By Andrew Watson
The BYU chapter of the Intercollegiate Knights serves students and the community while on a crusade to keep campus tradition alive.
“Service, sacrifice and loyalty is our motto,” said “The Honorable Duke” Vonn Christensen, the Knight”s president and a math major from Porterville, Calif.
With 25 members, the Intercollegiate Knights of BYU are constantly involved with service projects on campus and in the community. They have sponsored book drives, assembled Christmas packages for military service men and women overseas, visited disability homes during holidays, made and distributed quilts for the poor and worked with LDS Humanitarian Aid Services to assemble hygiene kits for schools in poor parts of the world.
“I”m somewhat biased, but I think the Intercollegiate Knights is one of the best organizations at BYU,” said “Horrible Executioner” Peter Brown, the parliamentarian and traditions officer and a physics and astronomy major from Friendswood, Texas. “It has been a great way to stay involved and serve my alma mater.”
Among the activities the club organizes, the service-searching students plan a yearly “Easter Extravaganza” egg hunt for the children of students and faculty. Christensen says that about 300 people attend each year. This year”s hunt is scheduled to take place April 12.
The knights are also in charge of upholding BYU traditions many students take for granted.
“Not only are we involved in many service projects, but we have a very rich heritage of upholding BYU traditions,” Brown said. “We are in charge of lighting the Y for homecoming and graduation as well as ringing the victory bell after home football and basketball victories.”
Developing new traditions is another part of doing your duty as an Intercollegiate Knight. Christensen wants to begin a tradition of campus-wide talent shows. He says the knights want to expand the idea of the yearly ward talent shows to a higher level and organize a huge talent show every year involving the best and brightest – and weirdest – students BYU has to offer.
By organizing service activities and establishing and maintaining other traditions, the Intercollegiate Knights develop valuable skills that will apply to future careers and individual service opportunities.
“We really like to focus on our members developing their own leadership skills,” said Christensen. “When they leave the Y, they will be familiar with how to organize service activities of their own.”
Intercollegiate Knights began as a fraternity in Washington state in 1919, but BYU did not have a chapter until 1941. Today, BYU and the Albertson College of Idaho in Caldwell, Idaho, are the only two schools in the nation with chapters of the Intercollegiate Knights.
The national convention of the Intercollegiate Knights will be conducted here at BYU later this month.
The BYU Knights meet at 7:30 p.m. every Tuesday in 180 TNRB.
