MTU Spring - Newsletter 2026

ARCTIC ARCHIVE

MARCH 15

Extra Life

APRIL 4 Initiation

Learn more and register for our Extra Life Charity Event:

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to the Arctic Chapter! Last semester, we had one of our larger pledge classes in a while and initiated six new brothers to join the Arctic Chapter. This class is also special due to it being our first Gamma class with subsequent classes to follow, and these brothers insist that the “Gamma Golden era” is now upon the Arctic Chapter. The new brothers have been hard at work helping in chair positions, around the house, and just being great additions to the brotherhood.

After the success of last

semester, we started this semester with many ambitions of large projects like basement renovations, and trying to do more with the winter carnival. This includes a larger and more organized attempt at a monthlong snow statue after learning a lot from last year's attempt, which was the first time we did it in a few years.

Basement Update

The weekend before school started, a few brothers decided to come up early and help with some demolition of old living spaces in the basement to

help in opening up the basement. These brothers started by removing the walls between the rooms and quickly learned that in order to cut dry wall they needed a vacuum to suck up the dust and to not set off the fire alarm. After two fire alarms, a police visit, and a Harbor Freight trip later, these brothers were back and continued working throughout the entire Saturday. Within the first day of demolition, the brothers had taken down all the walls and ripped into the floor of one of the two rooms, with the only issue being that the

dumpster space was running out, and we could not do much more demolition without another dumpster, which we could not afford at the time.

Some of the setbacks we encountered throughout the day were that we learned in one of the rooms there was a fireplace that ran through the entire house that was not planned for, and the wall in between two rooms looked like it could be load-bearing when it

was assumed to not be. After this initial work weekend, the chapter has been busy with school and winter carnival, so there has not been a lot more progress. But what has been accomplished is still important; the basement shower and its room were demolished, and an inspector came out for the potential load-bearing wall and told us it was not load-bearing but it was supporting another beam. The chapter is hoping to do more work soon with carnival

activities done, but it has been made much harder with all of our donations going towards two dumpsters and the inspector We hope to be able to start some of the building soon, but are hoping for donations to help get us the materials needed.

After competing in a month-long snow statue last year, we learned a lot as a chapter and how we should be organizing it. Last year was our first time doing it as a fraternity in a few years, so we had to get many of the materials for the first time and everyone was learning how to do this. This year, we came in with a better plan for our statue and plans to organize the whole effort. Our statue this year was a replica of the Artemis SLS launch site with the shuttle and the landing pod, for this year's theme of “Through Ice and Snow, to Space We Go.” Throughout the month, we faced many hardships, including brutally cold weather that required the school to cancel all snow statue building for close to half of the week in some cases.

But after one last push on the winter carnival all-nighter, we had the statue finished and looking pretty good. While we did place last in the men's division, it was still a huge learning experience for all members since we took it much more seriously this year compared to last year. This was our second time doing it as a chapter, and something we will continue to improve on in future winter carnivals.

Pinning

Finally, on February 7th, we had our pinning ceremony in the Memorial Union Building's Alumni Lounge, and pinned four new members to join Triangle. The Gamma Beta class is made up of excellent gentlemen who embody our core values, and we are all excited to get to know them better through new member education and initiate them into full brothers.

NEW MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

Noah Halkola

Noah Halkola is a software engineer in his second-year here at Tech, and became a brother last semester in the Gamma Alpha pledge class. Noah is currently one of two recruitment chairs and has done a great job in helping our chapter grow. Noah likes playing guitar outside of the fraternity, and playing guitar hero with other brothers at rushes and at the house. He joined the brotherhood for our sense of humor and the support system within our chapter

Clark Heilman

Clark Heilman is a first-year computer engineering student, and one of the brothers in the Gamma Alpha pledge class. In his first active semester Clark has been very active within the fraternity, including becoming academic chair for this semester. Outside of the fraternity, Clark is learning to blacksmith and has made things like knives and wallhooks with his skills, as well as enjoying the snow and skiing at Mont Ripley when he is able to.

Mason Laskowski is a second-year cybersecurity student joining last semester with the other Gamma Alphas. Mason joined Triangle for the strong support and friendship of our brothers and has fit in very well with his sense of humor. Mason is learning to play guitar and piano currently with Death Grips being his favorite band to listen to. He also says Team Fortress 2 is “the best game ever made” and enjoys other video games with brothers as well.

SUPPORT MTU’S LEGACY

CEF this semester has been especially helpful in getting tools for our planned makerspace, and teaching brothers how to use them with our ongoing basement renovations. It's been very helpful to have a larger project for the brotherhood to work on and learn how to use these tools from other brothers.

We plan to keep gathering tools to help aid in both goals and encourage more brothers to take up improvement projects around the house to both learn new skills and benefit the chapter home.

HOUSING UPDATE

With the basement renovations being put on hold due to spending the majority of our donations on two dumpsters and the inspector, we are hoping that some of our alumni would help by donating to us. Your donation would first be used for the basement, and then for any ongoing kitchen renovations, like addressing our lack of ventilation that is still an issue. We would appreciate any donations through Venmo to @TriangleFraternity-MichiganTec or by reaching out to any of our active members to help assist in donating. We would like to finish our basement renovations by the end of this semester, but the lack of funding has been our largest roadblock yet, as we plan to turn it into another hangout space for the chapter to use.

LOST CONTACT?

Know a brother who’s changed emails, moved, or fallen out of contact? Help us bring him back into the fold. Send updated contact information to communications@triangle.org so we can keep every Triangle member connected.