Sigma Chi receives top national frat award
High ratings in community involvement and campus leadership have allowed Utah State University’s Sigma Chi chapter to receive one of the fraternity’s highest honors.
The Gamma Kappa chapter was awarded with the J. Dwight Peterson Significant Chapter Award last week, the top award given annually to undergraduate chapters.
“Last year, we focused a lot on academics, grades and service,” said Mike Waggoner, last year’s Sigma Chi president. “At our brotherhood retreat last fall, we wrote down the things we stand for and stressed community service and the importance for each member to be more accountable for the obligations they take upon themselves.”
Application chairman Mike Ricci, a senior aerospace engineering major, put together the application through a week-long process.
Ricci said a number of members of the fraternity came together to put the application together. Members would write papers and Ricci would edit them to ensure they conformed to the application’s specifications.
“I was stressing out that week pretty bad,” he said. “I knew that our chapter had done everything to be worthy of it, I knew we should earn [the award].”
The award application required papers detailing the benefits of ritual-based meetings, the chapter’s scholarship policy, the chapter’s alumni relations and campus leadership and community involvement.
The USU chapter received top scores in the ritual, scholarship, risk management and financial management sections of the application.
Current Sigma Chi President Jarrett Blonquist said the application process assigns points based on each area of application, and a certain point value must be obtained to receive the award.
“You pretty much compete against the headquarters’ standards,” he said.
USU’s chapter received 45 out of 55 possible points.
While the 2002-03 year was the seventh time the Gamma Kappa chapter received the Peterson award since 1967-68, Blonquist said the house is making every effort to receive the award again next year.
“We are focusing on actually doing more service,” he said. “We’ve tried to recruit men who have higher potential.”
Blonquist said the fraternity did a good job during Greek Week of getting high-caliber men involved with the organization.
A major part of Sigma Chi’s yearly service is their Derby Days charity project. Last year, Sigma Chi raised $2,000 and presented a check to Salt Lake Primary Children’s Hospital.
Sigma Chi member Jordan Neilson, an undeclared sophomore, said the trip to Primary Children’s Hospital was one of the highlights of the last year.
“They gave us a tour of the hospital, showed us where different types of children with each different disease are, where they take care of them,” he said. “Everybody that worked there was so involved with children, they get attached to them.”
Travis Neilson, a sophomore studying history, echoed Jordan’s comments.
“It was just cool to see where our money is actually going,” he said.
Ricci said the fraternity-sponsored Derby Days will help the fraternity win the Peterson award again in 2004.
“We’re going to try to make [Derby Days] really successful,” he said. “National likes that.”
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