F Iota Class o John House Cir and ca h t 19 ur Simon Fields – ‘11 Lemont, IL English/History Cong Gu – ‘12 Rolling Meadows, IL Accounting/Finance Mighty Proud! Fraternally, Matthew Kirby – ‘12 Palatine, IL Civil Engineering Jeron Blood President, Chi Iota Chapter Fiji prepares first spring philanthropy This past Jay Ma – ‘12 Buffalo, NY DGS (ECE) Ryan Maes – ‘12 Homer Glen, IL Undecided Michael McGuire – ‘12 Elk Grove Village, IL Aerospace Engineering Aadil Saxena – ‘12 Plainsboro, NJ Business Matt Schipp – ‘12 Park Ridge, IL Aerospace Engineering Brandon Smith – ‘12 Downer’s Grove, IL Psychology Harry Sun - ‘12 Palatine, IL Business Alex Wilson – ‘10 Aurora, IL Geography aniel House and D -2 00 7 Brothers, With our spring semester reaching the end of its term, the Chapter is proud to showcase many of its recent accomplishments in the newest edition of the Chi Iota Quarterly. From recruiting 14 pledges into our spring class to keeping our high level of academic performance, we feel we’ve done a lot to make the grads proud. In addition to these acts, we worked hard to host the best Pig Dinner possible on April 25th in Oakbrook, Illinois. If recent events like our homecoming event are any indication, I am confident you all will provide the great support needed to make this event another one of our great accomplishments this spring. It will be something that each and every one of you can look back on and have great pride in Fiji. Thank you all for your continued support in Chi Iota! David Janociak – ‘11 Lemont, IL History and Secondary Ed. Ronald Liu – ‘12 Vernon Hills, IL Undecided (CS) on d ec Established 1897 Spring 2009 Thomas Boczar – ‘12 Mt. Prospect, IL Physics S 90 1 Chi Iota Quarterly By Josh Moore Reporter past semester saw the introduction of our Halloween themed event entitled, “Fiji Fright Fest.” Our Island philanthropy is going to build off its successes. Fiji Island Barbecue will be taking place on Friday May 2 from 5pm to 7pm. Tickets cost $5 and will give access to a buffet of barbecued chicken, potato salad and fruit salad prepared by our in house chef, Juan Hernandez Aguilar. Our philanthropy event will be occurring the next afternoon on Saturday, May 3, in Frat Park. The event is mainly targeted at sororities, but other fraternities on campus will also be participating. For an entry fee, each organization will be able to put a team together to compete in our “FIJI: Survior Games” competition. It will be a single eliminat- ion tournament composed of a relay race with mud, slip and slides, and walking the plank, sand volleyball and water balloon dodgeball. Sorority Alpha Delta Pi is helping to co-sponsor and will be providing coaches for the competing teams. The purpose of the events is to boost our name recognition on campus, but primarily to raise money for Habit for Humanity of Illinois. As Rich Bach attests later in this very newsletter, Habitat for Humanity is a deserving organization that we will proudly donate all of our proceeds to. This spring, the brothers decided to take a page from some other chapters of Phi Gamma Delta and create a spring philanthropy to tie in with our Fiji Island weekend. While we have participated in sororities philathropies in the spring, we have never held our own event To donate to FIJI Survivor Games and Habitat, address checks to 902 S. outside of the fall. This Second St. Champaign, IL, 61820 and make payable to Phi Gamma Delta. Not For College Days Alone... \r\n2 What’s new at Chi Iota? A group of brothers participated in Delta Gamma’s Anchorsplash philanthropy. The team placed second in the swimming relay competitions and brothers Chris Kvistad and Jordan Shevell took second place in Mr. AnchorFIJI won the Atius-Sachem Mom’s Day Sing for the second consecutive splash, a male beauty pageant and talent show. year. This time we teamed up with the ladies of Alpha Delta Pi to perform their take on the musical Hairspray. Bogdan Buricea was elected “Sexiest Male Engineer” by popular vote of students in the College of Engineering. Fiji Island is coming! On May 3, a barbecue will be held at the house from 3-6. That night, local bar Station 211is rented out for the Fiji brothers. Left: 4 brothers filled out a team for the ECE JAM and took home the championship. Center: Fall’s Fiji Fright Fest raised over $1,150 for Red Cross. Right: Brothers enjoy the new pool table purchased with donations from the Tom Jump Golf Open last fall. Finally, congratulations to Morgan Hartman and Kevin Happ on being elected to the Illinois Student Senate, Connor Grant on being elected to IFC Judicial Board, and to Joe Zearing, Josh Moore, Sam White and Ryan Wildy for receiving perfect 4.0 GPAs in the Fall Friendship - Knowledge - Service - Morality - Excellence \r\n3 G ra d u a t e H a p p e n i n g s Save The Date! A Letter From The Purple Legionnaire PIG DINNER ‘10 By Rick