A Charge to the Brotherhood
Brothers,
There is a reason this reunion arrives when it does, and a reason it gathers brothers of every era for the first time in almost two decades. Many of you already know it. For those who do not: the Chi Chapter is not at this moment where any of us want it to be. The active chapter has gone dormant. The doors of Two Forest Park Lane — the home that has sheltered Chi brothers for ninety years — are, once again, closed to us. The Hill that has been ours since 1876 currently has no active brothers walking it (since 2018).
That is the gravity of the moment. It is also the opportunity. A milestone like 150 years is special. It is the moment a chapter chooses, openly and together, what its next half-century will look like.
To meet this moment, the Association has charged a small committee — the four of us, named below — with one goal: to bring an active chapter of Psi Upsilon back to Cornell, and to restore Chi brothers to the home at Two Forest Park Lane, before the chapter’s 152nd year is out. The mission of the committee: Re-Establish the Chi at 2 Forest Park Lane, 2025 — 2027. We will report on progress in detail at the Little Chi meeting on Saturday afternoon.
Make no mistake — this is not an easy task. First, our house is currently a dedicated program house, and we see challenges for the University in relocating those residents and their program to other places on campus. Second, the University has been supportive and said the right things about our return, the specifics and timing remain unsettled — and the University has made plain that the call is theirs, not ours. We understand all that, and so the challenge and call for action falls on all of us here, as well as on the brothers who could not join us. We trust you will embrace that challenge with us.
We need every brother who is here — and many who are not — to support this effort in two ways. The first, no surprise, is money: the next twenty-four months will require legal, real-estate, recruiting, and operational expenditure beyond what the Association can meet from dues alone. The second is time: alumni voices on campus, alumni hands at the house, alumni presence at every consequential moment of the rebuild. One of our learnings — again, no surprise — is that continued and meaningful support by alumni is what differentiates the organizations that succeed from those that do not. That includes showing up, which all of you are doing this weekend. We need gifts to Cornell committed to re-activating the Chi at 2 Forest Park Lane.
If you can give at Saturday’s gala to help recruit a class worthy of Chi, do. If you can write a check this winter to keep the house lit and process costs paid, do that. If you have a brother in your pledge class who has not been heard from in twenty years, find him and bring him in. The brothers who built Chi gave us a brilliant chapter and a home. It is our turn to give the same back to the brothers who will come after us.
In the bonds — and for the bonds’ continuation,
