Brothers, I am pleased to announce the date for our annual alumni golf outing: SATURDAY JUNE 8.
Brothers can start securing their spots via PayPal on our Golf Outing website page. Dinosaur payers can send checks to me at 9 Saddle Ridge Road in Sparta, 07871. $175 Payable to “Theta Chi Alumni Association” More details to follow, including the location of our 19th hole gathering, which is TBD. Mark Devaney Theta Chi Golf Commissioner
Our 2018 champ, Mike McClain took home the Forever Trophy. Congrats to Mike who carded an impressive 77
We will again be having the same great social events this spring. First, we will be having our fourth annual Founder’s Day event on Friday, April 6th. Festivities will begin at 7:00 PM at Huey’s Knight Club at 164 Easton Avenue in New Brunswick. I hope to see the same great attendance as we have had the last three years.
Our third annual Beta Delta Dart Tournament will be held on April 21st. There is a separate article regarding the dart tournament on page 5.
Last, but certainly not least, will be our 37th Annual Beta Delta Golf Tournament. The event is going to be held on June 9th. Mark Devaney, our golf tournament golf chairman, has already sent out an e-mail to the golf outing mailing list, but for those of you who don’t have it I have reprinted it on page 5.
I strongly encourage all of you to read Branden Wright’s undergrad presidential article on page 2. The Greek system has had some serious challenges over the past year, both at Rutgers and nationally at college campuses across the country. We are very fortunate to have a great group of young men in our chapter at this challenging time. I encourage all of you to plan to attend one of these spring functions where you will have a chance to interact with our undergraduate brothers and see how blessed we are to have such an outstanding group of young men representing our chapter at this time of challenge in the Greek community. I can’t tell you how thankful I am to have this outstanding group of undergrads during this very difficult time for the Greek system. Our Beta Delta undergrads are one of the standard bearers for the chapters within the Rutgers Greek System and will continue to be a standard bearer at Rutgers going forward. We are very fortunate to have these young men representing Theta Chi at Rutgers University.
Fraternally,
Glenn L. Long ‘72
President
Theta Chi Alumni Association, Beta Delta Chapter
On January 21, 2017 I had the honor of attending an award ceremony where Brother Stan Cherrie, Brigadier General and alumnus '64, received the Theta Chi Distinguished Achievement Award. This ceremony was part of Theta Chi University, a regional leadership conference that was sponsored by nationals and hosted at Rutgers by our own Beta Delta Chapter. The National Executive Director of Theta Chi, Michael Mayer was on hand to personally present the award.
I was astonished to learn during Brother Mayer's opening remarks that the Distinguished Achievement Award had only been bestowed upon 69 brothers nationwide out of over 180,000 members throughout the history of the Theta Chi. As impressive as that was, Brother Cherrie's personable style and amazing career achievements showed why he was so deserving to be named as the 70th recipient. Fortunately, I was able to capture some of this on video. The opening few minutes of this video features Brother Mayer and the award presentation, followed by "about 10 minutes" of Brother Cherrie's talk on leadership.
When we initially put the word out on Facebook about the upcoming award presentation, several of Stan's Theta Chi contemporaries posted their congratulations, but many were unable to attend in person including Stan's wife Mary Ellen. I wanted to share my video with them, I hope you enjoy it.
I'd like to add that before his speech, Brother Cherrie had already spent some quality time with undergrads at their morning conference breakout sessions, and stuck around to participate in afternoon sessions. Toward the end of his talk, Brother Cherrie offered to mentor any brothers who reach out to him for help in working through whatever leadership challenges they're facing.
Failure to Communicate!
I've heard lots of feedback from fellow OX alumni over the years that we need better communication to increase the turnout for our alumni events. This always conjures up that awesome quote from Cool Hand Luke, "What we've got hear is failure to communicate!"
This is exactly why I starting working with our Alumni Board to see if we can update our methods and improve the situation. So far, I've been posting on our RU OX Alumni Facebook page and started this Blog, I'm also working to update our website content and sending out some occasional emails.
Unfortunately our "email list" had gotten pretty far out-of-date, alarmingly we were at the point where the number of rejects was greater than the deliveries. I've rebuilt our official email list from scratch using the free Mail Chimp platform and the current email addresses I had, but we were still only at 94 subscribers. Obviously, this is not acceptable as we could only communicate with about 25% of our total alumni base.
