Beta Chi Chapter | FOUNDED 1868

On Sunday, Februrary 5th, 18 Pikes volunteered at the "Tri-U-Mah" indoor triathalon held at the University Recreation Center. Volunteers counted laps, recorded distances, and also encouraged athletes throughout their events. After volunteering, all members and 20+ prospective members headed over to PIKE to watch the Patriots take on the Giants in Super Bowl XLVI. Pictures of this event are posted under the photos tab.

On Saturday, November 20th, 11 new members took part in the Zeta Class Initiation, and we are proud to call them our brothers!  Congratulations to: Alex Sand, Jon Robertson, Thomas Koehn, Tanner Fuchs, Mohamed Elmubark, Brady Cross, Dylan Jones, Nolan Hazard, Joel Bauman, Tony Sluzinski and Jeremy Kudrna! After a 6-day initiation week, the Beta Chi Chapter is at full strength heading into Thanksgiving Break (46 members), and is looking forward to an exciting second semester with another new class of Pikes!

Road trip! 16 pikes took the roughly seven hour journey down to Kansas City, Missouri for the Pike Leadership Summit on November 12th. While there, they met fellow Pikes from around the country and attended the various meetings and presentations that helped create a great enthusiasm for Pike and garner strong leadership skills.  The Beta Chi Chapter has invited the director of Pike University, Rick Burt to come and speak at our chapter, as well as the international historian, Dr. Reel.  The next conference will take place in Chicago, Illinois in February.

The Pike pledges and alumni got together for the weekend of November 6-7. This was a very fun event that got the pledges familiar with the recent alumni. It was a good bonding/brotherhood event that included everything from pick up football to a scavenger hunt.  Nick Wallin, a recent Alumni hosted the event and the Beta Chi Chapter is already looking forward to the second annual retreat in the spring!

Last Friday, October 22nd, Dreamgirl Week at the Beta Chi Chapter commenced with coronation at 6:00 p.m., crowning Callie Smith from AXO as Dreamgirl and Jessica Leer from AGD as Pike Angel. 

A calendar of events from the week:

Monday - Interviews after dinner

Tuesday - Bake Off

Wednesday - ABC Fashion Show

Thursday - Canes for the Cure Philanthropy event

Friday - Coronation

We are thrilled that Callie and Jess will be spending time with us this year and thank all the other candidates for a wonderful week!

Minneapolis- October 1, 2010- In response to the recent criminal activity on campus, the members of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity are calling on members of the campus community to participate in a public forum to discuss issues related to public safety. Early in the week, members gauged interest such an event with an email to identified campus leaders. Within hours, numerous organizations had responded expressing their desire to participate in the forum prompting Pi Kappa Alpha to move forward with its event.

Pike chapter President Seth Thompson said, “With the events that have been happening on our campus over the last few weeks it is clear that the safety of students is an issue that needs to be talked about. It is an issue that can only be solved if we can get all members from our campus community to work together and come up with reasonable ways to make our campus a safer place. We will be holding a public forum early in November to try to gather a number of people interested in working towards a positive solution.”

The event will host leaders from around the community in an open discussion on public safety. The purpose of the event will be to identify issues that cause safety concerns, and set goals to solve them. The event will include a roundtable discussion, and break-out sessions with the objective of analyzing and implementing problems and solutions.

The public is welcome at the event, although there will be closed and open portions of the meeting. The summit will take place in early November, specific date and time is to be determined.

Over the summer, the Beta Chi chapter has been hard at work doing improvements on the house for the upcoming school year.  Improvements include but are not limited to:

• A new fire suppression system, bringing all rooms up to fire code
• Building a brand new DJ station/buffet counter for Monday night dinners and social events
• Re-staining the front door and coffee tables in the great room
• Re-polishing the great room floor
• Painting walls and replacing weathered dry wall in rooms and common areas

A full-day of cleaning will commence the summer work on the house this Saturday, September 4th

Hello Fellow Brothers/Friends,

This past weekend myself and a few of our brothers & alumni attended the 2010 International Pi Kappa Alpha convention which was held in Austin, TX. The Epsilon Delta chapter of the University of North Texas received their second Raymond L. Orians Chapter Excellence Award!

The Epsilon Delta alumni advisory board was also recognized as the Alumni Advisory Board of the year!

Congrats to our chapter/alumni for all your hard work and accomplishments this previous year!

J Dar
Pi Kappa Alpha
ppka

This past weekend, recruitment chair Ross Gebauer signed the first pledge of the 2010 fall class of the Beta Chi chapter, Tanner Fuchs.  Tanner is from the metro area and is enrolling in the College of Science and Engineering (formerly known as the Institute of Technology).  He was a varsity athlete in both football and track in high school, and is an excellent fit for the Pike House at the University of Minnesota.  Welcome Tanner!

