Delta Chi: ‘We’re not going anywhere’

After starting from scratch a few years ago, Delta Chi fraternity president and junior Matt Lampert said the fraternity’s rechartering this weekend signified how strong Delta Chi has become in such a short time.

“It means we’re not going anywhere,” Lampert said. “We’re here and we’re strong.”

Due to rechartering this weekend, the IU chapter of Delta Chi will be officially recognized by its national organization as a chapter and will receive more support on a national level.

Delta Chi celebrated rechartering with a weekend of events. The activities began Saturday morning when Delta Chi’s team qualified for this year’s Little 500.

Then, on Saturday night, the fraternity officially received its charter at a banquet at the Crown Plaza hotel in Bloomington. The banquet featured guests from Delta Chi nationals and alumni, including Dean of Students Dick McKaig.

On Sunday, the fraternity performed community service by doing an all-campus cleanup.

Delta Chi was kicked off campus and lost its charter in 2002, and Jordan Gershowitz and a few of his friends came together in 2007 to start a new fraternity.

“My freshman year, I wanted to be in a fraternity with the complete fraternal package, so we started up a colony,” Gershowitz said.

This weekend was the culmination of a year and a half of recruitment and work, Gershowitz said.

“We started with six or seven guys, had 41 founding fathers and now are chartering with 80 strong,” Gershowitz said.

Sophomore Paul Testa, who organized the chartering banquet, said the rechartering process is a sign of the fraternity’s permanence.

“When the fraternity was first founded as a colony, it established whether or not we were going to be a fixture,” Testa said. “A charter says we’re going to be here for a long, long time.”

The brothers of Delta Chi are already planning their next moves, Testa said.

“Our next step is to get a house to establish ourselves permanently as a mature fraternity,” Testa said.

But Gershowitz said since Delta Chi doesn’t currently have a house, members must rely on each other to keep the fraternity strong.

“Honestly, we have an awesome brotherhood,” Gershowitz said.

Testa said he realizes the significance of rechartering for Delta Chi as a whole.

“It means we have reached the next level,” Testa said. “When we started it was hard to imagine, and now we’re starting to achieve things we couldn’t have imagined last year.”