FIJI Parents’ Newsletter End of the School Year Update – Spring 2010 Hello all! The end of the school year is always a commotion and these past months were no exception. April and May have been extremely busy for all of us with the many activities we are involved with on campus. We will be sending out these newsletters periodically during the semester especially whenever we have significant events to report. If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to contact us: Matt Schipp ’12 – Corresponding Secretary Josh Moore ’11 – Chapter President schipp2@illinois.edu jmm8976@gmail.com Enjoy! We recently celebrated our Founders Day on May 1st! The Fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta was founded on May 1st, 1848 thus celebrating 162 years of excellence! On April 14th, we paired up with the ladies of Kappa Kappa Gamma to host a BBQ dinner at the FIJI house. We did an excellent job on both ends bringing people to this first-year event, and $3015 was donated to Habitat for Humanity! Congratulations to Michael Drackley ’13 for organizing this philanthropy dinner. We look forward to expanding this event next year! New Changes We will merge both the Mom’s and Dad’s Association into a Parent’s Association. It seemed unnecessary to have two separate groups that both do the same thing. We have received updated e-mail addresses and will be sending you all updates about FIJI’s accomplishments and involvement on campus. However, it was agreed to keep the $50 yearly dues for the Parent’s Association. This money goes to feed the kids during the move-in week for both the fall and the spring since we are not provided with food service. Any unused money goes towards house improvement projects. Checks can be made out to the Fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta and given to the Chapter Treasurer, Matt Kirby ’12, upon arrival on campus at the start of the school year. \r\nFIJI wins big at Philanthropy! April is a major time for philanthropies at the university. This month we had participated in several sororities events, winning several of them. A group of FIJIs won a scavenger hunt in Alpha Xi Delta’s “The AmaXing Challenge: Xi Marks the Spot”. In addition, we also dominated at Delta Gamma’s “Anchor Splash”. We have a surprisingly gifted group of swimmers and drivers who represented us well by placing in every event and winning first overall! Greek Oscars At the end of the year, the Greek system has an awards ceremony for all the fraternities and sororities. This year FIJI won several awards including Best Housing Corporation and Best Scholarship Plan. Some individual honors include Jeff Gardner ’10 winning Greek Man of the Year and Michael Drackley ‘13 was honorable mention for Best New Member! Summer Fun! This summer we have several events planned. We will be having a fundraising project at Joliet Speedway and a summer recruitment event. Brothers work at the Joliet Speedway in order to raise money for the house and keep dues as low as possible. Fundraising provides us with opportunities to take advantage of the many activities on campus. We hope for a strong turnout! We have Weekend decided in to order have to The Order of Omega Three brothers (Matt Kirby ’12, Brian Fisher ’11, and Josh Moore ’11) were inducted into the Order of Omega recently. This is an honor society for members of Greek Organizations. Congratulations to all! an annual raise money auction for the during Mom’s Chapter. We encourage you to keep this in mind during the year in case you happen to stumble across anything interesting you might like to donate to the auction. Thank you in advance. In addition to all of these accomplishments, we have had great success in intramurals. We have made it to the playoffs in broomball, basketball, and indoor soccer. We also had a co-recreational team including several FIJIs and their girlfriends that won the softball league.