The 6th Annual Dr. Kent Estes Memorial Golf Tournament raised $5100 for UNK scholarships this year. Thanks to all of those that played in the tournament or donated to the Dr. Kent Estes Scholarship Fund. We hope to see everyone back next year for another great tournament!

Lakeville is a city about 20 minutes south of Minneapolis, and they have a Clean-up Day every spring. Participants walk along the highways in the area and clean up garbage. Pike had over 20 members help with the clean-up efforts; we picked up the sides of a 2.5 mile stretch of road. The mayor was very pleased to see that we came all the way from the U of M to help out.

Relay for Life is an anual event at the U of M to raise money for the American Cancer Society. It started at 6pm on April 16 and ended twleve hours later. Pike had over 25 members participate, one of the larger groups in attendence. It was great to see a large number of participants at the event and Pike will continue to support Relay for Life in the future.

On Saturday, April 10, 2010, the Epsilon Class was initiated. We are honored to welcome these new members into our fraternity and believe that they have a lot to offer. This class is one of the largest on campus this spring. We also initiated Phil Thompson, the first president of Beta Chi when Pike was restarted in 2006.

Once a Pike, always a Pike.

Epsilon Chapter has had a long history of success on the athletic fields and in all forms of competition.  The 2009-2010 Academic Year has been no exception.  Pike continually competes in every intramural sport offered by Virginia Tech, and prides itself in its success not only in terms of wins and losses, but in the way that Pikes carry themselves on and off the field.  Pike competes in two different areas of athletics: the intramural sports that are run by VT Recreational Sports, and open to all university members, and the IFC tournaments which are 6 single-elimination tournaments held each year that are open to each Fraternity.  Below are some of the accomplishments thats Pikes have achieved in between the lines this year.

Soccer: Intrmaural (3rd Place), IFC (2nd Place)

Volleyball: IFC (2nd Place)

Flag Football: IFC (Champions)

3v3 Basketball: PIKE A Team - Intramural (Champions), Pike Dream Team - Intramural (2nd Place)

USOA Preseason Basketball Tournament: Intramural (Champions, Men's and Co-Rec)

USOA Dodgeball Tournament: Pike A Team - Intramural (Champions), Pike Dream Team - Intramural (2nd Place)

5v5 Basketball: Intramural (Champions), IFC (Champions), Co-Rec Intramural (Champions)

Note: Pike A and Pike Co-Rec 5v5 Basketball teams both went undefeated in USOA, Intramural, and IFC Play, with a record of 28-0

Innertube Water Polo: IFC (Champions), Intramural (Playoffs still in progress, Pike is vying for its 5th consecutive Water Polo Championship)

The Beta Chi Chapter is proud to annouce their pledge class for Spring 2010. Each person exemplifies S.L.A.G. (Scholars, Leaders, Athletes, Gentlemen) and is excited to start learning about the history of Pike and begin to get involved. The pledge class includes the following:

-Luis Guitart

-Parker Hanson

-Joseph Roth

-Habib Salama

-Garrett Schaefer

-Bobby Thoits

-Brent Williams

Every person shows promise for the future of the fraternity and we are proud to soon have them become a initiated member of Pi Kappa Alpha.

Pike University serves as a teaching tool to the over 200 international chapters of Pi Kappa Alpha. The Beta Chi Chapter sent 14 members to this event just outside of Chicago during the weekend of February 27. The members learned a variety of information about building an award-winning chapter. These events help to push our chapter in the direction an award-winning chapter that benefits our community and university. This event also served as a brotherhood event, in which members were able to hang out with each other the entire weekend.

The Beta Chi Chapter celebrated Founder's Day with the alumni on February 27, 2010. A few of the undergraduates enjoyed a dinner at Jax's Cafe and social time with some of the members of the Twin Cities Alumni Association (TCAA). Topics discussed included events to get more alumni involved and creating a smoother transition from active member to alumni. The alumni have helped the chapter in numerous ways; we would not be at the point we are if it wasn't for our alumni.

March 1 marks the 142 anniversary of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. Since the chapter received their charter on Novermeber 7, 2008, the chapter has been working closely with them to increase alumni involvement to create a solid alumni base around the Twin Cities. The chapter hosts barbeques, poker events and more for the alumni in addition to the events TCAA hosts for the alumni throughout the year.

The Interfraternity Council of Virginia Tech, the organization that governs over 30 IFC organizations at Virginia Tech, published its year in review newsletter recently.  The Newsletter is sent around the campus and community so that everyone can see the positive impacts that Greek Organizations have in Blacksburg.  Pike stood out once again, being noted for dominance in athletics, success in philanthropies, and overall excellence as a chapter (being one of only 3 chapters to receive Academy of Excellence recognition).