Sigma Chi - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

DELTA PSI CHAPTER OF SIGMA CHI FRATERNITY AT RPI SPRING 2021 W hen you think back to your first week at RPI, you probably recall a rush of excitement. Meeting a fresh set of friends. Throwing frisbee on Freshman Hill. Sampling dinner options from the nearest dining hall. These are the things I expected when I applied to RPI. Fast forward to freshman move-in day in August 2020. The Class of 2024 and I moved into a campus under quarantine. We were confined to our rooms. Cafeteria meals were delivered to our doors. Videos surfaced of staff tossing unclaimed meals into the trash, surprising nobody who tasted them but being so wasteful that it sent the student body into an uproar. With the freshman class teetering on the edge of mental health, RAs offered three hours per week of outdoor time. It wasn't nearly enough to socialize and meet new people. Eventually that first quarantine ended (though there would be two others before the end of the academic year, each of them two to three weeks long). Outside of the quarantines, life was hardly normal. Dining halls were open but by reservation only. Academically, most professors posted pre-recorded lectures online. Labs were the primary courses attended in person. Social activities were virtually nonexistent. In the end, our only choice was to persevere. How did we make it through? For me, it was thanks to the brotherhood I found at Sigma Chi. In hoc, Ryan "Shrek" Blake '24 Tribune ryanwblake2002@gmail.com FRESHMEN FINISH A YEAR LIKE NO OTHER U nable to meet in person amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Delta Psi Sigs are turning to Zoom to keep the bonds of brotherhood alive. For me, this is just the latest example of how distance can strain relationships and technology can ease the problem. When I left RPI in 1974, the U.S. economy was in tatters, so I took my first job in Nigeria. That led to a long period of work overseas, mostly with the U.S. State Department. When I retired from government, I took a job at the University of Oxford. Later, I relocated to the small English village where I reside today. My life goes to show how evolving technology can knit us closer. In Nigeria, you couldn't place a call to the U.S. without reserving time at the nearest post office. Letters took about 15 days. By the '80s we had faxes, and by the '90s we had email. Soon we had bandwidth to support large email attachments. Now we can see and hear one another in real time. After RPI, graduation tends to scatter us to the four winds. The number of brothers with whom we keep in touch tends to shrink over time. But Zoom can bring us back together. It takes just one email invite from the class coordinator (in my case, Bob "Ruff" Hutnick '71). Just remem- ber the instruction that every Zoom participant hears sooner or later: "Unmute yourself." In hoc, Ernie Parkin '71 drejparkin@gmail.com Amid Pandemic, Power Up Your Webcams Brothers at the chapter house. From left, Jack Williams '24, Curtis Terry '24, Michael "Coldcut" Kokkatt '22, Ryan "Shrek" Blake '24, Angelo "Scooter" Spiratos '21, Simon Gibson '24, and Trey Michaelsen '25. (Not pictured: Alan Shi '24 and Kazuki Unayama '22.)

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