It was ten o’clock on a Saturday night and I was certainly not expecting anything of appreciable worth or excitement to occur on this innocuous January evening. I was sitting in the living room of my fraternity house when my little brother walked through the door and asked if I had seen the basement in an eerily calm and simple manner. Of course I had seen the basement, that’s where my food lives and my underwear gets cleaned. I have since learned that ambiguous questions delivered with such poise are often the most loaded and harmful to my mental well being.

Concerned, I make my way down into the depths basement. Awaiting me was 3-5 inches of standing water in our boiler room and along our west wall, home to the majority of the house’s “expensive” electronic equipment (I use the term liberally.) The realization that my house was flooding, my land lord was too far to be of use, and it was my job to make sure this gets addressed was a very stressful one.

At this point a few facts regarding my upbringing become relevant to the story:

1. I have seen the movie Home Alone
The furnace from the movie scared the crap out of me such that I was afraid to enter a basement
until I was roughly 12 years of age

2. I grew up in northern New England
We did not have a basement; we had a sketchy stone hole in the ground (a crawl space) behind
doors I was afraid to open because of Kevin McAllister.

3. I have not lived in a house with a basement since I was 12
My parents live on a lake, and having a basement is asking for a flooding problem.

So, the house had a basement full of water and no idea of what to do with it. There were several suggested options (all of which were worthless) and subsequently dismissed. It was at this moment that one of the brothers remembered that we had a wet/dry vacuum in the garage. Eureka! It was placed in the garage as it was ultimately deemed “inconvenient” when located in the house, a mistake we have since rectified. I wandered upstairs to put on my rainbow striped goulashes (I am a sucker for shoes) and got to work. We had one brother manning the vacuum and two dumping out the black Troy-infected water when it became full. This was an experience that I would not like to relive in any way at any point in my life… ever.

After the water had been sufficiently removed, we were then charged with the task removing wooden floor boards that have been for roughly 4 years. This becomes a problem because as a ginger kid I have been blessed with the immune system of an ailing infant orphaned at birth. My voice proceeded to lower by 2 octaves within minutes of releasing the death spores from beneath the floor, hitting pitches that lifelong chain-smokes could only aspire to reach.

It was unanimously decided that living in a house with a basement full of poisonous death spores infecting the air quality was in nobody’s best interest, so we set out to the 24 hour Wal-Mart 20 minutes away to obtain a de-humidifier. The level of moisture in the basement was akin to a summer night out in the bayous of Louisiana, the kind where you start sweating when the thought of sitting on leather seats crosses your mind.

Have you ever been to Wal-Mart at 2 in the morning under the influence of death spores? I have, and it’s not a positive experience. 2 am at such a place is visually comparable with a trip to the circus, complete with the bearded lady. After an hour and a half, a $148 de-humidifier and $30 worth of allergy medication, our outing was complete. I ended up making it to bed around 4am and was fortunate enough to have work in the morning.

The whole fiasco still left us with one looming question in the morning; why did the basement flood in the first place? We were all quick to blame Al Gore and global warming, but upon further inspection it was discovered that someone had turned on the hose when it was frozen and did not think to turn it off entirely. If you are the miscreant who caused these problems, I advise you to never tell me, not even on your death bed; it would put the both of us in a very unfortunate situation. We called our alumni president and let him know of the problem only to learn that you are, apparently, supposed to turn off your hose during the winter months to avoid problems of this nature. There should be a lever in your basement attached to the water feed for said hose in case you were wondering. As a point of clarity, the Saturday of the Great Flood of 2008 was the night before the beginning of spring recruitment this year.

Why tell you this story? It has recently been brought to my attention that the majority of people are unaware of the most important benefits of Greek Life. People are quick to tell you that the biggest bonus of being Greek is the bond you build with your brothers. This is entirely true, but the majority of this message is missed if you are not part of the Greek system. Why should we expect you to know what being Greek means to us if most of the positives remain unspoken? Simply put, being a part of a fraternity has been the best learning experience that college has afforded me. Because of situations like the one I described, my ability to assess situations and deal with issues far outside of my knowledge and comfort zone has grown tremendously. The importance of being upfront about conflicts and dealing with them in a prompt and appropriate manner has been instilled in me. I use what I have learned as a brother every day to help me solve problems. I would not be the strong and confident person I am today if it weren’t for the stuff I have had to deal with from my house and the good times I had with my brothers doing it.

 Written by Lis Gallant, Vice President of Public Relations for the Interfraternity Council

Posted in Home Page, Student Perspective | No Comments »

During Ryan’s first year at RPI, we often thought what residential life might be like for him. Was he able to make friends and find support, was he exploring opportunities on campus, or was he just studying in his room alone? We asked questions but felt there was a lot we weren’t hearing about. We also figured that not knowing was a part of the letting go we had to do as he created his new life as a college freshman.

Soon we were hearing about Ski Lodge and the brothers and rush and pledges. We had initial concerns about Ryan joining a fraternity, having no experience with them ourselves. We had images of Animal House and keg parties, of him being intimidated and challenged by upper class men, of him no longer thinking for himself. But we had always put our trust in Ryan’s decision making and hoped he had thought this out thoroughly. This was his choice to pledge for Phi Kappa Theta. We told him our concerns and hoped he would keep talking about his experience with us.

Ryan is a junior now, in his 3rd year with Ski Lodge. Not only has he shown that he is committed to the brothers, he has worked hard to contribute to the community of Phi Kappa Theta, by working with the new pledges each year and doing his part to make the house run smoothly. He has learned about leadership, responsibility, commitment, and discipline, all important life skills which supplement his classwork at RPI. He has been on dean’s list for most of this time. And the friendships he has made with his brothers hopefully will continue to be supportive and lasting. Mostly he seems happy being around like-minded people and appears to have found a sense of belonging.

