News from Regional President Marty Busekrus

I had the honor of being part of the Southeastern conference of Pike University in Atlanta. There were over 500 undergraduates in attendance as well as all of the Supreme Council and fraternity staff. I can not recall a time over the 20+ years I have been a Pike when so much has been changing so rapidly. The fraternity today is light years different than it was just 10 years ago. The drivers of these changes are rooted in societal changes at both the University level and the broader society. A few examples of these changes are as follows:

1. There is no more Ingress week (also known as I-week or hell week) 
2. The concept of the "Big Brother" has been replaced with a formalized Mentor/Mentee program 
3. The New Member (formerly known as pledges) process has been reduced to 8 weeks and there is a very good likelihood it will get reduced to 4 weeks in the next 2 years. 
4. The University landscape has become increasingly difficult to navigate and Pike is closing or downsizing more chapters now than ever before due to the ever increasing reach of the Universities into the social fraternities. Harvard as an example has stated that any member of a non-coed social club can not hold campus leadership positions or be endorsed for outside scholarships. Their goal is to make these clubs co-ed. More information can be found in this article: https://www.chronicle.com/article/FraternitiesSororities/245251
5. The biggest threat to our fraternity is hazing. I'm not referring to the well publicized stories from around the country. Hazing in today's Greek environment consists of anything against a New Members will. This includes things such as planned gym hours, planned study hours, designated driver lists. The Pike fraternity experience today is 100% about training young men and giving them skills that they can utilize each and every day the rest of their lives in leadership roles. 

To address these headwinds, our fraternity is at the forefront of all Greek organizations in terms of not just surviving but thriving. The undergraduate Pike of today has an amazing opportunity to advance themselves further than any of us could have ever imagined during our time as an undergraduate. Memorial Headquarters has been developing a leadership program for the past 10 years and has begun to roll out what they call the True Pike Experience. This is a peer to peer series of courses (62 in total) that allow young men to learn incredibly valuable leadership skills. I would highly encourage each of you to watch the short video about the True Pike Experience here: https://www.pikes.org/pike-u/the-true-pike-experience-2018

All I would ask is that you spend 15-20 minutes doing the following. Go to www.Pikes.org and begin exploring the website. On the site you can:

• Update your profile 
• Buy some Pike memorabilia 
• Explore the new TPE (True Pike Experience) 
• Follow the links to see how your chapter is doing 
• Research the benefits of the Pike Foundation and consider donating 

I would also ask that you go to our local Pike Alumni site (http://www.pikealumniofsouthflorida.com) and explore our local chapter. Consider setting up a monthly or annual donation schedule. Our funds raised go towards two objectives. We typically pay for food and a drink or two at our local networking events and we also assist local undergraduates of FAU attend the Pike U events. As discussed earlier the direction of our fraternity is absolutely that of crafting and molding leaders. That starts at Pike University events.

In the Bonds,

Marty Busekrus

Iota Mu '96

List of Donors - 2019

Thank you to those who donated in 2019:

• Jeff Bisbee - Director, Cluster Operations, TransUnion
• Robert Stiskin
• Eric Salzman, Controller, FSX
• Brian Pearl, Pearl Antonacci Group
• Dr. Richard Raborn
• Harvey Mackler, gempire.com
• Mat Forrest, past International President of Pi Kappa Alpha, Ballard Partners
• Craig Distel, McDonald Hopkins, LLC
• Phil Doumar, Doumar Insurance

With your support we have been able to assist the members of the Lambda Beta Colony in their attendance to Pike University Events.

Annual Donation : $100.00 USD - yearly  Monthly Donation : $9.99 USD - monthly