Why I Pledged
When I started college at Central Michigan University in 1984, I knew nothing about Black Greek organizations. I was assigned a minority mentor Jeffrey Malloy, who was a member of Phi Beta Sigma. He did an excellent job of mentoring me as a young African-American male at a school with only 300 Blacks out of 16,000 students. At no time did he ask me to pledge; he led by example. The Sigmas where the most active in the community and the biggest BGLO. I would hang around him and was always impressed with his friends, who happen to be Sigmas. The chapter had brothers in the business, engineering, education, and math departments. The president of the Black Student Organization, Panhell, and Campus Choir were Sigmas. The star athletes on the football, basketball, and track teams were Sigmas. The campus leaders were Sigmas men. The “best” steppers were Sigmas. When I would go to campus events the entire chapter, with their little sisters and Zetas, would enter these events together as a group in suits, which was impressive. There were 17 brothers on the yard, 30+ sweethearts and loves, and 10 Zetas, and Lambda Gamma chapter was only 5-years old. (See Lambda Gamma Chapter – 29 years and Counting)
Categories: brotherhood Tags:
15
the first time i ever heard of phi beta sigma was my freshman year. i was working a telemarketing job on campus hitting up alumni for donations when a coworker, who i later figured out was an AKA, said to me “i could see you in a black frat.” later that year, i went to my first step show. i asked my friends “who are we rooting for?” and they said “the sigmas. they’re the best ones.”
a few months later i run into some old high school classmates. somehow the subject of pledging comes up. i tell them the story about the AKA and we get a good chuckle out of it. dewight johnson tells me he was thinking of pledging sigma b/c either his dad or grandfather was frat.
over the next 4 years, i got to know the sigmas on campus pretty well. being on a campus that was then 64.5% caucasian, every other ethnic group couldn’t help but bond together. it wasn’t until 1992 that i took a real close look at sigma when a good friend of mine, bro. james johnson-hill, pledged that year.
i found out later i almost didn’t even make it on line. having existing relationships with most of the chapter biased many one way or another and i had my doubters. some of it my own doing – like my sands, marlon, and i showing up at the practice field 50 yard line instead of the “actual” 50 yard line. geniuses!
here i am 15 years later and doing more for Sigma than ever. pledging as a senior trying to wrap up a 5-year engineering program didn’t leave me a lot of time for step shows and party hopping. then i had a blue phi rebirth in 2005. trust me i had real reasons to say the hell with sigma, but i was humbled and amazed at the true brotherhood i was blessed with during my lowest moments in sigma. to have brothers i barely know – many of whom i never met much less spoken to. most of whom i only exchanged emails with. – stand up for me, pick me up and dust me off, then encourage me to put my best foot forward. stress the positive. it reminded me why i love this frat.
so today on my 15th anniversary in our wondrous band, i want to say BLUE PHI to you. because in your own way, you’ve helped bring bluephi.net to what it is today.
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bluephi.net turns 3
it’s hard to believe that i’ve been running this site in its current form for 3 years now. i just now looked back at the first post and realized that i’d written it 3 years ago yesterday. it reminded me of one of the reasons why i started blogging – to evangelize technology solutions to other Sigma webmasters and hope to create various web goodies you can use on your sites.
the first thing i did when i was asked to be a supporting officer was to establish my identity online. i went out and found pockets of active Sigma communities and i started participating, posting, introducing myself and so on getting my name out to get an idea of who’s who in Sigma online. it was then that i realized that the national site was missing out on a huge opportunity in not hosting its own social network and driving all that activity to pbs1914.org.
Categories: technology Tags:
