By EMILY BENNIGSDORF
Through the years, the Agriculture Department on campus has expanded and welcomed more clubs and activities to students — including its own professional agriculture sorority.
Sigma Alpha is a sorority for women wanting to further their development in the agriculture industry. The sorority is not limited to only agriculture majors but has a wide variety of majors ranging from tourism and hospitality, biology, elementary education, accounting and more. The women who are in the sorority are striving to be the best in their industry and keep their passion for agriculture alive.
Some of the active members grew up in small towns with animals and land. There is also another side to the sorority that hasn’t had the opportunity to grow up around agriculture but somehow found that it is a part of them.
For most people, coming to college is exciting, nerve-racking, as well as bitter-sweet. Sigma Alpha provides a sense of family for a lot of the members.
The active members of Sigma Alpha have the goal to become better women while developing goals through college. The members strive for success in scholarship, leadership and service. The sorority is based off of the book of Ruth in the Bible to show how hard work and dedication pays off.
Fort Hays State University is home to the Beta Mu chapter, and the number of members has been growing during the past few years. The sorority is now up to 26 active sisters, and it has been growing every year. The sorority does not have a house, but most of the members live in the same houses.
The sorority has started to create traditions with the university, such as their annual Kiss the Pig fundraiser that lines up with the Fort Hays Rodeo for the last five years. Each club participates in the event by having their club president and one of their advisers participate. The clubs have piggy banks set out a few weeks before the rodeo. Whichever club ends up with the most money, the adviser and president have to kiss a piglet at the rodeo. The actives also host other fundraisers such as burrito sales, bake sales and the Eat Beef apparel.
The Beta Mu chapter has started helping throughout the year with different events such as the agriculture department back-to-school picnic, serving at the agriculture appreciation dinner for local farmers, helping take first-graders to tour the farm, helping at the beef dinner and more.
The chapter was able to send five girls to Oklahoma City, Okla., on Feb. 1 and 2 this year to a leadership seminar. The importance of sending members to the seminar is to meet other sisters from different schools and learn how each chapter works, as well as bring new ideas back to the home chapter. The active members are excited to grow and they have a lot of ideas.
This spring, the chapter will have seven active sisters graduate. The friendships made through the sisterhood experience are a true bond, members say.
Most of the women currently in Sigma Alpha never believed they would join a sorority. Now they don’t know what they would do without it.
