College is a big place, and the University of Florida is bigger than most. With so many students passing through its hallowed halls, it is difficult to make a difference as an individual, to leave a legacy. It is with this thought in mind that Alfredo Arauz, Peter Gonzalez and Alex Martinez decided to start a fraternity. Florida had a rich Greek tradition and they had tried other fraternities but had not found what they were looking for. With the help of Albert Martinez, Alex’s cousin, who was a founding father at Louisiana Tech, they chose to bring Sigma Pi back to campus. The Zeta Zeta chapter left campus in the late 1990’s after losing its charter. They soon realized how much work they would have to do to make this dream a reality; however they were determined to accomplish their goal. They would have to recruit members, establish a reputation on campus and build an institution from the ground up. With the help of the Director of Greek Life, David Bynes, they began recruiting.
On October 15th 2003, the Zeta Zeta colony became official with an initial membership of 14. Every week this dedicated group would pack into a small apartment to attend to the business of growth. Spring of 2004 saw an increase to 25 members. Though still small the fledgling colony accomplished much. Imagine the surprise of the larger fraternities as Sigma Pi won 3 consecutive philanthropies including, Theta Dodgeball, Kappa Kingpin and Delta Zeta Turtlepalooza. Despite these victories they also faced setbacks such as being denied entry into the Interfraternity Council.
Zeta Zeta bounced back from this as Fall 2004 approached and were able to bid a rush class of 17, nearly doubling our numbers. With this new momentum the fall was a time of growth. Our social standing improved as we began to have socials with the sororities on campus. Our standing on campus was enhanced with the successful completion of the ACE project. Autumn had seen 4 hurricanes that devastated Florida, so the Zeta Zeta colony, cleared away all of the debris from behind Fraternity Row. Our standing among fraternities grew as we were finally accepted into the IFC on Oct. 27th 2004. And our showing at UF’s largest philanthropy, Zeta Line Dance, solidified our standing as a philanthropy powerhouse.
We continued our growth into Spring 2005 with a rush class of 12. This was a coup for Zeta Zeta as it was one of the larger rush classes out of the fraternities on campus, and we had to hold rush on field near Fraternity Row. We also instituted a new tradition of having a charity concert the Sunday before rush begins. The concert took place on the North Lawn and featured First Glance, the band of one of our member, Mike Derisi. All the proceeds went to the Red Cross’ Tsunami Relief efforts. As the spring progressed the whole colony began to prepare for Chartering. We also completed our second ACE project where in conjunction with Physical Plant we planted over 100 trees on campus. In the spring we hosted the 2nd Thuggish Ruggish Ball, our philanthropy benefiting Hospice. The philanthropy is a dance competition and was won for the second year by Kappa Alpha Theta. April saw the culmination of all of our hard work as Zeta Zeta once more became a chapter of Sigma Pi. And at Sigma Pi University, we received an award for our Hurricane Cleanup ACE project.
Far from being the end of hard work, it is really just the beginning for now that we are a chapter, the sky is the limit. We have a lot of work to do as we graduated 4 seniors, Amadeo Derisi, Hans Lopez, Alfredo Arauz and Jacob Meyer as well as Unay Cruz who is serving as a Corporal in the Marine Corp in Iraq. The fall is going to be a busy one as we build on past success with the goal of becoming the best fraternity on campus. In the works are more socials, philanthropies and another ACE project.