September 8th, 2011 Manny
Tonight was definitely the culmination of our efforts over the past year: Greek Convocation
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Greek Convocation, it’s a yearly award ceremony for chapter achievement, recognizing fraternities at Rutgers for their work on the Annual Report. The Annual Report is basically a checklist split into categories that every chapter should exemplify regardless of what they stand for. I’m very proud to say that we did extremely well!
Awards were given out to chapters who were able to fully complete the checklists for multiple sections. They called chapters who completed one section, two, three, and ever four sections. Around this point I was starting to worry that we might not even be called and that we may have fouled up our paperwork… That fear quickly vanished when they called out “Delta Sigma Phi” for having fully completed five sections out of the nine that we were given! The only other chapter to have received an award after us was Mu Beta Psi, the music honors fraternity which completed seven sections. This means that the Gamma Zeta chapter was the IFC chapter to fully complete the most Annual Report sections!
The last set of awards to be called out were the Four Star awards, which is given to the chapters who achieved a very high score on the Annual Report. My brothers and I looked on and observed that there were only five awards to be presented, meaning that the bar had been set much higher than last year when we had won our Category 1 award… Once again however, Delta Sigma Phi was called to receive their Four Star award!!! We were fortunate enough to have earned such a prestigious award and we were joined by Chi Upsilon Sigma sorority, Sigma Kappa sorority, Sigma Chi fraternity, and Mu Beta Psi fraternity. Delta Sig was one of two IFC fraternities this year to receive a Four Star award. We are extremely honored and are definitely going to strive to keep our standard for excellence high for the next year and the following years to come!
YITBOS
El Nino
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August 9th, 2011 Manny
My apologies on the big gap between articles!
This has definitely been an eye opening summer for me as a Delta Sig. I’ve been to the Leadership Institute and to our 2011 Convention and I can definitely say I’ve seen the fraternity in a whole other light. I have met many brilliant men over these past two events and many men who are very passionate about our fraternity. There’s so much that I want to say right now that I’m having a hard time picking a spot to start. I suppose all I can do is start from the beginning…
In the beginning of the summer, I discovered that I was selected as one of 50 men who would be attending Delta Sigma Phi’s Leadership Institute and would be flown out and transported for free to Camp Tecumseh in Indianapolis, IN. Admittedly, though I was intrigued by the concept of the Leadership Institute I originally applied just to check off a requirement for our national Accreditation Packet. I thought this would just be some average retreat where they do the usual “let’s do some ice breakers… you’re a leader… here are some vague ways to improve yourself and your chapter… blah blah blah…” and then they would give me a piece of paper and send me on my way back to Jersey.
I was completely wrong.
You could ask any Delta Sig who attended the Leadership Institute if you don’t believe me when I say that this retreat was above and beyond anything I expected to experience. I am now working to follow through on several action plans that I made for myself to become a better man. We discussed the importance of change as a leader and explored the various roles of leadership that an individual may be most skilled at. We went through a high ropes course involving rock climbing and this crazy ladder that required two brothers to hoist their way up as a team. It’s hard to explain but I’ll find a couple pictures from the Delta Sigma Phi Facebook to include at the end of this part. The greatest part of this retreat was that I was surrounded by 49 other motivated undergraduates who also wanted to become better men. We were guided by alumni who were dedicated to the belief in developing leaders to bring about a positive change in the world. It’s funny in a way. Whenever I’m around Delta Sigs, it feels like I’m with family… we just naturally click and it’s almost effortless to enjoy myself. Despite having to wake up early the next day, we’d be up extremely late just hanging out and talking and learning about each others chapters. I’m going to cut the LI retreat short but if you’re interested in learning more about this, please don’t hesitate to ask me about it. You can leave a comment and I’ll leave my email at the bottom for anyone curious about this initiative as well as any questions regarding Convention.
Trading rush shirts
Bon fire! The man standing by the fire is an interpreter for Ray, a brother of the Eta Psi chapter, an all-deaf/hard of hearing chapter of Delta Sigs at Gallaudett University.
Mehdi from Stonybrook and I tackled the giant swinging ladder of death to rep the East Coast the right way.
Victory: Team Bromance
Now onto Convention!!!
