the state of Iowa Beta
 

After a long summer we are less than two weeks from fall classes at Iowa State, so I thought I would offer an update on Iowa Beta.

We were colonized with 6 founders and added 2 members before the end of the spring semester. Of the 8 of us, 1 is unable to return this fall due to financial matters and 1 will be graduating in the spring.

Our recruitment efforts have yielded the results we were expecting. Currently we have 7 pledges for the first fall pledge class, but we expect that number to increase to 12 before Labor Day.

We have made reservations to have a rush-banner up in the Memorial Union the first week of class as well as a display case during the second week. Both are in high traffic areas of the Memorial Union. To coincide with the display case we will be holding a few informational meetings and inviting guys from our recruitment list who wanted to arrive at Iowa State before looking at the Greek community.

Our budget is not yet complete, but is getting there. One or two more meetings between Joe Ogrin (the spender) and me (the tight-wad) should produce a budget to present to the colony for consideration.

Calvin Truong, our colony GP, was at GAC and went to FELA with Joe. Calvin, Joe and I, along with Scott Klingbeil, if he is in town, will be putting together our Fraternity Education program this week. We were glad to have Alec Traub, Director of Expansion, and Phil (last name I forgot), our ELC, visit last week and we are fortunate to have been emailing with Ron Ransom, the other ELC.

Our philanthropy and community service plans are perhaps our most developed area for the colony. Many of our plans combine a social aspect to be used for building brotherhood and for relations with sororities. Currently we have 2 philanthropy projects planned for the fall. One is on-going: we have proposed a can & bottle recycling program to benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation that consists of placing and maintaining recycling bins near vending machines in 15 locations on campus.

Our other philanthropy project is to hold a few lemonade stands (on campus, at 2 home games and at a downtown farmers’ market) with the help of a sorority. One-hundred percent of donations, along with matching donations from local businesses will be sent to Alex’s Lemonade Stand ( http://www.alexslemonade.com ). Alex’s Lemonade Stand is a non-profit organization which makes grants toward pediatric cancer research.

On the community service side of things we are continuing our weekly visits to the Boys’ and Girls’ Club and have been asked to build a haunted maze for the facility for Halloween. We have several opportunities lined up to work with Story County Conservation on various projects from trash pickup to trail maintenance, even prairie seed harvesting. All of these events take place on Saturday mornings or early afternoons and are in areas where we can invite a sorority to come out with us and host a BBQ when we are done.

I’m sure there are areas I’m leaving out, so please feel free to ask Qs, I just thought I’d give a bit of an update.

Congratulations...sounds like your hard work is showing some fantastic results.

Sounds like great work. Is every member involved in a student organization other than Phi Psi? That makes recruitment much easier.

When does the colony get to move into the house?

Yeah, most of us are involved in several and have pointed out guys to work on this fall- from stuorgs to dorm floors, to work place.

As for the house: at the end of the month some of the house corp. and a few of us meet with RDG Architects to go over options on the house. Still looking at Fall '05 or Spring '06 for the house to be ready.

To bad you can't get the volleyball court turned back into a swimming pool.:cool:

there's still a pool, it just has a lot of clay and sand in it- we dug up the edge of the liner one day out of boredom.

We now have an official URL instead of the university-designated one.
http://iowastatephipsi.org replaces http://www.stuorg.iastate.edu/phipsi/
Our website, however, needs some rehauling including the color scheme.

Iowa Beta colony's pairing for Homecoming (Phi Psi, FIJI, Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and Beta Sigma Psi fraternity) placed 2nd Over-All.

Many alumni appeared for our tailgating (House Corporation rented a tent on Victory Lane and provided food). Good interaction between the colony and alumni.

The current plans for the renovation of the Iowa Beta chapterhouse were unvailed. Price estimate: $2.5M. I heard $0.5M already pledged.

Our colony is at 13 with 1 verbal committment (paperwork should be done on Mon or Tues).

Cans and bottles refunded from tailgating with alumni has provided $5 to the chapter. Left-over ("abandoned") alcoholic beverages are going to be recycled towards of-age colony members at future tailgating and other events.

Next weekend many of us from the colony are road-tripping to Boulder to visit the Colorado Alpha chapter during the weekend of the Colorado-Iowa State game.

Colony is still at 13, with ongoing friendship and recruitment to several interested parties.

Our alumni have come together to advise us on recruitment methods and to give some monetary assistance towards recruitment.

Several of us are headed to Cabo Alpha the first week of January.

You really have to get those numbers up. You should be at 40-50 by the end of this academic year.

To: phipsi, news@iowastatedaily.com
Subject: gorilla sightings
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 11:39:50 -0600 (CST)



Phil, the Phi Psi gorilla, will be delivering candycanes to offices around campus this afternoon. He will be wearing a santa hat and a Phi Psi shirt.
First stop will be B6 of the Memorial Union at 1:30PM. After visiting several offices in the Memorial Union he will attempt to deliver a candycane to Iowa State President Gregory Geoffroy.
Route of delivery: Memorial Union, Beardshear Hall, Alumni Hall, Student Services Building, Theilen Student Health Center, College of Design, the Armory, Lagomarcino Hall, Ross Hall, East Hall, Gerdin Business College, Sloss House.