UCF’s Gazoni Family: More Than Just A “No Rules” Fraternity

In the past year word has gotten out that Lambda Chi Alpha at the University of Central Florida had their charter revoked, but refused to let their brotherhood die out and disintegrate like people see happen all the time when chapters are kicked off campus.  Resulting in the creation of what is now known as “The Gazoni Family”.  If you haven’t yet heard of them, I highly recommend you go stalk all their social media accounts right now.

SEE ALSO: 9 Ways UCF Students Dress for Game Day

SEE ALSO: 10 Struggles Only A UCF Student Would Understand

IMG_2244

Personally, these are some of my best guy friends. I’ve never felt so welcomed by a group of people in my life, and I watched as they transitioned from LXA to Gazoni.  Watching them go through everything initially broke my heart.  I hated seeing something that was such a huge part of all my friends life be taken away from them… but then I saw something great happen.  Being the strong, driven group of men I know and love they said screw that, and created something amazing.  They kept giving bids, but only now they made the rules.  In the past year I’ve seen article after article get written about this “No Rules Frat” and how cool they were, and why people should rush them because they’d be great to party with (undeniably they are great to party with), but they also got a lot of bad publicity- especially by the heads of fraternity and sorority life at the University.  Threats were made to sororities, swearing to punish chapters with sisters that attended any of their parties, and getting on the executives shit list for getting involved with them in any way, saying it was a “liability”.  They weren’t accepted by Officials of Sorority and Fraternity life- point, blank, period.  People saw what Gazoni was doing as a threat, an act of rebellion, and thought it was the start of a movement they didn’t agree with.

SEE ALSO: 9 Ways UCF Students Dress for Game Day

SEE ALSO: 10 Struggles Only A UCF Student Would Understand

Now what Gazoni is doing is far greater than anyone saw coming.  Sure, they party.  Sure, they have all the benefits of a Fraternity without the rules.  But did you know they also still picked a philanthropy to support and raise awareness for?  This reckless group of guys everyone fears of confronting is actually doing something for the greater good, and they’re killing it.  Only two weeks deep in November and they had raised almost $3,000 for the “Movember Foundation”. For those of you who aren’t aware of what the Movember Foundation is, its a Foundation to raise awareness for men’s health.  The foundation itself raises money that goes towards prostate cancer charity and many more causes.  More Information can be found at: https://us.movember.com/team/1939321.

With efforts to meet their goal of raising $8,000 for the Movember Foundation, Gazoni set up a tilt account and I see at least 10 different posts about it via Facebook everyday with brothers asking for support.  And they’re not only asking for donations, but actually setting up fundraisers.  On November 10th, they had a partial proceeds at a local restaurant “Amigos” in the area, and arranged for busses to take everyone to Cocoa Beach for a relaxed day of drinking- for a $15 donation to the tilt account of course.  Aside from the financials going towards the philanthropy of their choice, the guys of Gazoni are doing an amazing job of raising awareness in general.  They got a little creative, and in spirit of the popular “no shave november” trend, the brothers of Gazoni started doing what people did for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and are making videos challenging people to grow out a mustache for the month of November, along with making a donation to the Foundation.  Sure, they may all look like a bunch of Pedophiles from the 80’s right now, but like they say “FTN” (For The Nuts).

Gazoni Movember Back 12195983_10203845426576221_2829427874261853569_n

 

SEE ALSO: 9 Ways UCF Students Dress for Game Day

SEE ALSO: 10 Struggles Only A UCF Student Would Understand

What really makes the whole thing seem that much more great to me, is despite the lack of support they get from existing greek chapters at UCF, the men of Gazoni have managed to raise the amount they have.  Typically a lot of the sororities are given incentive for attending fraternity philanthropy events, whether its to receive “points” or with incentive for their chapter to win something by donating the most to the event, having the most attendance, etc.  However, Gazoni not being recognized as a “real” greek organization, sororities neglect making their events a priority, yet they still manage to have hundreds of people showing up to their events, buying their shirts supporting Movember Foundation, and bringing so much more awareness to friends and family.  When I asked a member of Gazoni, Ryan Jennis, why exactly they decided to keep the idea of raising money for a philanthropy alive he responded with “Honestly, we just didn’t want to change anything about the way things were going.  We get a bad rep a lot of them time, but as an organization we still wanted to do something to give back to our community”.

To get a little more outlook of where the Gazoni Family is coming from I asked Yuval Mor (the President of Lambda Chi Alpha during their removal and leader when the creation of Gazoni began) if there was anything he wanted to be included in this piece… this is what he had to give me: “As I watched the expelled organization of Lambda Chi at UCF evolve into what is now the Gazoni Family, I couldn’t help but notice a twisted narrative promoted by institutions such as the university and “Pan” involving the notion that we had somehow abandoned our values. Unfortunately, this frame of thought hinders our capability to work for the greater good, and ultimately act as a detriment to the livelihood of philanthropy in the Central Florida area. We continue to care about the community in a genuine manner, and the more our efforts are taken with sincerity, the more successful our ventures for the welfare of the community can be”.

The intentions of this article are simply to bring awareness to so many more people that the members of Gazoni Family have such better motives than are perceived.  Everyone be sure to check out their next event at The Knight’s Library Nov. 30th!  Follow @gazonifamily for more info!

11665364_10207121534181541_6412234573608785104_n

SEE ALSO: 9 Ways UCF Students Dress for Game Day

SEE ALSO: 10 Struggles Only A UCF Student Would Understand

You Might Also Like