When: Saturday, July 13, 2013

Where: Brookview Golf Course
200 Brookview Pkwy Golden Valley, MN 55426

Time: First tee time is 11:45am

Cost: $35 walking, $50 riding

RSVP: Before Sunday, June 30, 2013 to Sam Beutel
beut0032@umn.edu

Dinner will be provided at the Chapter House following the golf outing.

Today International President Steve Starnes released another message, sent to the fraternity’s “Governors and Volunteers” listserve:

“Dear Brothers,

I take great pleasure in announcing the promotion of Brother Bill Bronson, MN ’11, to Transition Director for Alpha Delta Phi International. Brother Bronson has been a Chapter Service Consultant alongside Nick Budzinski. MN ’11 for the last two years.

Bill’s responsibilities will include the smooth transition into retirement, after 37 years of service, of Brother Dr. William Millard. Brother Bronson will work closely with Brother Terrie Eastmade and your board of governors to further effect the increased service model we will implement for our chapters and their alumni.

Reporting directly to the fraternity president, Bill Bronson will implement near term and long range plans for support, fund raising, collegiate relations and literary expansion.

I am pleased to confirm and announce Brother Bronson’s new role and ask that you join me in congratulating him on his promotion.

Regards,
Stephen”

Thanks to Billy for all of his hard work. The MN Chapter couldn’t be more proud of their brother. Congratulations to Billy Bronson on this significant milestone for the fraternity and Brother Bronson’s career!

Nik VanDenMeerendonk, MN ’05
Secretary
Alpha Delta Phi MN Alumni Board

Our beloved 1725 University Ave. SE home has sheltered countless generations of Alpha Delts over the decades. We have shared meals, rooms, experiences, and some of the most defining moments of our youth in this building. Whether we knew it or not at the time, it was in this place that we completed our metamorphosis from boys to men. We’ve seen walls crumble over time, paint chipping away with each passing generation’s shenanigans, yet the sense of responsibility and loyalty we instill in our brothers is what allows us to act like men and rebuild our castle when it is in need of our care. A house doesn’t fall apart when the physical structure gives way, it falls apart when those who inhabit it give up.

Founder’s Day is fast approaching and the strength of 1725′s foundation will once again return in droves to celebrate our brotherhood and give life back to the house that helped give us our own lives.

I for one am looking forward to seeing all the faces that never let our house fall apart over the years. It’s a time to celebrate ourselves for never giving up when the going gets rough. For fighting to keep Alpha Delta Phi alive in any way possible. I have come to learn that it is no easy task. Over the years, the tools have changed. We now live in an age where publicity is easier than ever to garner – given the accessibility of social media and e-communication. There are Facebook pages dedicated to Alpha Delta Phi in which we can see how many people know our name and what we do. Twitter accounts that share our accomplishments and personalities. We keep the spirit of ADPhi alive through our supportive words just as we keep the old headquarters alive through donations and repairs and a lot of elbow grease.  We all have different stories about each other that we love to tell at our annual celebration, but the house is the one with ALL the stories. From day one.

Thanks to all our brothers throughout the years, Alpha Delta Phi has a life of its own on the U of M campus and is now a recognized name among many Greeks and non-Greeks alike. This is a house we can truly be proud of, and one we should be honored to return to each year to celebrate many hands with one heart.

Yes, the wood is scuffed, the paint peels, the walls crumble and we all look stupid in our old composite photos — some more than others. Our house may be far from perfect at first glance, but look closer — those imperfections indicate the many stories the house has to tell. Your fraternity invites you to return this Founder’s Day and take a closer look at your house.

It has stories you’ve never heard of, and as long as we keep it alive, it always will.

Nik VanDenMeerendonk, MN ’05
Secretary
Alpha Delta Phi MN Alumni Board

It came at a time shortly after my blundering exit from college and the house.  I had been invited to participate as a junior member of the chapter alumni board. In this capacity, the acting president of the board had entrusted me with the task of enforcing a ban on full-size refrigerators in the house – a rule which was currently being violated by a pair of actives.

I accepted this task.  But when push came to shove in facing those actives, I caved and promptly threw the board under the bus.  See, on the one hand, I agreed with the board and felt compelled to follow through on my task.  On the other hand, I could also see why, from the active’s perspective, they felt justified.  Frankly, I didn’t have the wherewithal or interest in the issue to argue one way or the other.  So, to save face, I claimed that the president and the rest of the board were forcing my hand, but that I’d cover for them so they could keep the fridge.