This year’s Convention was at the Omni Resort at Champions Gate in Orlando, Florida. We had roughly 250 undergraduates and just as much, alumni there! This was one of the greatest events I’ve been to yet, inside and outside of Delta Sig. From the etiquette lesson we had to the professionalism workshops to the awards ceremony and banquet (our chapter received an improved GPA award for the Fall 2010 semester), this Convention was well worth the money! The Convention ticket itself was complementary and hotel and shuttle was discounted to a really good price. Only thing that was full price was the plane and souvenirs pretty much. I was caught completely offguard when I was called as one of the brothers to receive the Order of Sphinx award! Apparently Jay or the ACB had something to do with my nomination haha. One of the brothers knew he would be getting the award and so I was listening to names being called, hoping to hear the name of one of the Rutgers brothers and was shocked when my name was called! I’m definitely honored!
Oh and did I mention we spent a good day at Universal Orlando? Yeah… Jay, Justin, George Lu and I kind of spammed Harry Potter world for a good few hours… it was glorious haha. We learned about the history of Delta Sigma Phi and many of its secrets from Loren Mall, a man who has spent around 20 years after his presidency of the fraternity dedicated to uncovering the past of Delta Sigma Phi, as much knowledge about the fraternity had since been lost since it’s founding in 1899. All first-time attendants earned their Pilgrim’s Degree for traveling to Convention. Jay, Justin, and I joined the Delta Sigma Phi Singing Pilgrims, a group of men who learn and sing the songs of Delta Sigma Phi at national events.
I’m definitely looking forward to future Conventions and hope to go as an alumnus someday. The next Convention is in Arizona and after that is New Orleans! I was shocked to see how many alumni frequently attend Convention. One man was attending his 25th Convention this past July! I can only hope to be that connected to Delta Sig in my years as an alumnus. In a nutshell, Convention was amazing time with hundreds of other Delta Sigs, new and old.I’ll leave a few pictures for you guys to check out. If you want to see more, feel free to check out my Facebook page or the Delta Sigma Phi page!
For glory!!! (Order of Sphinx and Chapter Excellence award)
Delta Sigs assemble!
Kickin’ it with the sphinx.
One fez to rule them all…
Hope you enjoyed the article! I’m waiting on updates from the McKee Scholarship to come out on August 15th so I’ll be posting again in about a week before I go to RA training! I’ll leave the chapter’s Facebook and my Facebook and email if you’d like to contact me regarding any of my articles on here!
Rutgers Delta Sigma Phi
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RutgersDeltaSig
Manny Gonzalez (me)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/hatesusernames
Email: mgonzalez47@gmail.com
YITBOS!
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May 19th, 2011 Manny
Gamma Zeta has finished their first full semester as an official chapter!!!! We’ve handed in our Annual Report to the Office of Fraternity Sorority Affairs and are finishing up some final portions for our national Accreditation Packet! There are some cool things that we’ve done since Ben’s last post and there are also some great times in store for the summer!
Carnation Ball was great! It was an amazing night with lots of music, lots of awards, and A LOT of prizes and gift-giving. There are tons of pictures taken from the night but until we can figure out a site for anyone to view them, we have it on Facebook! There’s plenty of great pictures on there and it was a lot of fun to hang out with some of the alumni again!
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150240113596578&set=a.10150240105351578.371612.625276577&type=1&ref=notif¬if_t=photo_comment_tagged&theater#!/media/set/?set=a.10150240105351578.371612.625276577
The day after was just as fun! It was Rutgers Day so of course we had to get our philanthropy on! We set up a table, bought some whipped cream cans and pie tins, grabbed a couple garbage bags and paper towels and kicked off our Pie a Delta Sig event to raise money for Kaleidoscope for Hope and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society! I have all of the pictures up on my Facebook and I’ll include a couple choice pictures for laughs. =)
I’ve been waiting three years to do this to Metehan
Great victory for Josh as he delivers the finishing blow to Mr. Castro
The new Presidente got it too (Jay)
And the new New Member Educator (Max)
And in case you were wondering…
I got it too… my resident had to find me on College Ave…
As far as upcoming events, we have our Delta Sig Alumni Barbecue at 1 o’clock this Saturday at 56 High Street on the College Avenue campus! All Delta Sigs are more than welcome to come spend the day hanging out with the undergrads of Gamma Zeta and eat plenty of food and maybe get some football going too while we’re at it! I’ll definitely post some pictures from the day later on. Fingers crossed the weather’s good (we’ll make it work either way).
