374
edits
Changes
→Highlights of 2014
==Highlights of 2014==
Formal recruitment for the Beta Phi chapter for 2014 was very successful and had a total of 27 New Members who were initiated on October 25, 2014. Many members of our chapter received the LAS award in scholarship and also the Bright Future Award for incoming freshman students. During the Fall semester of 2014, our chapter GPA was 2.937. Unfortunately, we did not receive any Province awards for the 2013 year.
One of our traditions in this chapter is to do a “Snap Cup” at the end of every meeting. This allows us to say something positive about one another or the entire chapter about anything that was good for that week. Special events that we held during 2014 included Sapphire Ball, which was held at a downtown hotel, Forester’s Ball and Kappa Krush.
Women Behind the Badge:
Our Vice President of Organization Marissa Barone, currently has a historical badge that belonged to Myrtle Buls who was a Beta Phi member from 1946. Although she passed away in 2010, she enjoyed many outdoor activities, singing and traveling. She was quoted as saying “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.” Marissa was given the badge in May 2014.
==Highlights of 2015==
During the year of 2015, the University of Montana has added a new fraternity to
campus, Alpha Sigma Phi. The University now has 4 sororities and 8 fraternities. Within
our own Kappa Kappa Gamma Beta Phi chapter, we are blessed to have our new
house mom, Leann, who was our old house board treasurer. We also are pleased to
reward Alicia B. the Beta Phi scholarship back in April.
Our chapter has also increased in size since the past couple of years. We initiated a
total of 7 women in the spring and 21 women in the fall. Spring recruitment was very
successful because we had over 20 women show up for our “Mexican night” and over
15 show up for the mystery dinner the next week when we normally have only about a
maximum of 4 women. We then extended 13 bids to those women and ended up with 8
new members. Our formal fall recruitment was a “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” theme, and at
the end of the week, we extended 29 bids to women and pledged 26 women that
following Monday.
Philanthropy activities that our chapter has accumulated over the fall semester of
2014 and spring semester of 2015, we totaled over 2,100 hours for all 51 women.
Special thanks to Jessica L, Hannah G, Krista B, Bronte B. who all volunteered over
100 hours of service. Our chapter always helps out at the annual Forester’s Ball, where
this spring, we made about $230, and we donated half of it to the Kappa foundation and
the other half to our fraternity brother, Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s fundraiser. Their
fundraiser was that one of their brother’s girlfriends suddenly had a stroke and needed
money to help pay for the medical bills, so our chapter decided to help out with their
cause. Our main Reading Is Key event was held in the spring were we collected over
420 books from all the fraternities and sororities on campus. Our Senior Philanthropy
event also that spring was an alcohol awareness water pong tournament that all Greek
members or non-members could participate, and the seniors raised over $250 dollars
and then also donated the full amount to SAE’s fundraiser.
Some of the goals that our chapter council developed include: be more
philanthropic, develop better communication, and be Kappa Klassy. With the goal of
being more philanthropic as our probably the main focus, our chapter believed that we
should continue to improve on being more involved with the other sororities and
fraternities on our campus. One of the reasons why we decided on this goal was
because our chapter happens to be one of the smaller chapters on our campus, and we
haven’t been as representative for the other chapter’s philanthropies or fundraisers as
much in the past couple of years. Our chapter also believed that if we improved our
attendance of these fundraisers at other chapters, it would help us improve our
communication and being classy. We always have more opportunities to improve and
achieve our goals, and we aren’t going to stop trying to achieve them. In order to help
us achieve our goals, LC Alyssa came over a couple of weeks during the fall semester
where she helped us with our work week for recruitment and recruitment at that time as
well as nominations for our next year’s chapter council.
We as a chapter also believed that these goals would help us in the challenges that
our chapter faced over the year. Our advisors and alumna also came in to help us
during our time of need in order to better build up our public relations over the entire
Greek system facing an “alcohol restriction” and other public report cases that
happened. Overall, I believe that our chapter and the University of Montana Greek
system is improving and these challenges will continue to help us improve our image,
goals, and values for all to see.
Even though we have had a couple of challenges this year, some of the many
traditions we have done for years still continued. Our Founder’s Day on October 13th
was our 106th anniversary of our chapter on the University of Montana campus. Other
traditions include the weekly “Snap Cup” that we will read at the end of our meetings.
Also during our meetings, we have the “No Skip Skippy Jar,” the “Hey, Hey, I Got an A,”
“Kappa Kreep,” and the Supportive Sister Bra. The no skip skippy jar is where everyone
puts in their names if they attended all of their classes and win a prize. The got an A is
for rewarding everyone who obtained an A in any of their classes that week. The Kappa
Kreep is the newer one where if you spotted a sister studying, you could snapchat them
“secretly” and watch a slide show the VP of Academic Excellence would create from
that week. The supportive sister bra is just a bra that when it is given to you, you write
your name and date on it just to show who has been supportive in our chapter. Outside
of the weekly meetings, our chapter has an entire week dedicated to Bigs’ and Littles’
where the bigs’ will make crafts and write clues to give to the littles’ for them to guess.
At the end of the week, the bigs’ will then present themselves in unique and clever ways
to their littles’ and everyone gets excited. This year we had a ball of yarn start on the
first floor and the littles’ had to grab their string and follow it to their bigs’ as well as
having the littles’ collect articles of clothing scattered around the house to then meet
their bigs’ located outside on the lawn wearing the same clothing items. One of the older
traditions that our chapter does is on Friday night of Initiation, all of the actives will dress
in black and walk out onto the lawn with candles to form the shape of a key while
singing “Dream Awhile” for our new members to view from the President’s balcony. This
might be one of the most treasured traditions that Beta Phi has.
We have been blessed with our chapter house still being the original house that was
bought in 1931. Currently we have about 35 women living in the house out of a possible
37 women including our house mom. Several remodels have been introduced since the
original, but more recently we have remodeled the first floor and our basement. The first
floor has been remodeled over the past couple of years to represent the original house
back in the 1910’s to 1930’s because our house is honored with being placed on the
national register of historic places in Montana. Because of this, we are required to keep
our house “time period specific” with all the same colors and furniture, while still being a
place that many women will continue to live in. Our basement was remodeled from the
old “Pit” to the new “lounge area” by replacing the floor, repainting the walls and ceiling,
adding newer furniture, a popcorn machine, and all the exercise equipment that we
could ever think of or use. We still have chapter meetings in our house and continue to
grow and remodel the house while remembering that it is a historical house.
==Highlights of 2020s:==