Then it came time to answer to the board president.  In my ignorance and arrogance, the response I chose appeared to be the simplest and most effective way to preserve my own self-image: an e-mail to the president insulting and accusing him of bullying the actives which I copied to the rest of the alumni board.  It should be clear why this was inappropriate.

The president then replied with something that will stick with me forever. He told me he had always thought that I was passive-aggressive, and this had just confirmed it for him.  Therein I found my epiphany and one of the prime inciting incidents to launch my path to real maturity.

***

Sometimes I’m amazed at how dumb I was as a kid. I guess a less masochistic way to say that is: sometimes I marvel at how much I’ve had to learn and grow to become a man. But they basically mean the same thing to me.

While I cringe with discomfort at the memories of some of the stupid things I’ve done and said to people over the years, I look back and realize I would not be who I am today without them. So, while I sincerely apologize for all those I may have hurt along the way, I truly have no regrets. Instead, I have developed a surprising appreciation for and acceptance of failure as a catalyst for change, improvement, and growth.

This reminds me of Toyota. For those unaware, Toyota, the car company, pioneered a production system which eventually became known as Lean Methodology and subsequently revolutionized American Industry. But what really interests me about Lean is captured in one simple phrase which has become a mantra of the Lean disciple: Fail forward fast.

‘Fail forward fast,’ (FFF) evokes the concept that to improve and change you must embrace rapid iterative empirical experimentation. Likewise, you must be willing to fail, and fail often, but always remain diligent to learn from your failures. This style of growth encourages you to plan only as much as needed and then take risks, try new things, and act on the world. In doing so, you learn dynamically by drawing out and observing a response—good, bad, or otherwise—from the world around you; a feedback loop from which you may gain knowledge and change.

FFF holds relevance across all areas of our life: professional, social, family, academic, etc.  But as you have probably gathered, this philosophy can be dangerously reckless or inappropriate in the wrong hands or context.  Given the potential downside risks, negative externalities, and personal drama failure can cause in most of these domains, we have much less freedom to experiment.  The scope of our learning is further limited by the specificity of the context and the degree to which we can apply that learning in other situations.  In short, it’s difficult to find a good place to practice FFF to it full capacity.

***

Which finally brings me to my point: why I love this fraternity and why you should too.  I believe that our fraternity creates as close to an ideal as there can be for a context to support this type of experimentation, failing, and learning.

The great thing about our fraternity is that it integrates domains that span across the entire scope of a man’s being and creates an holistic environment to allow him to safely and confidently experiment and meddle within them all.  Alpha Delta Phi to an undergrad is like a microcosm of the world into which he will eventually grow up.  It gives him a taste of the experience of manhood, but doesn’t beg him to take it too seriously. It suggests that failure is an option, and indeed is an acceptable way to learn and avoid suffering the consequences later in life. It makes FFF an obligatory strategy.

Now, I didn’t realize this until much later after I left college. It didn’t really hit me until running into one particular brother on Founder’s Day.  Up until that point, I had been nervous about seeing him again due to a profound guilt I felt for something awful I had said to him previously.  Naturally, I assumed he despised me.  In spite of my expectations, he walks up to me, hugs me and offers to buy me a drink. It then became utterly clear to me why I loved this fraternity.

The thing is: we can fail. We can screw up. We can insult, embarrass, and offend one another. We can make academic mistakes and be delinquent in our responsibilities to the house and fraternity. We can stumble in our professional and personal lives. And we can do so fearlessly. Because at the end of the day, we can still walk into Founder’s Day and hug one another and buy each other drinks. We can do this because we have an understanding with one another that whatever happens, we are something more than just friends and nothing should be taken so seriously that it inhibits the joy, contentment, and freedom of that relationship.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hold one another accountable for our actions.  We can’t learn if we don’t know when and how we have failed.  And, as I discovered in the moment of epiphany I described earlier, sometimes you just need someone to be brutally honest with you when no one else will.

I had never been told before that I was passive-aggressive. But as soon as the board president said that to me, I suddenly noticed all of the ways I had been acting so in my life.  This simple act of honesty forever changed the way I interact with people. To be sure, I still falter and am still learning. But I can’t say I would have been launched on this path had I not been held accountable at that moment.

