State of the Chapter

8.15.08

INTRODUCTION

Greetings Brothers,

The 2007-08 school year was a great year for the Theta Beta Chapter. It was a transition year for the active chapter with the graduation of some key leaders, such as Justin Clem, Jason Schroeder and Nathan Hurley. They were freshman when the house was placed on probation and have led it back to its place as one of the core fraternities at USD. The current actives are forming a strong base for the future growth of Theta Beta. Andy Grimm was elected Commander last fall and did an excellent job throughout the year. However, he was called up to active duty and will be getting deployed to Iraq this fall so keep him in your prayers.

Scott Buchanan is the current Commander and he will be leading the active chapter while USD makes some transitions. Scott attended Grand Chapter in Austin, TX this summer and had the honor of staying at alumni Tom Doughty’s house during the week. The transition I spoke of is USD will be moving up to IAA to join SDSU, NDSU and UND so look for their scores on ESPN this fall. The Greek community continues to shrink in numbers so they have changed Rush to allow fraternities to hand out bids throughout the school year, thereby making Rush informal. Hopefully, the change will begin to increase numbers throughout campus. Work - week for the actives will begin on August 25th so stop by if you have some free time.

As far as the alumni are concerned, it has been disappointing that more of our fellow alumni have not stepped up to volunteer their time or money. Considering we have 713 members of Theta Beta, there have only been 10 core alumni who have been working hard to keep the house operating. I would hope that many of you would search your hearts to see what you can do to help Theta Beta continue to grow. Sigma Nu is about passing along the ideals that we all shared during our college days and it is our duty to pass them along to the new generation. We need to start scholarship funds to allow the actives to focus on education and remain competitive with the other fraternities that have large scholarships. Even more importantly we need local alumni that can serve as advisors and help mentor the active members.

Finally, I wanted to thank Dave Leonard for managing all of the day-to-day activities of the active chapter. Dave lives in Vermillion so he has been a core part of the house for several years, but he will be moving his family back home to Atlantic, Iowa so we need some other local alumni to step up and help fill his void.

I also wanted to thank Robert Hollingsworth for negotiating our debt down with Nationals to $3500 from $15,000. Great job

Please contact me if you have any questions or want to volunteer your time.

Fraternally,

Chad Tschetter OB 514 Alumni Advisor

PAST REPORTS

8.15.2007

Greeting Brothers,

The 2006-7 school year was an outstanding year for the Theta Beta Chapter. The year started out last summer with the Housing Corporation spearheading a major overhaul of the Big Brown Barn on a very tight budget. Rich Abild(OB433) did a great job managing the contractors but he couldn’t have pulled it off without the help of the actives and Dave Leonard(OB520). Dave recently moved back to Vermillion and his “Can Do” attitude made it happen just in time for school to start.

The next major event for the Chapter was Rush. We had a very successful Rush. We tied for second on campus with the signing of 13 candidates( including 2 legacy’s Kyle Hanlon and Tyler Snyder), a total of 104 bids were signed by fraternities on campus. I feel what set Sigma Nu apart was the large alumni presence we had at Rush. The following alumni all took time to help out with Rush. They are Dave West(OB234), Anthony Gaul(OB513), Ryan Donovan(OB581), Scott Brekke(OB557), Dave Leonard(OB520), Chad Tschetter (OB514), Rich Abild(OB433), Robert Hollingsworth(OB442), Tom Hanlon(OB255), Virgil Grim(OB674), Scott Groetken(OB406) and Justin Koenen(OB646).

The rest of the school year was thankfully uneventful. The chapter participating in many campus activities such as Strollers, intramurals, Greek Week and have several members involved with other campus organizations like IFC and the Student Senate. The actives also participated in numerous charitable endeavors, detailed later in this newsletter. The actives continue to be leaders on campus academically and are tasked to push the candidates to raise the bar as well. Most of the other fraternities on campus all of scholarships to offer to the chapter. This is an area that we are behind the curve on, hopefully one of you would feel it in your heart to step forward and begin an annual fund, possibly to honor a member of your family.

