A "Nu" Story

[misscherrypie]

This is the crazy story of the Beta Sigma Phi Friendly Venture (FV- what we call the chartering of a new chapter) I'll add some more each day.

This picks up around the time that I initially sent off for a FV Chapter in a Box package from International….that was in December of 2012.
Eleven women were interested in Friendly Venturing…..by the end of the year, they had all decided that it wasn’t for them. The FV was back to square one. Cue, a very, very sad Beta Sigma Phi sister sitting in Southern California on vacation visiting her family for the holidays.

…….Four weeks later……..

Classes had resumed, and I was preparing for my first retreat as a new member of the Student Ambassadors organization on campus……and thought that giving the FV process one final shot, in the hopes of helping to charter a chapter here was in order. I’d been disappointed in my Greek journey so often in the past six months that I decided that if a Beta Sigma Phi FV didn’t fly this time, whether it was a recognized greek organization on campus or not…..I was going to remain a member at large and deal with it and enjoy the heck out of being a Student Ambassador.

I wanted to share the goodness that is Beta Sigma Phi with other students….and sort of out of selfishness….I didn’t enjoy being the only Beta Sigma Phi on campus. (Looking back....I'm ashamed to admit this...but it was how I felt at the time)

Cue: Grace and Hannah. (Not their real names) We became friends in Student Ambassadors. They were the best of friends and did almost everything together. …then reached out to me….which was crucial to me feeling at home in the Ambassadors.Hannah graduated at the end of the semester and although we remained close and she lived not too far away, I missed spending so much time with both of them on campus.

Grace wasn’t initially interested in being a part of the FV. She did want to help me with the legwork of setting Rush up, since at that time….It was just me out there trying to recruit PNM’s, run rush and file paperwork.

This changed with the completely unexpected.

One day, Grace was surfing the internet to find out where other Beta Sigma Phi Collegiate chapters were located. During her search, our school came up. It turned out that a chapter of Beta Sigma Phi had deposited their scrapbooks in the University Special Collections on campus. Over 30 years’ worth of scrapbooks, to be exact. Grace told me about this and asked if we could go and look at these scrapbooks together. I agreed, wanting to see what was in them. So, we crossed campus and went upstairs to seek out the scrapbooks.

…….Four hours later……

Grace was so taken by the scrapbooks and kept saying “They’re like US! They do the same stuff that we do! They have the same kind of humor that we do! I want to be a Beta Sigma Phi!” That was the first interested PNM. I was trying not to cry over the scrapbooks….seeing my sisters and what they did together so long ago really touched my heart and kindled an even deeper love for Beta Sigma Phi

The scrapbooks belonged to “Nevada Nu” chapter, a chapter that was started in 1938. By looking up records and obituaries, we found out that the charter members of that chapter WERE our age: with a similar age cohort to that which later made up our chapter. Later, we found that Nevada Nu ceased to exist as of December of 2010.

This is our recruitment video that tells the story of Nevada Nu....with photos from the scrapbooks!

http://youtu.be/SWOKWF-TT7g

Grace asked if it was possible if we could be the “new” Nevada Nu and request permission from International to use that particular name. International said that this would not be an issue, so….when all of the paperwork is done, we will be the Nevada Nu chapter.

Hannah, who had wanted to go Greek during her entire collegiate career and had experienced disappointments during multiple years of going through recruitment , was the next PNM to come on board. Grace and I asked if she would be interested and she interrupted our spiel with “Yes. Is that even a question? We’d finally be sisters!”

The third member of our core group was another new ambassador named Laura. She was interested in going Greek and had considered both NPC and Multicultural Greek Council Sororities . For various reasons, she decided that Beta Sigma Phi was where she wanted to be.

To be continued……