I can’t stress strongly enough my belief that our fraternity should, as it has for me, encourage learning and accountability as I have described it.  We can indeed work in conflict with or in favor of this ideal.  As soon as we start taking things too seriously or too personally, as soon as we make it okay to get offended at one another, and as soon as we forget to take responsibility for our own state of mind we start to lose the freedom we once had.  However, if we act with respect, honesty, openness, authenticity, and good humor towards one another, we create the environment and the opportunities to grow.

Author Eric Hoffer once appropriately predicted, “In times of change learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” Taking this advice, fail forward fast and keep learning my friends.

Jared Schmidt, MN ’04

While most will raise their glasses and voices while attempting to fumble through Auld Lang Syne (have you ever met a person who actually knows all the words?), Alpha Delts will find beauty in the same melody, but with different words that each brother can sing by heart: There’s Beauty in yon Crescent Moon.

While Auld Lang Syne begins with the rhetorical question:  “Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?” There’s Beauty does not ask such a question because Alpha Delts find beauty in remembering all of our brothers:  be they collegiate cohorts, elders, up-and-coming  members or even a brother they have just met two minutes ago. We find beauty in the fact that even if we don’t know a  brother, we know the bridge he has crossed and that each of us contributed to building that bridge. And finally, we find beauty in the strong ties that make it an effortless action to welcome a brother back after years or miles of distance from the brotherhood.

This beauty seen through our actions mean that any year is a great year to rally round our Alpha Delt Phi.

I hope you’ll join us, wherever you are this New Years Eve to sing There’s Beauty in Yon Crescent Moon. Sing it loudly and proudly with brothers, be they acquaintances or old friends.

Happy New Year!

John Komarek
Director
Alpha Delta Phi Minnesota Alumni Society

The Alpha Delta Phi blazer by Blaze-In Sportswear.

How great would you look sporting one of these babies at homecoming or relaxing at Founder’s Day? Heck, wear it out for a night on the town. Just a friendly reminder that fraternities are more than popped collars, AXE and boat shorts, people. Some wear the green tie. Some wear the custom embroidered sweatshirts and knit caps. And a few will step up their game with the Alpha Delta Phi blazer — proving to the world one simple fact: we Alpha Delts are handsome devils.

Straight from the website:
It’s a classic look- and essential element in every wardrobe. A pure worsted wool- fully constructed navy blazer that lends instant polish to any outfit.

Features a classic fit with two button closure, center vent plus:
- Bold Emerald and Pearl striped lining.
- Impeccably hand embroidered Alpha Delta Phi crest and letters on inside besom pockets
- Custom embossed ADP buttons
- Hand-picked stitching
- Built in pocket square

Feel free to visit the website for more details!

https://www.blaze-insportswear.com/products-page/alpha-delta-phi/

“Newspaper designer, columnist win statewide acclaim” by Holly Wenzel

Nik VanDenMeerendonk, MN ’05
Secretary
Alpha Delta Phi MN Alumni Board

Holly Wenzel
managing editor

They’ve done it again.

Graphic designer Nik VanDenMeerendonk and columnist Heather Edwards earned top spots in the Minnesota Newspaper Association’s annual contest.

VanDenMeerendonk won first place in the newspaper’s circulation category in “design portfolio” and both first and second place in “use of information graphics and graphic illustrations.” He received an honorable mention last year for information graphics and first place in that category the previous year. This is Edwards’ fourth MNA award; she has been recognized previously for both column writing and photography.

How do they do it?

VanDenMeerendonk’s entries included a spooky take on the storied Griggs mansion, long rumored to be haunted. In the “Ghost Busted” layout, he sets the scene for Edwards’ interviews with former and current Griggs residents who say no, the live people looking for the specters were the only annoyance associated with the ghost stories. His page highlighting Minnesota apple orchards dots apple-leaf-shaped photo cutouts with bright red bushel baskets, even carrying over the leaf shape into the headline.

VanDenMeerendonk is a Hill-Murray alumnus who graduated with a double major — art and advertising — at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. VanDenMeerendonk credits his win to his broad interest in all manner of media – movies, book covers, posters, paintings, sculpture, websites and photos, all of which he pulls from to craft his newspaper graphics.

