Saturday, November 10, 2012, Alpha Zeta Cook Chapter held its bi-annual Alumni Event meant for New Members to get to know the members of our wonderful Alpha Zeta Cook Alumni Chapter. This event was held in the Fellowship Hall of  United Methodist Church of New Brunswick Church, a last minute change due to the problems that Hurricane Sandy caused, since all of the locations were closed. The chair of Alumni Committee was responsible for booking the venue, organizing the catering, and arranging for all of the brothers to make it to the event...

Saturday, November 17, 2012, nineteen new members in the Upsilon Class were initiated. 58 brothers and approximately 25 alumni, including Rutgers faculty, gather at Foran Hall on Cook Campus to welcome the new brothers. The night included various chapter rituals, including games, debates, the initiation ceremony and celebration...

Bigs and Littles came together on Saturday, October 13, 2012 to clean pumpkins in preparation for the Fall Festive, cleaned the trails in the Bamboo Forest at the Rutgers Gardens, and weeded the vegetable patch. It was a great bonding experience, and in this way brothers were able to give back to a very vital organization on in our campus community. It is tradition for our chapter to help out at the Rutgers Gardens every semester to introduce our new members to our ideal "Promotion of Agriculture.”

Brothers at the Alpha Zeta table participated in the annual Monster Mash at the Cook/Douglass Rec. Center. They gave out candy to the children of New Brunswick and played a game with them, so that the children could have a safe place to participate in trick or treating.  Activities included a haunted house trail; a sensory station, candy give out station, a photo booth and a mummy wrap game station. Cook Chapter’s booth offered face painting and a bean bag toss game for the children.

One of our Alpha Zeta alumni from Rutgers, Devon Craft, and her family were victims of Hurricane Sandy.  She reached out to the Cook Chapter of Alpha Zeta, here at Rutgers, for volunteers to assist her family in removing debris and cleaning up her home. They needed to dispose of belongings, mold, and throw out destroyed pieces of their house. We extended this need for help out to the brotherhood in hopes that some brothers would be able to volunteer their time over the weekend to help Devon and her family.

Brothers helped Farmers Against Hunger glean collard greens at Giamerese Farm. Gleaning is the harvesting of produce that would otherwise go to waste to be donated to a food bank. Cook chapter helps with gleaning every fall, to help promote agriculture and give some of our brothers experience in a farm setting, as some of them want to become farmers in the future.

On December 7th, the brothers of Cook Chapter celebrated the end of the semester with Winter Formal. Fifty-three brothers and alumni spent formal at the Hyatt Regency in New Brunswick, along with their guests.  Brothers dressed to impress in their formal best, attended a banquet-style dinner and enjoyed dancing the night away while the DJ played their favorite music.  Certain brothers were given awards, which included the brother with the most service hours, best big/little pair, hardest working brother and unsung heroes.

Celebration of fall season where brothers participated in an annual Friendsgiving celebration. For this event, the brothers played games, shared stories, and had a pot-luck style dinner.  Brothers gathered together to witness a fireworks display to end a very memorable and fun night.

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The Big Chill is an annual charity 5k race run by Rutgers Programming. Each participant was required to donate a $10 toy for homeless children. About 8,000 people participated and close to 9,500 toys were donated. With the extra donations, Rutgers was able to purchase 350 winter coats for the children as well. Most of our brothers and alumni ran the race, but there were some who walked the three miles, or volunteered (starting at 6am) to help run the race. The event was a huge success.

During Anti-Hazing week at Rutgers University brothers and new members attended various workshops to learn about what hazing is and how to prevent the spread of it at Rutgers University. New members were also encouraged to attend a workshop sponsored by the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs where they were taught the value of brotherhood and the negative effects and consequences of hazing. It was an information week for us all and we gained several ideas about fun bonding events that we could carry out in our own new member semester, one of which included a bake-off, an idea the brotherhood really enjoyed.