Bach This year over 40 graduate brothers attended Pig Dinner hosted outside of Champaign for the first time. In 2010, we will be hosting Pig Dinner on April 24 at 6PM in the Illini Union. Save The Date! HOMECOMING ‘09 This year homecoming is on October 10 and will feature Illinois taking on Michigan State. Order your tickets now and come down to Champaign for the game, a barbecue at the FIJI house and after hours relaxing at White Horse Inn. Notice! The Chi Iota Quarterly is going digital! Due to ballooning printing costs, Chi Iota Quarterly is going exclusively digital! Through mail, we are able to bring you a better product in higher resolution and with full color. The changes will begin with the next newsletter coming up this summer. If you wish to continue receiving print copies, or do not believe you are on the email list, please email Morgan Hartman, Graduate Relations chair, at MHARTMA3@ILLINOIS.edu, or send a post to 902 S. Second St. Champaign, IL 61820 so that you can be kept on the mailing list. Purple Legionnaire Greetings once again, brothers. I trust you all enjoy these Chi Iota Quarterly newsletters as much as I do. As I’m sure you realize, it takes a lot of effort by a number of undergrads---and a few grad brothers as well---to keep these coming to you in a timely manner. Since they are intended primarily for you, the graduate brotherhood, please know that your contributions are always welcome. We’re interested in what’s going on with you, your family, career accomplishments, community service, and life in general. If you’ll just let us hear from you, we’ll be happy to share the information in future editions. Philanthropy has always played a part in the Fiji experience and I need to briefly mention how much I enjoyed my weeklong trip to the New Orleans area in January working with a great group of undergrads as Habitat for Humanity volunteers. I don’t recall doing anything quite this ambitious when I was an undergrad but perhaps some of you did. Since more details are covered elsewhere in this issue, I won’t go into them here except to say that this experience really had a profound effect on me. I want to thank Brother Ryan Mercer and the rest of our Fiji crew for letting me tag along to rediscover the satisfaction that volunteerism can provide. Chi Iota truly is an outstanding group of young brothers these days of which we can all be mighty proud. Their unselfish efforts during this undertaking are but one example. Were you aware that in just the few short years since re-colonization, Chi Iota has 74 brothers and pledges on campus? This truly outstanding accomplishment has grown the chapter to where we are now larger than 28 of the other 45 fraternities at the U of I. The reason for this is clearly because our undergrads are outstanding at attracting new members. “Rush,” as we used to call it, is certainly not like it used to be, however. For starters, it isn’t even called “Rush” anymore--it’s now “Recruitment.” Many of you can recall when we took the majority of our new pledges during formal rush each spring, primarily from high school candidates who would be starting school the following “We’re interested in what’s going on with you... and life in general” fall. We then supplemented that nucleus with additional recruits through informal rush during the school year. There is no “formal” rush anymore and new pledges can only be recruited from already enrolled male students through informal efforts. While this seems more difficult to me, our chapter has been very successful in assembling sizeable pledge classes of high quality recruits each semester in order to arrive where they are today. While they do receive some information from the University regarding names of those who have expressed an interest in fraternity life, many of their potential pledges are identified through personal contact with those they meet in class, at social events, through friends of friends, etc. Creativity is the key and our “You are always welcome to help in the recruitment process” young brothers must use their imaginations in arranging a wide variety of activities and events at which to tell the Phi Gamma Delta story to potential new recruits. These include barbecues, pizza parties, poker games, sporting events, and social mixers, to name just a few. You are always welcome to help in the recruitment process, by the way. If you know of a young man who is or will be attending the University of Illinois, and who you think might make a good Fiji brother, please be sure to forward this information to the chapter’s Recruitment Chair so that he can be contacted. If you’re planning a visit to campus, why not contact the chapter beforehand to see if any informal recruitment events might be going on while you’re there? You are always welcome. Until next time. Fraternally, Brother Rick Bach (“Botcher” – XI 69) Contact