05/09/08
Students carrying white boards with names and signatures were a common sight on Baker’s campus two weeks ago. Now, nine students have traded in their boards for a spot in the honorary theater society.
“Basically, their goal was to meet people and just get everyone’s signatures so they get a chance to talk to everybody,” sophomore Justin Whittaker, Alpha Psi Omega president, said. “That week was just to say, ‘Hey, welcome’ and was focused more on them.”
Freshmen Ali Watson, Courtney West, Philip Schiffelbein, and sophomores Libby Kmiec, Jason Shipley, Rachael Moon, Olivia Hernandez, Megan Nelson and Kaci Forsythe were all initiated into Alpha Psi Omega on April 27. Unlike fraternities though, these students weren’t known as pledges.
“Since we’re in theater, we try and jazz it up a little bit, so instead of pledges they would be understudies and things like that. You know we kind of throw theater lingo at them to make it interesting,” Whittaker said.
New officers were also recently chosen within the organization. Whittaker was named president; senior Ashley Pike, vice president; Schiffelbein, secretary; West, treasurer; junior Claire Norland, pledge educator; and Watson, historian.
Schiffelbein said he was looking forward to next year.
“I’m excited about it,” he said. “I take notes at the meetings; I’m sort of the president’s brain. If e-mails need to be sent out, I do that, and I do paperwork.”
Watson is also looking forward to being a part of Alpha Psi Omega and her job as historian.
“I’m looking forward to being in Alpha Psi Omega, because it’s a fraternity that already has many friends of mine, who I consider family and I want to be a new addition to that family,” she said.
As president, Whittaker is hoping to accomplish a lot of goals and change how some things are done.
“Because we have so many new members and they’re enthusiastic, and then all of the members we already have who are enthusiastic as well, we plan on being more organized, more efficient and basically just want to better ourselves,” he said. “We’ve always had a lot of ideas, and now it’s just time to put them into action.”
With the help of this year’s class of understudies, Whittaker doesn’t think this we will a problem.
“They are an excellent group, they came in with enthusiasm. These guys knew what they wanted to change as far as Alpha Psi Omega goes,” he said. “They had the same goals; we want to be more well-known, we want to be more involved, we want to sponsor more, we want to help out; and they’ve got a lot of good ideas.”
As the planning for the upcoming year begins, Alpha Psi Omega is working to reach those goals. Talent shows and other events are already in the works for next school year.
“We’re going in a positive direction. It’s going to be fun; it’s going to be good,” Whittaker said. “People should expect to see our name around campus more often next year.”