In National news, Convention is happening this July and who else is going but Simon, Jay, Justin, G-Lu and yours truly! We’ll be heading down to Orlando, FL and spending 4 nights at the Omni Orlando Resort at Champions Gate and meeting Delta Sigs of all ages! I booked my flight there yesterday and am now extremely pumped for it! Before Convention, we have the Leadership Institute, which yours truly has also been accepted to =D I’ll be representing Gamma Zeta , at no cost, at the Leadership Institute in Indianapolis, IN this July (another event that I’m extremely excited for). Brothers are also applying for the McKee Scholarship. Parth won it last year and now Gamma Zeta is determined to get as many brothers’ names on the list of recipients as possible!
Also, speaking of Parth, he is now the President of the Engineering Governing Council!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this really long article because I had a great time typing it out!
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April 12th, 2011 BPoon
I’ll be updating this in a little bit, but this weekend was nothing other than FANTASTIC. We initiated 5 new high quality brothers followed by an even more fantastic brotherhood retreat upstate in Penn Yan. There will be pictures, but it will take time for them to upload. Risky Jenga, dawn-breaking Risk, cows (LOTS of them), Epic breakfast/lunch/dinners, meeting a brother from Oswego, stopping to visit our Binghampton brothers, and a whole bunch more. Even outside this weekend, we’re making our imprints such as getting to the semi-finals of the Samosa Eating Contest hosted by the Desi Intercultural Youth Association and our fellow brother Mike Huang receiving the Golden Tripod Award at the Student Movie Festival.
Don’t forget to contact Jay Patel or anyone in our fraternity about getting tickets to Carnation Ball this year!
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March 5th, 2011 Manny
So far in the semester so good! Delta Sig is doing big things this semester and I figured I’d take a break from studying for exams to let everybody know how things are going.
First off, we have a great pledge class this semester in our Kappa class! They’re all getting along very well and I can see infinite potential in all of them to be great brothers. I want to congratulate all of the brothers who now have the honor of having littles as well. It’s definitely a great experience to be a big and I hope that you all get the most out of it.
We’ve been working on all kinds of projects lately and we’ve been working to shape up the fraternity and start preserving our history now that we’ve been chartered. Ben has started working toward updating the brother profiles on this page and both Ben and Jay are working on getting a profile of all the lineages within the chapter so we can look back and remember just how far back this fraternity runs as we get younger guys who aren’t as aware of Gamma Zeta’s history as the rest of us.
So far the brothers have got the ball rolling on community service and philanthropy work and we’re aiming toward doing more (and better) events! We’ve decided to organize a blood drive for April 27th to benefit the American Red Cross and we’re currently brainstorming on fun philanthropy fundraisers! We recently cosponsored a date auction for Operation Smile and helped to raise money for children in third world countries born with cleft lip/palate. We also cosponsored a benefit concert with Alpha Phi Omega to raise money for this year’s Dance Marathon! Speaking of Dance Marathon, Jay Patel and I will both be participating in Dance Marathon on April 2nd! For those of you who aren’t familiar with Dance Marathon, it’s a fundraising event where “dancers” stand on their feet and go without sleep for 32 hours! All the proceeds go to benefit children with cancer so if you’re interested in contributing, here is the link for Delta Sig: http://embracekids.donordrive.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.team&eventID=502&teamID=5070. I’ve managed to raise my minimum amount but Jay still needs help meeting the March 11th deadline so feel free to give him a hand. Definitely stop by and visit us on April 2nd if you have the time!
And now, as I return to my studies, I’ll leave you all with some pictures.
From left to right: Ben (Eta), Mike (Iota), and Chane (Kappa)!
Justin (Kappa) and his big, Parth (Theta)
Behold the Eta Empire!
Going around the table from left to right: Mihir Kunal, Jimmy Bruno, John Carlos Soto, Ben Poon, Jay Patel, Derrick Cortez, Jack Yuan, and Max Tang
And finally…
becomes…
I find this picture amazing, haha!
(Far back) Sarath, (Mid Left) Justin, (Front) Mike, (Mid Right) John, (Back Right) Ravi
Good night!
