Pi Phi Bid Night 2011

  Sunday night, CA Delta waited anxiously on the lawn for our 60 new members to come running down the row and join our house.  For this Fall's Bid Night, we decided to have an in-house Casino Night complete with two food trucks and a DJ.  The NomNom truck provided every girl with a Vietnamese Banh Mi sandwich and a street taco, with delicious choices like honey grilled pork and lemongrass chicken.  We also had the Coolhaus ice cream sandwich truck provide seven gourmet ice cream flavors and five gourmet cookie choices, all wrapped in an edible rice paper wrapper with the Pi Beta Phi logo.

  The in-house was one of the best choices for CA Delta because it gave us the opportunity to really talk to our new members and bond with them through sisterhood.  Girls taught each other how to play craps, blackjack, and roulette and at the very end, everyone cashed in their chips for raffle tickets, which they used to participate in the raffle.  All the prizes were Pi Phi related: cups, lanyards, license plate frames, and back to school packages that included pencils, pens, and post its.  The most coveted prize was the Pi Beta Phi lavaliere won by one of our active members.  It was a successful night focused on introducing our new girls to true sisterhood and having the time of our lives.  Thanks to Casino de Paris, the NomNom truck, Coolhaus, and Nick Loui (DJ) for a fantastic night!

It's Award Season!

CA Delta wants to recognize the fantastic women who have won awards this Spring as well as recognize some of the girls who won last year!  Congratulations on your hard work, ladies!

Stephanie Lang: Won the UCLA Panhellenic Scholarship for the 2009-2010 academic year.

From L to R: Alex Preece, Elaine Codd, Troy Bartels

Alex Preece: Former chapter President received the Panhellenic President's "President Leadership Award" for her demonstration of excellent leadership with CA Delta throughout her presidency (2010-2011).

From L to R: Elaine Codd, Aly Rutsch, Troy Bartels

Aly Rutsch: Former Panhellenic President was presented with a joint recognition from UCLA Panhellenic and Pi Beta Phi for her dedication to CA Delta and the UCLA Panhellenic Community (2010-2011).


Halsey DiSario: Won the Sign of the Arrow Melissa Scholarship (see this blog entry to read more about this scholarship and our winner!)

Stephanie Choengkarn: Won the UCLA Panhellenic Scholarship for the 2010-2011 academic year.

Isabel Mulhulland Cramer Scholarship:  Awarded to Lila Abramson, Wendi Li, and Melissa Romo.  Congratulations girls!


On top of the awards that these ladies won this year and last, CA Delta won 3rd place in Greek Week for exceptional attendance, great athleticism and chapter pride.  We also won the UCLA Alumnae and Family Relations Award for 2010.  This award was for outstanding relations with our family and alumnae including events, activities, publications, and communication.  Finally, during the Greek Winter Gala this March, Pi Phi took away two major awards: the UCLA SOE (Standards of Excellence) Gold Laurel Recognition award and the Membership Development award.  Go Pi Phi!

First President's Letter

I am so pleased to be writing my first letter as president of CA Delta Pi Beta Phi. CA Delta has been so busy this year, both on campus at UCLA and within our surrounding community. This year, we have really reached out to local organizations such as local grade schools in order to further Pi Beta Phi’s official philanthropic effort: literacy. 
In early February, we held a large self-defense workshop in which every Panhellenic sorority on campus took part. We worked with an organization called ‘TAKE Defense’ that specializes in self-defense for young women. After an increase in awareness with regard to the safety of sorority row on behalf of all Panhellenic chapters, our TAKE Defense workshop was more successful than ever. 

Pi Phi also actively participated in UCLA’s annual Greek Week, which is designed to bring all of the Greek organizations on campus together. We were assigned to the Green Team and participated in academic and physical games such as relay races, pie eating contests, flag football, and many other fun activities. At the Greek Gala celebrating the end of Greek Week, Pi Phi was awarded for obtaining the highest ranking in Standards of Excellence Points. 


We also celebrated the founding of Pi Beta Phi at Knott’s Berry Farm with all the local chapters in the area. Our first annual Alumnae Tea was a huge success. Our chapter loved meeting Pi Phi alumnae, some of whom had been Pi Phis for over 50 years! 



