Sigma Chi Re-chartering Effort in Gettysburg Gaining Ground

By Nate Storey

“The details on why they left are a little fuzzy on every account…I’m not going to lie actually… there were problems with the chapter,” said Lawson. “The guys didn’t want to live in the house…I know they had the rumor that there had been drug problems there too…” Because of the issues, the Sigma Chi alumni on the Board of Trustees told the brothers that they had to change their ways or turn in their charter and in the end, they decided to turn in the charter. Sigma Chi set up an agreement with Gettysburg College then, so that if Sigma Chi returned within five years, they would be able to get their old house back.

Now, only four years later, Lawson and the rest of the new class of Sigma Chi have set about planning and orchestrating the return of Sigma Chi. Now that Aaron has taken over as Consul, they have begun recruiting and currently have around 20 members. They have now sent in their Declaration of Intent to the national fraternity, which includes the bylaws for the chapter, which they had to write from scratch. “That’s kind of a daunting task to write,” said Lawson. “You know normally when you start one of these; it takes at least a year before you’ve even submitted your statement of intent and we did it much quicker…”

Word of Sigma Chi’s return has spread to freshmen and sophomores alike who have yet to go Greek. Because of this, Lawson is not worried about the slow membership, “most of the time it’ll be one at a time, our recruiting efforts go about like that,” but that they are starting to plan larger recruiting events for later in the year. Bill Sapoch continually tells them that they should not agonize about membership, but should wait the best guys, those that are “going to be leaders.”

” Sigma Chi is the opportunity of a lifetime, there are hundreds of thousands of people that can say they were a member of a fraternity, but who can say they brought a fraternity back?” said Mellinger, who, though he made the choice to join Sigma Chi later than Lawson, has taken on an important role, preparing data for the Declaration of Intent and writing recruitment procedures.

Lawson summarized his whole experience with Sigma Chi “At the beginning it was really just a vessel for what we were going to do, but after a while we all sort of drank the Sigma Chi Kool-Aid so to speak. We realized what kind of a fit it really was with their emphasis on leadership and service and what not.”