The Solution: Class Captains Email Drive
We put the email sign-up form on our website homepage, and I've enlisted our Class Captains to help get the word out that we need everyone to sign-up on our official Beta Delta Alumni Email list.
The process is simple and painless, and we won't bury you with spam emails. It's more about sending out important announcements, pdf versions of the Bugle, and details on upcoming social events.
To succeed, what we really need is for every Rutgers OX alumni brother to manage their own subscription info. If you received my email about the "2nd Annual Alumni Dart Tournament" delivered to the right inbox, then you're good-to-go. If not, please be sure to visit our homepage and fill in the short email sign-up form. Be sure to click the mail chimp confirmation email that gets sent to your email address.
Thanks to the effort of the Class Captains so far, we've already increased from 94 to 120 subscribers in just 2 weeks. Personally, I'd like to see us get over 250 subscribers, so please spread the word and encourage others to visit "betadeltaonline.com" to sign themselves up.
The Rutgers football team took its lumps this season under first-year coach Chris Ash, finishing with a 2-10 record, but the future does look bright. The best indicator of this is that recruiting is going quite well, much better than under former coach Kyle Flood. The assistant coaching staff, highlighted by strength and conditioning coach Kenny Parker and Director of High School Relations Rick Mantz, is well positioned to not only recruit well but to develop the players currently in the program.
In spite of the football team’s record, the tailgating season was a great success. We now have three different tailgates in the Yellow Lot at the stadium, with the primary tailgate featuring the Theta Chi Flag which is easy to find. Much thanks to Andrew Holloway ’13, our alumni social chairman, for putting together the tailgates and being very hands on to ensure that each tailgate is a success.
While football season may be over, we are planning to have three of the same social events that we had last spring which were all quite successful. These include the alumni dart tournament at the chapter house on a yet to be determined date, the Founders Day Party which will be held on April 7th and the spring game tailgate on a yet to be determined date in April. These were all successful events last year and we are looking forward to having them again this year. Have a great holiday season everyone. I am looking forward to seeing many of you in the spring.
Fraternally,
Glenn L. Long ‘72
President
Theta Chi Alumni Association, Beta Delta Chapter
For those of you who have football season tickets, you are well aware of the continuing increases in the cost of tickets, parking, required donations, etc. It is for this reason that we are now going to be tailgating in the Yellow Lot instead of the Scarlet Lot. The Yellow Lot is just past the Hale Center
northeast of the stadium. I’m looking forward to seeing many of you in the Yellow Lot at our tailgates this football season.
For those of you who are able to visit the campus for a football game, I would encourage you to pay a visit to the chapter house, where you will see many improvements that have been undertaken this summer. These include a new front walkway, new shrubs in the front of the house, and new tile in what was the old kitchen.
The most exciting improvement, however, is at the front entrance to the house where we will now feature a memorabilia room. You will immediately notice when you walk in the chapter house that there will be our “OX” logo incorporated into the new red tile at the front entrance. The front room will have a red and white theme and will have shelves for the memorabilia that is currently being collected to feature there. This effort was spearheaded by John Sprovieri ’72 (my pledge brother) and I know that he is excited to have brothers return to the chapter house to see this new memorabilia room.
We have also initiated the second annual Theta Chi Challenge. This is a donor program for Rutgers that was initiated last year and implemented again this year. The idea is to have affinity groups, such as fraternities, solicit fellow members of their affinity group with the intent of increasing the donor rate from the affinity group. The Beta Delta Chapter of Theta Chi is serving as a model for this concept at Rutgers, and it was very successful when it was implemented last year. I’m looking forward to similar results this year when all of the results are tallied.
I hope to see a lot of you this fall!
Fraternally,
Glenn L. Long ‘72
President
Theta Chi Alumni Association
Beta Delta Chapter
It is time to put your money where your putter is!
The 2016 Theta Chi Open, as you all know, is Saturday, June 18 at our beloved RU golf course.
The fee remains the same -- $160 for golf, food and drink. $60 for food and drink. $120 for first time golfers. And as usual, we are looking for alumni to fund the undergrad group.
We will also once again gather for the 19th hole on Brother Rick Winter’s deck, which has been fortified after our collective weight caused it to buckle last year! (Good thing Rick’s in the insurance business…)
So please get your payments moving. The best and preferred method is via the link below:
