Keon Smith discusses why he pledged Phi Beta Sigma

Keon Smith is a fourth-year broadcast journalism student at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), and he recently joined Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Incorporated in Spring 2024. On Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024, the FAMU Rattlers faced Texas Southern for their homecoming matchup sponsored by Chevrolet, a proud sponsor of the SWAC. As always, Greeks were on the yard. We caught up with the new Sigma to hear more about his pledging process and why he chose to go Sigma.

Why did you choose Sigma?

Well, the reason that I chose […] Sigma is because I was a transfer student. And when I came to FAMU, I was always thinking about what I wanted to do, like Greek wise, not going to lie. So I was kind of like doing research on the other orgs and stuff like that. And then out of all of them, much respect to all the other orgs, but out of all of them, this was the one that stuck out to me the most.

Was there anything that caught your attention about the Sigmas?

Yeah, it was honestly […] stepping. Because I’m also a member of the melodic stepping experience. Shout out to them. The first thing that got me into them for real was I had went to the 2022 step show and this was like right after I had first started stepping. I really like how they stepped. So that was the main thing that got me in the door of like, okay, I like these guys, let me do more research on them.

When you finally got to cross, how was that feeling?

Yes, my crossing […] was beautiful. It was beautiful experience to finally come out to the campus […] so amazing experience because this is something that I was thinking about from when I first got here. So to actually get to that point, it was, like, pretty surreal to me. So, like, I really enjoyed it.

What is your creed?

We strive off of brotherhood, scholarship and service. Those are our principles. So we always go off of the brotherhood. Always. No matter what. Being there for a brother. Scholarship, we must be a head honcho in the classroom. Education is important. And then service, giving back to the community, doing whatever we can for the community. That’s what we live by the most in our fraternity.