April 2004

James Ehrmann • A Long Day’s Knight

No longer shall I be referred to as a pledge! I am now active member 1545 of Sigma Nu. Last night’s knighting ceremony (active members are referred to as knights) was the culmination of “work week,” in which we were required to be at the fraternity house from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. every day of the week. This all started Sunday night, which was somewhat of a bummer considering I’d been in Missouri all weekend visiting the Sigma Nu chapter there and hadn’t managed a great deal of sleep.

Work week turned out to be an absolute blast, however. I bonded with the 17 other guys in my pledge class and got to know the older guys in the house much better. We completed two in-house projects (repainting the study and another room) and spent an afternoon helping out at the Ronald McDonald House to fulfill the community service requirement.

Sigma Phi Epsilon hosted an educational session, which outlined the do’s and don’t’s for houses during summer rush. It was just the basics: no alcohol in sight (full or empty bottles), no talking about any other fraternity, no drinking alcohol during rush week, and no inviting prospective members to parties during the summer rush week. There was also a big deal made about being respectful to women. All in all, it was general common sense, but it was good that it was reviewed, because, from what I hear, a lot of houses had trouble following the rules last summer.

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