Rick Bach at: the.bachs@comcast.net or by telephone at (309) 827-0302. Friendship...the sweetest influence \r\n4 House Corps Corner Social Calling Update from the house corporation The men of FIJI have already locked in several social events for next semester including Football Block at Kams with Alpha Xi Delta as well as events with: Alpha Epsilon Phi Alpha Gamma Delta Delta Zeta Kappa Kappa Gamma Phi Mu Sigma Kappa Chi Iota Online Our chapter website is currently undergoing renovations to enhance its usefulness to all brothers. Hopeful additions include more constant news updates about the chapter, a section with all previous newsletters, connectivity with the PhiGam.org database of known brothers as well as undergrad brother profiles. Check back frequently to see these changes as they go online by visiting us at http://www.illinifiji.org Brothers, Greetings from your House Corporation! An update on chapter house plans follows but I wish to first recognize the stellar performance by our undergraduate chapter in the areas of academics and recruitment! Our house GPA was 7th of 46 fraternities last fall. Brother Bach has provided more details on recruitment in his article. We can all be proud of the collective accomplishments of Chi Iota! Regarding our chapter house – Tom Homer is leading a subgroup of our House Corp that is identifying and evaluating all possible chapter house options for future years. Since the middle of last year this group has been working on multiple fronts to secure continued housing for our undergraduate membership. We are in year 2 of a 3-year lease on our current chapter house location which is owned by the Phi Sigma Sigma Sorority House Corp. We’ll call our current location “Plan A” and it will be our residence through the 2009-2010 school year. It is our preferred alternative. We are working with the Phi Sig House Corp on a further extension of our lease, but do not yet have anything solid. Phi Sigs are working very hard to recruit enough members to re-occupy their house and are thus reluctant to commit. I’ve spoken with their House Corp President in early April and we are still waiting for a firm response from them on a lease for the 2010-2011 school year. Since Plan A is not a done deal, we have been working on finding a Plan B. Our search has turned up some pretty dismal properties as well as a decent one. The Delta Phi house on Fourth Street is currently our leading “Plan B” house. We have had a look inside and have spoken with their House Corp rep. We are in the process of gathering the rest of the info we need but so far it appears that the Delta Phi house would be a good Plan B if we need to move from our current location after the 2009-2010 school year. As for Plan C – we are still searching for it, so if you have any good leads, please let me or Tom Homer know. As you would expect, we are doing everything we can to lock something in. As tenants, we have only partial control of our destiny. This is one reason why Jim Hickey is organizing a fundraiser to help Chi Iota move from renting a house to owning a house in the future. Brother Hickey can tell you more about that in an upcoming newsletter. Hope to see you all at Pig Dinner! Mighty proud to be a FIJI! Fraternally, Steve Scott, House Corp President Perge! Since Steve published this letter, the Phi Sigma Sigmas have offered us a lease on the 2010-2011 school year which housing corps is currently in the process of signing. Phi Gam Feature - Class of 1977 Graduation Year and Major- 1977 with a major in Business (Finance) Career Now- Looking for a job - Resumes available upon request!!! Positions at Fiji- Social Chairman Nickname- “Doris” Most Memorable College Moments- The beer bottle party in Pony’s room. Don’t ask!! Who Am I? Think you know? E-mail us at FijiNewsletter@gmail.com or mail us the answer to 902 S. 2nd Street, Champaign, Illinois, 61820. If you guess correctly, you’ll enter the pool to win a Fiji Hooded Sweatshirt! Nothing in the World Can Take the Place of Persistence \r\nNonprofit Org Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity 1201 Red Mile Road Lexington, KY 40504 US Postage Paid Lexington, KY Permit # 540 Congratulations! To Graduate Brother Majesh Abraham, ‘07 on winning the Phi Gam Feature! Keep on playing everyone! Staff Rick Bach - Purple Legionnaire Morgan Hartman - Editor-In-Chief Justin Au - Features Reporter Josh Moore - Chi Iota Reporter Steve Scott - Housing Corp. Reporter Congratulations to the Iota Spring Class of 2009 Thank you to all the grads, undergrads, and people at IHQ that made this newsletter possible! Contact Us! Want to get in touch, or just stop by the house? Contact: President Jeron Blood at jblood2@illinois.edu Corresponding Secretary Brian Cerier at bcerier2@illinois.edu Graduate Relations Chair Morgan Hartman at FijiNewsletter@gmail.com or (309) 642-2922