The highlight of a recent trip to Europe: a visit to the M.C. Escher museum in the Netherlands. Escher’s fool-the-eye perspective drawings are apparently just an introduction to the three-dimensional experience he designed into the museum, where just a step across a carefully crafted room can turn people from Lilliputians to giants. VanDenMeerendonk himself pursued drawing through most his education.

“I was always into art — I had been doing mostly charcoal drawings until college,” he says.

Surprisingly, he was in his 20s when he encountered his first design course using computers, but he quickly adapated the technology to reflect his visions. VanDenMeerendonk has been able to create magic with even a couple simple snapshots, as in the apple layout. With the Griggs design, he had just one photo to work from. He found the image of the moon on a “desktop wallpaper” site, took the font from a free typeface library and adjusted the whole with deft touches of vapor and shadow.

“He seems to set the bar even higher for himself when we don’t have much source art to offer him,” executive editor Mary Lee Hagert notes. “We’ll think we haven’t given him anything to work with, and he’ll come back in a few hours with a stunning layout.”

VanDenMeerendonk is something of a double weapon: he often comes up with his own headlines — such as “Ghost Busted” — thanks to his advertising training and avid reading. He hits the mark in both content and tone in just a few well-chosen words.

“I really took that ‘brevity is key’ message to heart,” he says.

MNA judges’ words for his work were equally brief and punchy: “Awesome design,” “great photo illustration” and “pops off the page” are a few.

“This was a very tough category, so this newspaper should be proud,” one concluded.

We are.

The festivities will kickoff at 6:00 pm on Friday, October 12 as we welcome alumni and family to get the best seat in the house for the annual homecoming parade. As was the case in the past few years, we will continue our events on Saturday, October 13 at 8:30am with breakfast followed by our traditional Alumni vs. Active football game at Bierman Fields, followed by tailgating at the Chapter House.

Since the Gophers kickoff at 11:00am, all alumni and family members are welcome to stay throughout the day to watch the game at the Chapter House and to be a part of atmosphere during the Homecoming weekend at TCF Bank Stadium!

Bring the whole family back to campus to meet new friends and see old ones. Relive old memories and see what incredible progress the Chapter has been making since last year. All Alpha Delts and their families are invited to make the Alpha Delt house your home for Homecoming 2012.

The atmosphere on campus on game day is something that every alum should experience, especially on Homecoming. We sincerely hope that you can make this year’s celebration. The undergraduates are certainly looking forward to losing to the alumni again in the annual football game!  ;)

As a reminder, please remember to be respectful of the house and its active residents. They have worked hard to get it ready for the much-anticipated arrival of the alumni and their families and we thank them for their hospitality. Be courteous to those who may require special assistance so that everyone can experience a safe and enjoyable Homecoming at the Alpha Delta Phi house.

Please contact Steve Ehrfurth at adp@umn.edu with any questions.

Go Gophers!

EVENT SCHEDULE
Friday, October 12, 2012*
Homecoming Parade, BBQ & Pep Fest
6:00pm – Chapter House

*Due to the nature of the University’s split homecoming schedule and the
schedule of the active chapter, the official alumni sponsored events are scheduled on Saturday although all alumni and family are welcome to attend all events on Friday evening.

Saturday, October 13, 2012
Breakfast & Alumni/Active Football Game
8:30am – Bierman Fields

Homecoming Tailgate and Fellowship
9:30am – Chapter House

Minnesota vs. Northwestern
11:00am – TCF Bank Stadium

There are alumni who have already confirmed their attendance for Friday evening (Parking will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis at the chapter house for both days. – special accommodations will be made upon request for handicapped or senior alumni members).

Nik VanDenMeerendonk, MN ’05
Secretary
Alpha Delta Phi MN Alumni Board

Allow me to introduce myself: My name is Allen Eastlund and I am a video game enthusiast. I want to be open and forth-coming with you, gentle reader, that video games are a fiery heart that beats in my chest matched only by my love of science. I believe in the power of release that video games, comics, and fantasy bring. I believe that in that next castle, just the next one, just one more castle, I will find that princess. I believe that as a one-man army and aided by a buxom AI, I can save the galaxy by preventing the firing of the ring-worlds. I also believe in Harvey Dent. All of these beliefs have tied me, hook, line and sinker, to video games in every level of my life. Now that I’ve completed my full disclosure, I would like to relay a small piece of advice that I probably could have used an eon ago in my undergraduate career:

Balance is key.

