For the fourth consecutive year, Hillsdale College’s Alpha Tau Omega fraternity earned a True Merit Bowl.
In August, the Hillsdale Beta Kappa chapter received recognition by the national fraternity for its outstanding scholastic, philanthropic, and recruitment efforts.
“It is always the overarching goal of our chapter to be True Merit,” chapter President senior Matt Katz said. “For me, it shows that we were able to achieve our goals and become better men than we were the year before.”
Each chapter of the ATO fraternity from around the nation gathers every year in August for a national congress. There, the national fraternity presents True Merit swards to those chapters it deems worthy of recognition.
The national fraternity doesn’t limit the amount of True Merit awards that it gives out every year, but only 38 of the 154 active chapters earned the honor this year.
This year’s award is also Beta Kappa’s fourth time receiving the prize, since the award was created in 1969. Chapter Vice President junior John Duffy said he believes this is a testament to the growth the chapter has seen in the last half decade.
“We feel like we have reached the point where we have raised the bar every year,” he said. “Our standard of recruitment is always going up. I’d say that in the 128 years that we have been a chapter, having won our only four True Merit Bowls the last four years means that Hillsdale College Beta Kappa chapter has never been stronger than it is right now.”
Duffy added that recent alumni deserve a large amount of recognition, because of the groundwork that they laid for the current chapter members.
For those alumni, however, seeing the chapter thriving is a reward all its own, they said.
“It’s a great feeling seeing guys that you helped bring into the fraternity dedicating themselves to it, appreciating their time in it, and being recognized for their efforts,” ATO alumnus Everett Ives ’16 said. “It’s only really as an alum that you can appreciate how important it was to you in your time at school, and it’s great to know that the fraternity is in capable hands.”
Although things look strong for the chapter now, the men of ATO said they are striving to improve even more in the coming years.
“Our biggest goal is to raise the house GPA, ” Duffy said. “We would really like to see ourselves exceed the all-men’s average, so that we can really be a competitive candidate for Top Chapter.”