Volume 30 · Number 2 · Winter 2013
End Notes
Coffee House coworkers and friends of Kyle Braver surprised the Giants fan with a ticket to a World Series game.
Taking him out to the ball game
Kyle Braver has made a lot of good friends working at the Coffee House, but he didn’t know just how good until the 2012 World Series.
Braver, a diehard San Francisco Giants fan, was celebrating the Giant’s 8–3 win in Game 1 over the Detroit Tigers at a café near campus when coworkers and friends surprised him with a standing-room only ticket to Game 2. A YouTube video they produced shows him blinking — and speechless for more than 30 seconds.
“What happened [that] Wednesday night wasn’t even something I considered a possibility, and it was so out of left field that when it did happen, I didn’t have a response,” he said. “I’m incredibly lucky to have people who’d do something like that for me in my life.”
While taking 21 units as an economics and history double major, Braver works more than 30 hours a week as a CoHo supervisor. The YouTube video, “Kyle Goes to the World Series,” describes him as “the most kind-hearted, amiable and thoughtful person you’ll ever meet.”
Fraternity razing
Phi Delta Theta’s old house, right, was torn down this fall to make way for a new building, left, that will look a lot like the original.
Nearly a century of fraternity living can be hard on a house — even one that began as a church and ended up alcohol-free.
Phi Delta Theta had looked into renovating its C street building between campus and downtown Davis, but decided in the end that structural problems were beyond fixing. The building, described by former chapter president Charlie Colato ’13 as an eyesore, was torn down this fall.
Alumni have donated close to $1 million for construction of a new house in a style similar to the old one. When completed next fall, it will have room for 19 residents, plus dining and living areas that can be combined for chapter meetings of up to 75 people.
“We now can become a model locally of what Phi Delta Theta has become nationally — a leader in implementing alcohol-free housing for its members,” Colato said.
The demolished building was perhaps UC Davis’ oldest Greek house. Phi Delta Theta was founded on campus in 1912 as Calpha Fraternity (California Agricultural Fraternity), and acquired the C Street property in 1914 — the building’s north portion was formerly a Presbyterian church. In 1954, the fraternity evolved into the California Epsilon Chapter of Phi Delta Theta.
“We, California Epsilon, are extremely excited to be moving forward into the new school year with a fresh group of young men, and soon a brand new house,” said current president Jacob Morton.
If they had only known then ...
Upper-division students, asked what they wished they’d known when they first came to UC Davis, gave their answers — both offbeat and serious — in a video shown this fall at the campus’s New Student Celebration.