As all students progress through their undergraduate careers, many make the decision to include video games as part of their pastime hobbies. At face value, this is not a concern; nor is it any cause for alarm for any outside, omniscient, tuition-paying source. Playing a game of Angry Birds while waiting for the bus does no harm. Farmville is crack for the masses but at the end of the day it amounts to clicky-cow-game on steroids. In fact, video games have been repeatedly shown to increase visual acuteness, decrease depression rates in college students, and prolong all aspects of virginity. However, there are certainly downsides. As a true believer in all things digital-escapism, I, and those around me, am acutely aware of this reality. It seems like just yesterday that I was reveling in and bragging about the fact that I would skip calculus lectures to Yoshi-butt-drop Pikachu off of Link’s castle. Or deploy well-placed banana peels to ensure pole position with Peach. To this day I regret my fateful decision to blow off a visiting fraternity brother because I had just “secured a raid spot”.

A little bit more about myself: I am currently a post-comprehensive exam biophysics PhD student at the University of Kansas that holds a bachelors of science in Astrophysics from our alma mater. I am living, breathing, thumbs-twitching proof that you can, in fact, succeed in academia while still being a long-term life-partner of video games. Yet when I look back on my long (long, loooong) academic life, I can’t help but wonder whether or not the level of immersion I chose was worth it. Had I attended my calculus lecture(s) that year, might I have secured that elusive A? By chance, would that night out with a great brother have been a career-making event? Would that supermodel I met once have been so impressed by my CV that she dropped her Bugatti-driving boyfriend and eloped with me to the central plains of the great Midwest? In short, could I have achieved a deeper college experience with a little more focus?

There is no denying that video games can provide a warm embrace after the cold shower that is a differential equations pop-quiz or that macroeconomics exam that didn’t go quite as planned. Spectacular nights can be whittled away while camping your brothers for great victory. Bearing all this in mind and coming from a slightly-more-sage position than a common orc warrior, my advice to all active brothers is to be sure to keep an eye on your goal: finishing college with a competitive edge. Finalizing your degree with a strong GPA is paramount to a successful future, your view of yourself and your abilities, and it helps the fraternity to be a stronger place for future sons. If you happen to find yourself being lured into the entrancing dance of finding just one more heart shard, or lobbing a digi-smoke-grenade into the field of battle for just one more attempt at taking that strategic bunker, try taking a step back and thinking — is this is really your 3^rd bid? Or is it your 22^nd?

There’s no denying it: college is all about the experience.

The Total Experience: meeting new and interesting people, taking that foreign language you’ve always thought about, and showing yourself and those around you what you’re capable of beyond the confines of a digital world. Relaxing is always part of any grand adventure and video games are certainly a perfect mode in which to relax. Take heed though, and make time for the pieces of the college experience that lead to more than just fast reflexes. The key to finishing any quest with the most gold, ammo, and charisma points is to not relax too much; it just diminishes the adventure.

—Allen Eastlund MN ’05

We cordially invite you an evening at the Alpha Delta Phi Chapter House for an night of story telling, memory sharing, and great music featuring the reunion concert of Maxwell Speed – the 1970′s era house band.

All proceeds from this memorial concert will go toward the chapter house restoration fund to repair the aging slate roof in Bruce’s memory.  All brothers, spouses, and significant others are invited and highly encouraged to join us for a night of fun and good music.

We sincerely hope you can join us!

Xaipe!

Jeff Stewart ’76, Mark Muchow ’75, Dan Kuechle ’75,
Geoff Martin ’76, Rick Atherton ’76, Ward Armstrong ’76,
Mike Muchow ’77 and Steve Ehrfurth ’06

BRUCE ANDERSON MEMORIAL CONCERT

When: Friday, September 28, 2012

Time: 8:00pm

Where: 1725 University Ave. SE Minneapolis, MN 55414

Cost: $100 per person for graduates and guests
$25 for undergraduates

Parking: Parking in the chapter house parking lot is first come first serve. Additional parking can be found in the 4th Street Ramp one block from the chapter house

RSVP: Please RSVP by contacting:
Steve Ehrfurth ’06 at steve.ehrfurth@gmail.com or
Jeff Stewart ’76 at jstewart061@gmail.com

There will be private security at this event so please RSVP so we can provide them with a list of guests.