The 2007-8 school year will be a critical turning point for Theta Beta. We need to have a good rush and need to activate more members so we can have 20 members living in the house. 20 members is what we need to break even and currently only 15 guys are slated to move in this fall. Therefore, the alumni are tasked with continuing to subsidize the fraternity’s daily operations. We need all of you financial support to make this happen. Furthermore, we need mentors that can attend meetings and help grow the character of the chapter. There was a large void left in the house around 2003-5 and many of our traditions and standards have died. We need alumni to help bring that back.

Lastly, we are in the process of setting up a more interactive website that can give more frequent feedback to the alumni. Nate Welsh(OB507) is spearheading this effort and it should be ready to roll out by July so check back then. We need all of you to go to our website and give us your email address if you haven’t already. Furthermore, we need to start the process of planning our 40th anniversary celebration. We need feedback from all of you on this effort. Do we want to have it in Vermillion or in Sioux Falls, should it be during D-Days and what activities would you like to see; are some of the feedback we need from you. We could also use volunteers to help plan the event.
Contact me with your feedback
Chad Tschetter OB 514
Chapter Alumni Advisor

PS…….ALUMNI

Along with the fundraising, the 40 for 40 campaign includes the rallying of our alumni for our 40th anniversary. We want to honor the first 40 active members of Theta Beta at the 40th Anniversary banquet. We need a volunteer from this group that can help spearhead this effort. We need help tracking down all of the men, so we really need someone from that year group help plan the event.

Anyone interested in helping out contact Chad Tschetter at cdtsch1@tx.rr.com

PAST REPORTS:

Updated: 8/23/2006

Theta Beta 163 is back…..

Brothers,

As of last week we passed the Fire Marshals inspection and the actives were allowed to move back in. The house has come a long way in the past two months. It really looks like a different house if you have seen it in the past few years. A lot of work has been done in just the past few weeks. We need a strong rush- but we have a good group of guys now to to build off of. I would like to personally thank Nate Hurley and Jason Schroeder for being the point people in the house this summer-they have worked their tails off and it shows. I would also like to thank David Leonard, an alumni who lives in Vermillion and has really stepped up these past weeks and offered his time, money and expertise- We wouldn’t be were we are today without him. We have a lot of people to thank-but we still have a ways to go. We have spent nearly 18,000 on the house. These are all things that were required by the fire marshall. New doors, windows, electrical, and a number of smaller fixes. The house looks good, but next year will will have to address the bathrooms. But for now we are looking at about 8,000 of new bills- insurance for the year, taxes, rush and the beginning of the school year bills ahead. We had about 19,000 in the account, so we are looking at being about 7,000 short here in the next 45 days. I want to thank all the people who have donated this year- also all the alumni that have pledged- we have about 4600.00 due in pledges from 27 alumni earlier this summer. We ask that all people who have pledged please now send in the money if they can- we desperately need it now. We also need the hundreds of alumni that haven’t pledged anything yet to now step up. The actives haven proven themselves by getting everything they needed done over the past year-also we have fixed up the house and passed fire inspection. Please go to the website and make a donation today. On the front page of the website you can look at the donors for 2006 and the people who have pledged to send in donations. We will have new reports shortly from Dave West on another fun EN golf tournament a few weeks back, Reports on Rush from Justin Clem, and more on the financial shape of the house from the Housing Corp.

But again, we need your help. Please make a donation today. Hope to see you at D-Days (Oct 6-8) this year to check out the house and show support for the actives.

Fraternally,

Richard Abild
OB 433

Fall Report 2005

Greeting Snakes,

For those of you that have been out of the loop, we will give a brief history that has lead us to the situation we currently find ourselves in. As we all know, the alumni have never been well-organized and active participants with the active chapter. Our disconnections with the actives lead to a drop in standards that the active chapter was held to. They made many wrong decisions between 2002 and 2005 that lead to them being placed on suspension by the University and Nationals in the spring of 2005. They initially were placed on 5 years probation but that was negotiated down to a one-year suspension. They were unable to live in the Old Brown Barn, recruit new members or participate in any social functions for the 2005-06 school year.

