This year Theta Xi fraternities across the nation were able to celebrate the 158th anniversary of the founding of our fraternity. On this day our chapter as well as many others celebrated the founding of the fraternity in their own way. Some chapters had a party, inviting alum and actives to tell tales of days gone by and while others, such as our own, planned a day of house projects to improve the property and grilling out to keep everyone fed. With 12 new members joining our ranks the fraternity was ready to work hard and knock out as many of the day’s activities as possible. This year the chapter’s plans were to clean out the Blakley property, put up a fence at the south 6th Street property, fix the Sideways toilet, and perform an all-encompassing deep clean of the house.
The day started off at the 6th street property around 8 in the morning, where the actives provided bacon eggs and Dunkin’ Donuts coffee to wake everyone up. Once everyone was fed, a group of six were picked to start work at the Blakely property. When the actives arrived they were met with Dr. Zac, an open shipping container, and about 30 doors. The task at hand was to get all those doors out of the basement and upper floors and set them up for storage to be rehabilitated for the rooms once they are put into place. Once the doors were moved the last thing to do was to move the remaining chairs, tables, and lawnmower into the shipping container, lock it up, and return to the 6th street property for their next task.
Back at the house, some Actives were beginning to layout the placement of the fence post holes and figuring out how bad the auger kicks when you find a rock underground. After a little trial and repositioning of post holes, the Actives got the corners in place and marked out the remaining positions to fit the pre-assembled fencing. From here the learning experience began. None of the brothers had put up a fence before, so a lot of discussion and consultation began as any good engineers do. So they dug the holes as each fence post was set into a special dense expanding foam to hold them steady. The actives took it slow and steady for the remainder of the day’s activities and were able to get all of the fencings they bought, put up on the posts before the end of the day. Everything except the gates… Still waiting on the prices of wood to come down I guess lol.
Back inside the house Brothers were cooking and cleaning and cleaning and cooking. Actives were able to clear out redundant books in the library and organize everything alphabetically. While they dug through the old books, they found some relics of the fraternity. Old photos from the 70’s and 80’s showing brothers in the house where we currently reside, as well as a little excerpt from 2001 showing the quirky nature of the brothers. Many of these photos have been recovered to be scanned and saved digitally so that we can have them forever.
By the end of the day, the brothers were able to relax and enjoy the wonderful weather before everyone spent the rest of the night at the downstairs bar.
