Phi Kappa Psi continues to rebuild after chapter’s re-establishment

Almost two years after jackhammers tore down the remains of the Phi Kappa Psi house on fraternity row, a newly built $7.5 million fraternity house stands in its place, ready to house a chapter with a fresh focus on service.

Phi Kappa Psi re-established its chapter at UCLA in September with a founding class of 22 members. The expansion and recruitment chair of the Phi Kappa Psi national organization recruited the founding class.

The fraternity held a winter rush this year and now has 31 active members, said Raffaele Saposhnik, a second-year business economics student and vice president of the fraternity.

The UCLA chapter, which started in 1930, was suspended by the national organization in August 2011 because of a series of “risk-management” violations, which included alcohol and unauthorized events, Jeremy Tillman, a UCLA and Phi Kappa Psi alumnus, told The Bruin in 2011.

The national organization closed the original chapter in 2011 because it thought the UCLA chapter was straying away from the larger organization’s values, said Kameron Willsey, expansion and recruitment consultant for the Phi Kappa Psi national organization.

In 2014, the Interfraternity Council gave Phi Kappa Psi permission to recruit new members again. Donations from alumni and current members financed the reconstruction of the new fraternity house, which finished remodeling last year.

Willsey said he thinks the alumni support that Phi Kappa Psi has from members this year will enable them to focus on the organization’s goals, which include service and leadership.

“We are trying to focus on our original goals and not fall into the trap of focusing solely on the social aspect of fraternity life,” he said.

Saposhnik, who joined the fraternity in October, said one of his favorite moments in the house was when all 22 members of the initiated class repeated the house chant, “High, high, high, Phi Kappa Psi. Live ever, die never, Phi Kappa Psi,” during the winter bid process.

“It was great to see how people who had just met three months ago … managed to create this house system from the ground,” he said.

Saposhnik said he thinks fraternity alumni have played a major role in re-establishing the chapter.

Alumni started a family program for new members of the chapter in which members of the initiated class get alumni as their “bigs,” Saposhnik said. Other fraternities have brothers who are current undergraduate students as “bigs.”

Saposhnik said he has been working with UCLA alumnus Dave Wehrly, a real estate investor, to learn more about career opportunities and networking.

The alumni of the fraternity have also launched many scholarship programs such as the Tony Horton Founders Scholarship, which provides up to 20 grants of $2,500 for students.

Willsey said the fraternity has come up with a new six-week education program to help new members learn about the values of the organization because they do not have active undergraduate members to help them learn about the fraternity.

“I decided to join because I thought that it will be a refreshing challenge to re-establish a new fraternity,” he said.

Saposhnik said the fraternity is continuing a rolling process of recruitment, and he hopes that more students will encourage the work that the fraternity is doing and join in the months to come.