Hi everybody this is tierza watts director of student life at cu denver today in our student life spotlight series i’m so excited to have christopher mayofsky here with me from delta lambda phi dlp is one of our new fraternities that will be joining us on campus this um
Spring and recruitment is actually in a couple weeks so i wanted to give christopher the opportunity to come um on a spotlight interview and talk to us a little bit about his group i want to start with though christopher would you tell us a little bit about where did
You go to college what was your college journey how did you end up joining this organization absolutely i appreciate your time today and giving us the space to talk about our fraternity um i did my undergraduate work at southern illinois university edwardsville um where i started there in
2001 and at that time north london phi was not on campus and i looked at the other fraternities and they just weren’t what i was looking for in a fraternity they weren’t bad fraternities at all it’s a phenomenal community uh still is but just wasn’t what i was looking for
And then an opportunity came to bring deltona phi to our campus and at those first meetings it was very clear that this was the space for me uh as um a 20-something early 20-something who was you know wrestling with identity and trying to come out and all of those
Other things you know founding finding a place that is open and radically inclusive was really what i was looking for and so that’s really helped my journey um to today uh to speak to you know others about joining our fraternity and how that that’s and how
That’s helped i will also say that it’s also it helps me find my career i do work in higher education outside of the fraternity but you know my opportunity to be in a leadership role within my fraternity as well as which led to student government and also led to a
Number of other things which provided an opportunity for me to you know see what a career in higher education would be like and that’s how i’ve gotten also to my career as well awesome will you tell me a little bit about um delta lambda 5’s values as an organization
Of course so we have a number of values we have memberhood community service a number of other values that we have within our organization right but our biggest value that i would share with anybody is our commitment to inclusion our fraternity was founded in 1986 um on the basis of the openness of
Sexual orientation for our members at that time um most people couldn’t be out in a fraternity experience but our founders wanted to make sure that that was a reality for college students so our organization was founded on that openness and radical inclusion from day one and so the thing that we really
Espouse is that radical inclusion of membership while a lot of other organizations may say we welcome you we we see you um we argue right like we see our members who are non-binary who are gender fluid who are genderqueer you know whatever the case might be our cisgendered members as well
Um you know we see those numbers and we are those members and so for us it’s an opportunity to showcase what radical inclusion in fraternity and sorority looks like and gives us an opportunity to live that out day-to-day i know one of the things that we were excited about when your group was
Selected for our campus um is that you bring an identity group based group that’s not been on most campuses that i’ve worked on in the past and so i’d be curious to know kind of your opinions and thoughts on what do you think bringing delta lambda phi to our campus
Is really going to do to contribute and move cu denver forward sure so it’s an opportunity for students to enjoy the fraternal space but just in a little bit of a different way so our organization you know particularly around gender and identity concerns or race concerns or any of those other things we
Try very hard to support our brothers and sisters and colleagues um in with other identities and so um you know particularly around you know these pride movements that have happening you know inclusion around um gender and queerness you know our organization really is striving to do those things our our
National philanthropic partner is p flag parents and families of lesbians and gays which is a large national international network of of folks for support but also community action and those kinds of things and so for us what we would bring to cu denver or what we will bring to cu denver is um
Just moving the needle forward on those things on campus right so making sure that you know we’re advocating for those who may not feel that they have a voice you know providing space for students who who maybe need some healing you know we always want to try to make sure that our
That our chapters and our provisional chapters are spaces of healing and support for our membership you know i can share that you know my chapter was an extension of my family for other members in my chapter we were their only family and so for us it’s going to provide an opportunity to
Be that family whether it’s that be that chosen family for for students on campus you know one of the things you mentioned earlier when you were talking a little about your values was philanthropy and community service and i love that you’re connected with pflag are there other organizations that
You as an organization specifically volunteer with or support or fundraise for sure so we are so our national partner is pflag but we also allow our local entities to kind of pick and choose what makes this most sense for them so we’ve seen everything from aids foundations to we’ve seen
Local shelters you know food banks you name it right we allow them to choose kind of what makes sense for them and in their community you know so particularly here in denver there’s a lot of different organizations that our provisional chapter would be able to to partner with right so whether it be
Local shelters or you know any of those other things we want to make sure that they are choosing both our national partner as well as a local partner that makes sense for them so we give them that flexibility to do so um we always support and talk them through what
Finding a partner looks like so it’s not we’re not just saying go out and find one have fun but we talk through like here’s how you find a good partner here’s how you do your research you know we we go through that process with them another element that groups often bring
To campus is really a focus on being a leader being a leader within the organization a leader on campus a leader out in the greater community is there anything that dlp specifically focuses on as you’re developing members to be leaders out in the community sure so we like to focus our leaders um
In teaching our leaders on how to be advocates in their community um while we are not an advocacy organization we are a fraternal organization a lot of what we discuss is here’s how to here’s what being a leader looks like so one of the things one of the programs we have is
Actually happening this coming weekend is our delta force leadership academy um and we have it’s a year account it’s a it happens every year about this time where our students come together and we bring in members from a number of chapters across our organization to talk about community leadership to talk about
Advocacy to talk about you know what it means to be a leader on your campus and how you translate that into your larger community you know we believe that um community service doesn’t stop the day you graduate but the community service is a lifetime commitment and so we make sure that we’re teaching
Our members that this is a lifetime commitment both membership is a lifetime commitment but also community service and community organizing is also a lifetime commitment so we saw we spend a lot of time focusing on that well thank you i appreciate you meeting with me today so we can record this um
Folks watching this video our sorority fraternity life very first ever recruitment event will be on thursday february 3rd we’re currently planning to meet from 4 30 to 7 30 in the turn hall in the tivoli students union um if by chance we have to pivot to virtual we will publicize and post a
Zoom meeting but right now we plan to be in person and so we hope you’ll join us there at that event participants will find out about what does it mean to be a member of one of these groups and all of the organizations including delta lambda phi will have three different information
Sessions at those sessions you’ll be able to find out about their requirements for membership how they actually select their members what their timeline is for this spring for choosing those members um their provisional chapters which are their starter chapters they have a number of requirements they need to go through to become chartered
Nationally and they’ll talk about dues etc and so we do ask that you come to that event if you’re interested in any of our sororities or fraternities and you can register on either the student life website or on my links if you’ll search sorority and fraternity life so thanks
Again christopher thank you so much i appreciate it
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