Nationals de-activated many of the problems members, leaving the chapter with 15 actives and 4 candidates. The core group of members left are outstanding young men. The entire group have gone above and beyond to ensure the chapter has a future at USD and are in the process of establishing a new website. They have met all of the requirements placed on them by Nationals and the University. Furthermore, they are been doing weekly community service, maintaining the Brown Barn, raised their chapter GPA to 2.98, had a retreat from with a representative from Nationals with 2 more planned for the Spring Semester, have a group of prospective candidates already waiting to pledge next year and due to their efforts have been allowed by the university to move into 221 E. Main this summer (if we can pass a fire inspection). Justin Clem, the current Chapter President, has done an outstanding job leading the young men and was chosen by Nationals to attend the Sigma Nu Institute. It was a pilot training program for 16 Chapter Presidents from around the Nation. It is obvious that we have a great group of Actives that can turn the house around, now it is the Alumni’s time to step up.

In the past, the Theta Beta Chapter was held together by a small group of Alumni, such as Dave West and Monte Kramer (and many more). This past summer as news spread of the chapter’s situation around 200 alumni began to be in contact through email discussing the situation. Around 50 alumni donated $14,000 this past summer and fall to save the Big Brown Barn from being sold. It was on the market to be sold in the summer and offers were on the table for that to happen. That $14,000 was enough to pay the bills for the school year- mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance and past due bills.

We still owe $9000 to Nationals; we are negotiating with them a plan to get it paid off. Along with raising money, the housing corporation changed hands to Robert Hollingsworth, Richard Abild and Steve Schacht. We would like to thank the old housing corp. for their years of selfless service. Also, Chad Tschetter began serving as the chapter’s alumni advisor.

The situation as of today leaves the chapter at a crossroads. We have completed most of the things that can be done with hard work but that has not been enough to save the Theta Beta Chapter. The bottom line is that we need money to save the chapter. Therefore, a fundraising committee has been formed to implement a large fundraising effort. The committee consists of Dave West, Nathan Welsh, JD Aasland, Chad Tschetter, Richard Abild, Robert Hollingsworth and Steve Schacht. We realize the Big Brown Barn is most likely not the long-term solution for our housing needs, but until we raise enough money we cannot look into buying a new house until we have cash on hand.

The goal of the fundraiser is
1) To raise enough money to do the minimum amount of repairs to the house to make it safe andt livable. $40,000

2) Obtain enough cash on hand to help pay the bills over the next 24 months starting this fall until we can reach the break-even point of 22-25 active members living in the house on a regular basis. $20,000

3) Pay off debt to Nationals. $9000

4) Establish a Scholarship Fund for the Actives (Required by Nationals). $3000

5) Begin a reserve fund for future housing needs. $8000

SPRING 2006 FUNDRAISING GOAL is $80,000

We are going to have to move fast if we are to keep Sigma Nu in Vermillion. We have roughly three to four months to raise the money to begin repairs in June and let the actives know that they will be able to move back in at the end of the summer.

Again, we need to accomplish two major goals in the coming months. First, try and locate a majority of the close to 700 Sigma Nu Alumni from Theta Beta 163 and get their current updated contact information. And second, begin our fundraising campaign to save the house. The housing corp. will give a more detailed report on what needs to be repaired in the short term (Read under latest news) .

We would like to have alumni give $100.00 each year to help build back up the Sigma Nu house to days of old. But this year we need to ask for more. We have a short window of time to raise the money. Please give what you can in the next 120 days, challenge others to give and also spread the word to get fellow alumni to come forward and update their contact information.

Sigma Nu Theta Beta’s 40th anniversary is in 2008. Lets all join together in making sure that we still have a chapter in two years to celebrate this milestone and start to look forward to getting back in touch with the house and fellow alumni. Much more to come…….

Thank-you, for your support.

Chad Tschetter
Alumni Advisor

PLEASE HELP US SAVE THE THETA BETA CHAPTER!!!!!!!!!