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.
the state of Iowa Beta
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