Epsilon Pre-Ritual Study

Our Epsilon Ritual is the second to last stage of our membership development. This is the stage members must reach in order to be alumni of the fraternity. This is where the secrets and meanings of our fraternity are revealed.
Our chapter room is technically a public room. All of our ritual equipment is left out at all times and it is public. The secret comes from the meaning of all the equipment. This meaning is learned during the Epsilon Rite of Passage. These secrets are what connect brothers around the nation to each other. We all share the same secrets and ritual.
As the Chaplain, I decided it would be a good activity to use the SigEp mural which has all of our ritual equipment on it in a pre-ritual study. All of the Phis would sit together and try to figure out the meaning of all of the ritual equipment the day before the ritual. They would make their decision based upon what we have learned in the Sigma and Phi rituals. I believe this will reinforce the meaning and significance once we truly learn what it means during the ritual.

Alex Shuler

Membership Record Book

For the past month or so I have been going around to all the members of the house asking for the dates of when they signed their bid cards and officially joined Sigma Phi Epsilon. I want to collect all of these dates because as of a few months ago our house purchased a membership record book. Now this book contains pretty much every bit of information that a person would legally want to write down for other people to see. It shows the names of members past and current, some of their interests, why they wanted to be a SigEp and many more other interesting bits of information. Once this book is finished it will be a cool thing that any SigEp can go look at years down the road and reminisce on the glory days.
Sam

Dance Grab a date

Last Friday on the 5th we had a grab a date. This is where we each find a date and bring them to the house to partake in some kind of social activity. This week we had a dance grab a date where we learned how to Waltz. Guys lead and girls follow. Girls had to perform twirls and spins. We learned the waltz square step, the balanced step and the progressive square step. The waltz was in 3/4 time (123,223,323...). It was a great educational experience and we had a lot of fun.

Shunta

RETRO Open Mic Night

RETRO, open mic night was pretty tight. It was at the ethnic cultural center the EEC on the south side of campus. I and four other brothers attended to support one of our newest brothers, Ryan Trinidad. The event last about two hours and was composed of a medley of spoken word poetry, live musical performances, beat boxing, and a group known as "Swag Crew" who performed a series of party dances to a song not appropriate for this blog. Ryan's performance was towards the end of the event. He and his friend Drey wrote a comedic poem defining and elaborating on several slang terms and colloquials associated with their home city, Tacoma. Needless to say, they were hilarious. For me, RETRO was a unique experience. I'd loved the energy in the venue and the sense of community and fellowship that embodied the event as a whole. I saw a lot of the comradery on that stage that I see everyday in the house. I felt like I knew the EEC and the people there very well. They reminded me how lucky we are to all be brothers.
A-Fang

Hot Yoga

On February 20th, we gathered a group of about 30-35 guys to go to hot yoga. It was mainly a sound body event but fulfilled the challenge requirement for many freshmen. As we got to the building, our instructors were extremely friendly and quelled most of our fears. Many guys were scared because of their lack of experience and the level of difficulty. But at the same time, many were excited to try something new. As the class before us got out, we headed in one by one, taking a deep breath of the sweaty, hot air. Merely standing in the room made us drip with sweat. As we were just getting used to the environment, we started off with a couple stretches and breathing exercises. This was followed by many other poses which many struggled to do while some were quite successful. After the hour and a half session of pain, sweat, lying down, and fun, we were all glad to be done. Grabbing our soaked undergarments and clothes, we headed to the showers. As we were heading out towards our vehicles, the instructors reminded us that we have two more weeks to go to nine more sessions. In the two following weeks, some took advantage of their offer, while some did not. Overall, the event was great because it allowed us to try something new while getting an awesome work out.






HFF
Joe Lee

Community Service

For our community service project, we decided to help out a dairy farmer with some basic yard work that he needed done. Six of us sophomores drove out to Sultan, Washington at 10 A.M. to see what we could do to help out. When we got there, Chris, the owner of the farm, showed us around and gave us our tasks. We were assigned to take down 200 yards of barbed wire fence. The job took us a total of 7 hours to complete because of the tedious process of taking out staples and rolling the barbed wire. We also had to use a tractor to take out the estimated 30 wood posts that were buried two feet into the ground. After a long day of work, it felt good to give back, even if it was just several hours of taking down a fence. We know we did some good for someone in need.

Taking care of business,
Justin Chavez