Acacia Leadership Academy: Day One

Hello Gentlemen,

Today we commenced Acacia Fraternity's 9th Biannual Leadership Academy in Bloomington, Indianapolis where 92 undergraduates came together to learn and develop skills to which they can take back to their chapters. This ALA is also very special as it signifies the 1000th undergraduate to have gone through the academy.

As the last of the delegates from across the nation trickled into the house, we commenced the day by going to the local beach and playing some ultimate frisbee. But, the hot weather forced us in good time to go into the water and play some football. As we forgot to bring an actual football, we were forced to use a water bottle. After a good long period under the blistering sun, we all decided to go around campus and visit Greek Row here in Indiana University from the comfort of our air conditioned cars.

Afterwards, we came back to the house and got ready to commence the opening ceremonies.

At the opening ceremonies, Daryl Larson brought forth his humor and charisma to energize the undergraduates as we dispersed into our break out groups in which we picked nominees to represent our groups for elections to executive chapter positions in duration of ALA.

After a going through long, enjoyable and yet humorous speeches, we ended up picking our officers;

Venerable Dean: Andrew McGowan. Ohio State.
Senior Dean: Navi Parmar. Syracuse.
Treasurer: John Plaster. St. Cloud State.
Risk Manager: Darion James. Carleton Chapter.
Secretary: Nash Mendes. Carleton Chapter.
Senior Steward: Nathaniel McKee. Missouri.
Junior Steward: Erik Tamm. Carleton Chapter.

Congrats to the officers we hope you will prosper and succeed in your position! Also, a big thank you to those who took the initiative to step up and run for the positions.

To conclude the day, we all went to Classic Lanes to ease off after a long day and informally bond over some bowling.

In conclusion of this post, all the brothers would very much like to thank all of the staff, council members who organized all of this and made it happen. Also to the active brothers and alumni at the Indiana Chapter for letting us use their house to host such a great event.

Im sure theres more to come as Day Two is almost upon us. I hope to update my fellow brothers about our progress here in ALA as time passes.

Fraternally,

Nash Mendes
Secretary
Carleton Chapter '09