a great honor to be able to write the first letter from the president to all the parents and followers of Pi Kappa Phi here at UNC. It has been an amazing year and a half since we were installed, and we’ve been growing and accomplishing great things ever since. Let me start by recapping some of our accomplishments in the last 18 months.

We’ve raised over $5,000 for Push America, including a date auction that raised over $3,500 by itself. We can’t help it that we’re just some incredibly good-looking guys! We also created an event called Pedal 4 Push, in which two brothers continually rode a bicycle for 120 consecutive hours totaling over 4000miles. This event won the award for most creative philanthropy event at the UNC Greek Awards ceremony last week.

Moving forward, I am very excited about the direction this fraternity is taking. We are making great strides with recruitment, and we are putting in the necessary effort to get our academics on the same level as other things we excel in.

I would like to say thank you for the amazing support we have received from you all, and we will work to continue to be the same fraternity that you see right now.

Sincerely, Charlie Charbonneau