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