The Hype

Letter from the Venerable Dean

from Jacob Sloan, Venerable Dean

I'd like to welcome you all to the first issue of The Hype. Andrew Chew, our newly elected Alumni Relations Chair, has been putting a great deal of work into getting the alumni more involved and making communicating with alumni a more organized process. We hope that this format will be most convenient for those you who are online and also allow us to update you more frequently on our acheivements here at UT.

We have heard differing stories from many alumni throughout Texas as to whether the alumni there know about our re-founding and growth here at UT.

I was one of the founding fathers back in my freshman year in fall of 2003. Advisors Rob Mickam and Marshall Jones recruited us with the help of one of the International Consultants, Patrick McGovern. With a short pledge period and an initiation ceremony at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, we become the first official actives of the new Texas colony in December of 2003. I was first our pledge class president and then became our first Venerable Dean for 2004.

In fall of 2004, we moved into our temporary house at 2623 Salado St. where we got used to functioning as a housed fraternity and found our presence on UT's campus.

In the spring of 2005, Robert York became our new Venerable Dean, and I made the move to Rush Captain. That semester, we recruited our first large class of six men. This fall, Michael Strohmann took over as Interim Venerable Dean since Robert York was doing a co-op with Dow Chemical near the Houston area. We recruited another class of six men and another four in a second fall pledge class for a total of ten new Acacians this semester. At present, our total number of actives is 23 with 2 remaining pledges.

This December, I was re-elected as Venerable Dean for 2006 and see have great plans to firmly establish Acacia as a long-lasting and valued part of the Austin community and UT campus. We are preparing to re-charter as we approach a number that will allow us to move back into the original Acacia house at 2614 Rio Grande.

I hope this letter serves to catch those of you up who have not already been involved in our colonization process, and I look forward to meeting you all at future alumni functions and our re-chartering ceremony.

I encourage you to read about our accomplishments in the community and within UT's Interfraternity Council. We have been making great strides to become one of the premiere fraternities at UT once again.

Fraternally,
Brother Jacob Sloan

Letter from Alumni Relations

from Andrew Chew, Alumni Relations Chair

I have just recently been elected to Alumni Relations Chair position for this upcoming semester. I am a Bio-Chemistry/Pre-Medicine Senior from Houston, Texas. I pledged the Texas Chapter of Acacia Fraternity in Spring 2005 completing a class of six men. I joined this organization because I saw it as an opportunity to take part in a rebuilding process and hoped that my influence would help expedite the process of re-chartering as well as re-establishing our ties within the community. Another issue that I wanted to tackle was keeping the alumni updated on our events and accomplishments. This newsletter was concieved based on this concern so that we may update all of you of what the active chapter is doing.

We hope that these newsletters will allow us to involve more alumni in our activities and invite you all to future initiations and alumni functions. If you have any questions or suggestions for the newsletter or what we could do to help the alumni chapter become more involved, please email me. It would be great to know what we can do to accommodate our distinguished alumni. Thank you very much, and I hope you enjoyed the holidays.

Fraternally,
Brother Andrew San-Chun Chew