Spring quarter is here, and it is always a very exciting time at CA Delta. We will be holding our Mom’s Day event and our annual Arrowspike Volleyball Tournament to raise money for Pi Phi’s philanthropy Links to Literacy. As we mentioned in previous newsletters, our house was recently remodeled and we welcome all parents to stop by and see the changes! 



Peace, Love, Pi Phi,


Madeline Triplett

Pi Phi Scholarship Winner: Halsey DiSario

Recently, our VP of Member Development Halsey DiSario, received the Pi Beta Phi Foundation Sign of the Arrow Melissa Scholarship for Community Service and Philanthropy.  Since middle schools, she has been involved in a variety of community service projects such as volunteering in Latin America for the last two summers. While at UCLA, Halsey has worked as the Recruitment Director for "Amigos de UCLA", a student-run tutoring project for elementary and middle school students in mid-city LA.  Currently, Halsey is serving as a fellow at the UCLA Volunteer Center. Through that fellowship, she organized a campus-wide UCLA and Peace Corps joint volunteer event to beautify the new Los Angeles Veterans Housing Complex.  She is also working with the Constitutional Rights Foundation, a non-profit organization working to improve government and politics education nationally. Halsey is a third year Political Science and Spanish double major, and hopes to work in International Development after she graduates.  Congratulations Halsey, we're so proud of you!

It's Tea Time

Today, the CA Delta Pi Phi's put on their first ever alumnae tea with the help of our Alumnae Advisory Committee and our House Corporation.  Girls got to the house hours before the start to help set up by making beds, cleaning bathrooms, and throwing open the windows and curtains.  Our lovely staff and incredible house mom, Diana, provided us with curried chicken sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches, cranberry-onion bites, and an assortment of desserts ranging from lemon bars and brownies to five different types of cookies.

(From left to right: Melissa Romo, Hailey Denenberg, Cathy Flanagan, Sami Rose, Jackie Powers,  Steph Choengkarn, and Stephanie Lang)

By 2 o'clock, we were ready and waiting, current CA Delta's waiting outside, in the living room, by the dining room, and throughout the house, prepared to give house tours and chat with alumnae.  The first to arrive was Marian Hope, a CA Delta Pi Phi from 1945, one of our oldest alumnae members to attend the tea.  We were able to award her as well as a few others with the Golden Arrow recognition, an accolade acquired by being a Pi Phi for fifty years.

From left to right: Jackie Powers, Megan Siniscalchi, Alex Preece,
Nicole Bendaom, Molly Mogan, Grace Cahalan, & Michelle Sandhu

We were also able to award our seniors for their dedication to our chapter with a bouquet of white daisies, encouraging the sort of "loves me, doesn't love me" mentality of picking houses and cherishing the fact that our seniors picked Pi Phi and volunteered countless hours to the success of our house.  Amongst these girls were our past President- Alex Preece, VP Membership (Recruitment)- Molly Mogan, and VP Fraternity Development- Jackie Powers, who all served on our exec board last year.  We're so excited to see these girls do amazing things with their lives, but at the same time, we're going to miss them so much.

All in all, our first ever alumnae tea was a complete success.  We were so happy to be able to open our home to past CA Deltas and past Pi Phi alumnas so that they could get a chance to see how much the house has changed since they were last here.  Some even said that they hadn't been back to the house since they graduated from college!  We loved hearing their stories about the house, listening to old rivalry songs (watch out anchors!), and hearing how much sisterhood meant to them even after all of these years.  We can't wait to do it again in a year, this time with even more Pi Phi's!

PPLM,

Laura

Pi Beta Phinally

Anyone walking by 700 Hilgard Avenue around 6 p.m. would find a hundred or so girls in neon orange tanktops singing at the top of their lungs and jumping around anxiously awaiting the arrival of their new Pi Phi angels.  And when our new angels ran down the street to our house, everyone cheered.  We welcomed Spring '11 with open arms full of Pi Phi bags, tanktops, and loads of candy.  After everyone ate the fifteen boxes or so of Dominoes, we surprised all the girls with a fun Bid Day event to ring in Bid Day the right way!

Girls ran all over UCLA taking pictures of them making people pyramids or with the famous Bob Marley locker.  It was so fun running through UCLA around twilight and seeing other Pi Phi's having a great time and laughing a lot.  We're so excited to have some awesome additions to Pi Phi!
PPLM,
Laura