Community college classes keep California native on track in Iowa City
–by Tom Garland, Kirkwood News Service
Bryan Cruz, a sophomore at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa City, sweated and struggled in the July heat as he moved boxes up the stairs to his new place.
Cruz wasn’t moving into student housing, a new downtown apartment, or even into a surrounding neighborhood. He was moving into his University of Iowa fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi.
“I joined Pi Kapp last year while I was enrolled at Iowa,” Cruz explained as he stacked boxes up in his new bedroom, “I’m originally from California and needed to save a little money this year and try to boost my GPA, so I decided that Kirkwood’s Iowa City campus would be a good move for me.”
However, when Cruz decided he was going to switch schools, he was reluctant after just being initiated into his fraternity a few months prior.
“I had just gone through the whole formal new member process of joining, so I was afraid they weren’t going to let me stay a member,” Cruz said.
He couldn’t have been more surprised with the chapter’s response.
“The fraternity not only let me stay, they also told me that I could even live in if I wanted to,” Cruz said, “They told me that they supported my decision to go to Kirkwood. I’ve been taking classes there this summer and I can already see it’s a perfect fit for me.”
Cruz isn’t the only one in his chapter that has made the switch from Iowa to Kirkwood and still remains a member.
Logan Ashenfelter made the same move Cruz did just last year and is now back at Iowa, ready to start the new semester.
“Money was getting tight, I felt my grades slipping, and I knew it was time to go to Kirkwood for awhile and get things straightened out. What I didn’t know was how well the fraternity was going to take it,” Ashenfelter said.
Greg Horsley, president of the Theta Theta Chapter of Pi Kappa Phi at The University of Iowa explained that as long as students like Ashenfelter and Cruz continue paying dues and keep their grades up, the fraternity has no problem letting Kirkwood students be members or even live in the house.
“We’ve had this situation come up a lot in the past,” Horsley said, “As long as the student is willing to uphold our values of the chapter, take care of their dues, and keep academics as their top priority, there’s nothing wrong with a Kirkwood student being a member of our house.”
As Cruz unloaded the last of his boxes from his U-Haul, he referenced Kirkwood’s slogan. “Kirkwood has all these posters up that say ‘Start Here, Go Anywhere.’ You don’t just have to start there. You can use that school for whatever kind of resource you want. It helped me from having to move back home to California. Now I can stay here with my friends and fraternity brothers in Iowa City, where I feel I belong.”