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Gamma Alumni Newsletter: January-February

Esteemed alumni,

As you know, one of the adages we adhere to is, “once a Pike, always a Pike”, it is in this spirit that we send you this newsletter to update you on what’s new with Gamma Phi recently. January marked the beginning of a new semester here at Wake, and with it, a new opportunity for our chapter to advance itself on campus and in the community.

New Leadership

At the beginning of the semester, elections were held for a number of executive positions within the fraternity. Gamma Phi elected a new SMC, Graham Smith Collett. Brother Collett is a junior from Morganton, North Carolina and previously had served in the role of Master of Ceremonies.

Spring 15 Pledge Class

Gamma Phi’s newest class began their pledge process in the beginning of January. They are one of the bigger classes we’ve ever had, with 25 kids. Furthermore, of the 25 bids we gave out 100 percent were accepted. After this class is initiated, hopefully sometime in April, we will have 99 active brothers, making us one of the biggest fraternities on Wake’s campus. Intramural Excellence

Our intramural sports teams continued to show their dominance with a huge win in basketball over last week. Almost the whole fraternity came out to watch our guys pull out the close win over one of our biggest rivals. This win puts us in great position to take home yet another Fraternity Cup, which we’ve now won three years running.

Atlanta Leadership Summit

During the weekend of February 20th a number of members from our brotherhood and our chapter advisor Chip Seidle attended a leadership summit in . This event was designed specifically for Pikes, and a number of chapters from all over the east coast were in attendance. The summit focused on how we could better run our chapter in the face of all the anti-fraternity sentiments currently out there.

Strikes with Pikes

One of our biggest philanthropy events of the year, Strikes with Pikes, is coming up in March. The event is geared towards raising money for the Taylor Trudeau Cycle for Life Foundation. This organization’s goal is to raise awareness and fund research for blood cancers in honor of fallen Pike brother Taylor Trudeau, who lost his life to Leukemia in 2008. Last year we worked with the Kappa Gamma sorority and raised around 2,500 dollars for the foundation. This year we have set a goal of raising 3,000 dollars for our fallen brother Taylor.

I hope this letter found you well, and that it provided some insight into what we’re currently up to. Through the guidance of our chapter advisor Chip Seidle and help from our outstanding alumni Gamma Phi has managed to thrive even in spite of the increasing anti-fraternity attitude at Wake Forest and across the nation. The past 12 months have seen 3 fraternities (Sigma , , and ) have their charters revoked by nationals in wake of hazing scandals and other infractions, and a number of other ones come extremely close. It seems that nearly every other week a Greek organization is being heavily scrutinized by the media for some offense. Times are changing, and we all hope that these changes will not include the minimization or even cessation of Greek life at colleges and universities across the country. These are indeed troubled times for fraternities and sororities and this is why now, more than ever, we need as much help from our alumni as possible. Donations from you, no matter how small, can help us send brothers to leadership summits, organize philanthropy events, and better our chapter in a number of ways. If you have any interest in continuing to help us improve our chapter in this turbulent time for Greek life, or if you simply have questions or concerns, please email me at [email protected].

Humbly,

Evan Jessie Warshauer ppka