We still have concerns about the social events where alcohol is present, but he assures us that a sober host and sober driver are designated and that he often volunteers for one of these jobs. Many of the worries we had just haven’t become an issue. We continue to put our trust in him and try to let go as he moves through these years at RPI. So its a learning process for us as well as him.

We hope he knows how proud of him we are.

Jean & Mark Railton

Posted in Home Page, Parent Perspective | No Comments »

We the brothers of La Unidad Latina, Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity, Inc. have recognized that although Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is well known for its rigorous academia, it is not well known for its multitude of cultural events. In order to address the need to reach and surpass the cultural caliber of other institutions we host our annual poetry slam. Since 1996, we have been hosting and improving this particular event to expose culture and unity at this institute through the art of spoken word.

The poetry slam unites individuals and organizations on and off campus to participate; they expose several campus organizations and the RPI community to share their cultural beliefs, ideas and experiences through the art of spoken word. This is a great opportunity for conscious rappers and performance poets to express what is on their mind to the entire community. The slam consists of a competition where the poets speak about the specified theme. The other part of the event is the open mic, where one is not only limited to spoken word, but can perform a dance, song, skit, and so forth. This segment also allows for last minute participation from the crowd, if they too feel passionate about an idea or a movement then they too can express themselves on stage. The slam competition will be judged by RPI faculty as well as students. This year the event will take place in the Biomedical Center Auditorium and will be run & hosted by the brothers of La Unidad Latina, Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity, Incorporated.

We La Unidad Latina, Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity, Incorporated, were established in order to address the shortcomings of academic institutions in meeting and addressing the needs of Latino students in higher education. It is our mission to enrich and unite the community through quality programming such as our annual poetry slam. This event undoubtedly increases the level of unity among students. It allows the students to express their voice and develop a better understanding of each others culture and ideas through the art of spoken word.

COMPETE
Competitors in this Poetry Slam will go through a round by round elimination (total of 3 rounds) for the grand prize, an 8GB iPod Touch ($300 value). In each round, the poet recites an original poem that stays within the theme of this year’s Poetry Slam, The 7 Deadly Sins. Each poem can be about one of the sins, two sins, all of the sins, or whatever the poet wishes, as long as it stays within the theme (Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Pride).

Each poem has a 3 minute time limit. No props will be allowed. Judges consisting of 3 faculty members, an alumni, and an audience member will score each poem on a scale of 1 through 10 (10 being a perfect score). The highest and lowest score will be dropped. Performance, relation to theme, and time will be considered when judging.

OPEN MIC - “My 82 Cents”
Throughout this Poetry Slam, there will be open mic segments. During an open mic, anybody from the audience may recite a poem of their choosing (it does not have to be in correlation with the theme). You can say absolutely anything, but you must schedule a slot prior to the day of the event.

Contact
Whether you wish to compete in the slam or perform during the open mic segments, please contact the Lambda Line at 917.291.2879 or at lucins@rpi.edu.

Check out the website at http://www.rpi.edu/~lucins/7deadlysins_ps.html

Posted in Greek Event, Home Page | No Comments »

Updating and improving the IFC’s website has been one of our goals for a long time and as Public Relations officer, it has been my responsibility to undertake that task. For too long I made very little progress, but more recently exactly what “updating and improving” means to the IFC has solidified in my mind and with a vision of where the site needs to go, the leap forward suddenly came easily.

Past IFC websites essentially did only what they had to do: provide contact information, minutes from meetings and important documents. These are necessary formalities to take care of, certainly, but a website that would truly serve the IFC at RPI has to include much more.

We need a way to let people know how much community service we do, and inform each other, and RPI as a whole, of our events. We need tools that help chapter officers with their duties and improve their relationship with IFC officers; submitting community service hours to IFC has been impossible for way too long. And we need better ways to share our ideas and the strategies that we’ve developed separately over the years.

With that in mind, I got to work on a simple design that intends to focus the attention on Greek accomplishments at RPI and be a solid foundation for the functional aspects of the site that we require. Online now is essentially our old website in a new package, but that shouldn’t be the case for long.

Right now I urge all the Fraternities at RPI to register their chapters and let me know what tools you think would be especially useful (via the idea box on the right). As I work on implementing a dynamic calendar for all our use, a method for us to share photos from our events, and developing the ideas I get from the rest of you, I’ll be looking to the Greeks to provide a bit of content now and then themselves.

Above, you’ll see links to Photos and Articles, both sections a huge work in progress and areas that will take a great deal of Greek participation to succeed. Houses should be sure to document all their events with plenty of photographs, and the IFC website will soon be a great place for you to easily show them off.

The Articles section will undoubtedly be the one that depends most heavily on the Greek system as a whole. Ultimately, what I hope is that, roughly once a week, out of the 25 or so fraternities on campus, a single Brother from one will be able to put together a short article about anything related to their house or Greek life at RPI: Something about an event they’re about to hold or have already, about a Brother who stands out, a new idea for managing an aspect of their house, the list can go on. For the small amount of work this would take, it could greatly benefit the Greek community at RPI.

So, while a lot has already been accomplished, there’s clearly much more that still needs to get done. I hope this website can be an essential and unique aspect of Greek life at RPI, and that it will be more than just a formality for the IFC. Let me know what you think!

Posted in Home Page, Site Update | No Comments »