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February 7th, 2011 Manny
Admittedly it’s been a while since anyone’s posted on this blog… I’m bringing it back though! A lot more has happened since we received our charter. We initiated our Iota class the following week after the banquet. Congratulations go to our neos: Mike Huang, Matt Sen, Steve Leu and Josh Yoo (my grandlittle)! We had an amazing Cocoa for Cancer fundraiser at Brower and easily made a profit.
Ten of the other brothers and I went down to Philadelphia on the 22nd for the Delta Sigma Phi Regional Leadership Academy. Thanks go out to Dre, one of our alumni who let us all pack into his house for the night so we wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel room at the Radisson!
And this semester we’re currently winding down with our Spring semester RUSH! It was full of all kinds of great events and we definitely met a lot of great potential new members. We had a buffet night with all kinds of good food (burgers, hot dogs, chicken, pizza, etc) and we recently watched the Super Bowl and watched the Packers win! Long story short, Matt and Jay lost a couple bets. I have a good feeling that we’re going to have yet another quality pledge class in our Kappa class this semester!
Aside from all that, the brothers are looking into a new house to stay in (no letters yet but that we’ll fix that soon) and we’re also in the process of planning out our trip to Orlando, Florida this summer for our national convention!
Thanks for reading and I’ll try to keep up the blogging job!
- Manny (El Nino)
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October 6th, 2010 BPoon
Rush Week is over! But if you’re interested in joining our fraternity, let us know and we’ll keep you posted about our next events and inviting you in. So many things have been happening over the past month that everything just seem to fly right by. Amazing things have happened and I can only express them in this manner…
WE RECEIVED OUR CHARTER!!!
Through sweat, tears, and painstaking efforts, our chapter here at Rutgers has finally received recognition from both our school and Nationals as a stable chartered Chapter. This was undoubtedly a group effort that stretches as far back beyond our starting days as a special interest group. Special thanks especially to nationals for helping us along the way, Rutger’s OFSA for guiding us there, and of course alumnus/ACB members who’ve supported and pushed this chapter to where it is today. Without you, we would not even be here today.
Our Brother Steven Koshlyak has proposed to his fiance! We wish him all the luck in the world to a good marriage and lifelong relationship. If you have the chance and you see him walking around, congratulate him!
Lastly, we’ve recently kicked off our Freshman Mentorship Program (there is a link on the right hand side under our brochure for more information and application). This program is especially made for incoming freshman who would like to take every advantage that Rutgers offers them as well as to work and study more efficiently for the purposes of excelling in class and building one’s motivational self. Once again, this is open to ALL incoming freshman, girls and guys, who want that guidance to bring them around Rutgers and New Brunswick to get a sense of our great school. The program is (of course) FREE but all participants must apply before October 13th,2010 as we will be selecting and making dates for everyone. Even if you’re unsure, just apply anyways and someone will contact you as soon as possible. (you may also click the flyer to take you to the page as well =])
There’s plenty more to say, but I will leave it up to the other brothers to fill in the rest!
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August 29th, 2010 gQ1899
What’s up everyone! Happy Move-In and Beginning of School to all!
I hope your summers have all been great and productive. As summer winds down and school starts up again Delta Sig will be starting FALL ’10 RUSH.
FALL RUSH?!?!
That’s right FALL RUSH! So check out our RUSH Group and all the events we have lined up which include BBQ’s, Wing Eating Contests, and Casino Nights just to name a few. All RUSH events are completely free and everyone is invited to come out and hang with the bros.
Check out our facebook group at:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=144209468934436&ref=ts
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July 5th, 2010 BPoon
Unbelievable how time goes by! We must have had at least six or seven events since the end of classes. No worry about pictures as I’m gathering themas we speak. If you are really antsy about them, brothers Kevin Qi, myself, and several others have them floating around on our facebook pages. We will be organizing more events to come so fret not!
On fraternity related news, we recently elected our new E-board members. They are as followed:
President: Manuel Gonzalez
Vice President: Jay Patel
Sergeant-At-Arms: Derrick Cortez
Treasurer: Max Tang
Secretary: Jimmy Bruno
Recruitment Chair: John Carlos Soto
Pledge Educator: Kennedy Mutaku
Congratulations to our newly elected Board!
I will update more in this coming week, but this will have to suffice for now! If you’re interested in learning more you can always contact any of the brothers at any given time or you can contact myself at BenjaminPoon88@Gmail.com .
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