The University of Kentucky is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky, United States. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state's two land-grant universities. It is the institution with the highest enrollment in the state, with 32,710 students in the fall of 2022.
Georgetown College is a private Christian liberal arts college in Georgetown, Kentucky. Chartered in 1829, Georgetown was the first Baptist college west of the Appalachian Mountains.
Alpha Phi Omega (ΑΦΩ), commonly known as APO, but also A-Phi-O and A-Phi-Q, is a coeducational service fraternity. It is the largest collegiate fraternity in the United States, with chapters at over 350 campuses, an active membership of over 25,000 students, and over 500,000 alumni members. There are also 250 chapters in the Philippines, one in Australia and one in Canada. The 500,000th member was initiated in the Rho Pi chapter of Alpha Phi Omega at the University of California, San Diego.
Pi Kappa Phi (ΠΚΦ), commonly known as Pi Kapp(s), is an American Greek Letter secret and social fraternity. It was founded by Andrew Alexander Kroeg Jr., Lawrence Harry Mixson, and Simon Fogarty Jr. on December 10, 1904 at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. The fraternity has 187 active chapters (168 chartered chapters and 19 associate chapters), and more than 113,000 initiated members.
Kentucky Wesleyan College (KWC) is a private Methodist college in Owensboro, Kentucky. Fall 2018 enrollment was 830 students.
Delta Tau Delta (ΔΤΔ) is a United States–based international Greek letter college fraternity. Delta Tau Delta was founded at Bethany College, Bethany, Virginia, in 1858. The fraternity currently has around 130 collegiate chapters and colonies nationwide, with an estimated 10,000 undergraduate members and over 170,000-lifetime members. Delta Tau Delta is informally referred to as "DTD" or "Delts."
FarmHouse (FH) is a men's social fraternity founded at the University of Missouri on April 15, 1905. It became a national organization in 1921. Today FarmHouse has 34 active chapters in the United States and Canada.
Zeta Beta Tau (ΖΒΤ) is a Greek-letter social fraternity based in North America. It was founded on December 29, 1898. Originally a Zionist youth society, its purpose changed from the Zionism of the fraternity's early years when, in 1954, the fraternity became non-sectarian and open to non-Jewish members, changing its membership policy to include "All Men of Good Character" regardless of religious or ethnic background, while still being recognized as the first Jewish Fraternity.
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. (ΑΦΑ) is the oldest intercollegiate historically African American fraternity. It was initially a literary and social studies club organized in the 1905–1906 school year at Cornell University but later evolved into a fraternity with a founding date of December 4, 1906. It employs an icon from Ancient Egypt, the Great Sphinx of Giza, as its symbol. Its aims or pillars are "Manly Deeds, Scholarship, and Love For All Mankind," and its motto is "First of All, Servants of All, We Shall Transcend All." Its archives are preserved at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.
Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. (ΦΒΣ) is a historically African American fraternity. It was founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C., on January 9, 1914, by three young African-American male students with nine other Howard students as charter members. The fraternity's founders, A. Langston Taylor, Leonard F. Morse, and Charles I. Brown, wanted to organize a Greek letter fraternity that would exemplify the ideals of Brotherhood, Scholarship and Service while taking an inclusive perspective to serve the community as opposed to having an exclusive purpose. The fraternity exceeded the prevailing models of Black Greek-Letter fraternal organizations by being the first to establish alumni chapters, youth mentoring clubs, a federal credit union, chapters in Africa, and a collegiate chapter outside of the United States. It is the only fraternity to hold a constitutional bond with a historically African-American sorority, Zeta Phi Beta (ΖΦΒ), which was founded on January 16, 1920, at Howard University in Washington, D.C., through the efforts of members of Phi Beta Sigma.
Alpha Kappa Lambda (ΑΚΛ), commonly known as AKL or Alpha Kapp, is an American collegiate social fraternity founded at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1914. Today, it operates 25 active chapters and has approximately 28,000 living-initiated members.
Stepping or step-dancing is a form of percussive dance in African-American culture. The performer's entire body is used as an instrument to produce complex rhythms and sounds through a mixture of footsteps, spoken word, and hand claps. Though stepping may be performed by an individual, it is generally performed by groups of three or more, often in arrangements that resemble military formations.
The World's Ugliest Dog Contest is an annual contest held in Petaluma, California, as part of the Sonoma-Marin Fair, to decide which of the dogs entered in the contest is the ugliest. The contest, along with the rest of the fair, is typically scheduled for the fourth week of June. Along with the title of “The World’s Ugliest Dog” the winner’s owner receives a check for $1,000 and a trophy As of 2017, the prize has been increased to $1,600, a trophy and a free trip to New York City. There is significant media coverage, and as many as 20,000–30,000 people attend the contest during the fair each year. The fair now holds an all-day Dog Lovers' Festival preceding the evening contest.
The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest is a contest in which students of all ages build Rube Goldberg machines to complete an everyday task in the style of American cartoonist Rube Goldberg. The contest is held internationally and, after the Covid-19 pandemic, digitally. Live regional contests and local and regional winners are eligible and invited to compete in the national contest.
Smokey is the mascot of the University of Tennessee sports teams. These teams, named "The Volunteers" and nicknamed "the Vols", use both a live and a costumed version of Smokey.
Elwood was the 2007 winner of the World's Ugliest Dog Contest. In the prior year, 2006, he came in second in the contest. His owner was Karen Quigley, a resident of Sewell, New Jersey. He was a two-year-old Chinese Crested/chihuahua mixed breed. Elwood died on November 28, 2013. He was eight years old.
A fraternity or fraternal organization is an organization, society, club or fraternal order traditionally of men but also women associated together for various religious or secular aims. Fraternity in the Western concept developed in the Christian context, notably with the religious orders in the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. The concept was eventually further extended with medieval confraternities and guilds. In the early modern era, these were followed by fraternal orders such as Freemasons, the Rosicrucian Society of England, and Odd Fellows, along with gentlemen's clubs, student fraternities, and fraternal service organizations. Members are occasionally referred to as a brother or – usually in a religious context – frater or friar.
The Ugly Men's Voluntary Worker's Association of Western Australia Inc., generally shortened to the Ugly Men's Association or Ugly Men was a uniquely Western Australian fund-raising and charitable organisation established in 1917. Previously, a Mrs Alicia Pell had organised an "Uglie Man" competition to raise funds for the Red Cross in Kalgoorlie. The East Perth Football Club then built on the concept to raise funds for the Perth Children's Hospital and the War Patriotic Fund. The football club's work developed into a successful grassroots organisation with the first branch opening in the Perth suburb of Mount Lawley and focusing on supporting cases of hardship caused by war.
The Ugly Animal Preservation Society is a comedy night with a conservation twist founded in Great Britain by biologist, writer and TV presenter Simon Watt to raise the profile of animal species which lack traditional aesthetically appealing characteristics. In part it is based on the belief that conservation of charismatic megafauna like pandas attract disproportionate amounts of funding that could be better spent elsewhere. The organisation aims to protect less attractive animals such as the proboscis monkey which also face threats.
In North America, fraternities and sororities are social organizations at colleges and universities. They are sometimes collectively referred to as Greek life. Generally, membership in a fraternity or sorority is obtained as an undergraduate student but continues thereafter for life. Some accept graduate students as well. Individual fraternities and sororities vary in organization and purpose, but most share five common elements:
- Secrecy
- Single-sex membership
- Selection of new members based on a two-part vetting and probationary process known as rushing and pledging
- Ownership and occupancy of a residential property where undergraduate members live
- A set of complex identification symbols that may include Greek letters, armorial achievements, ciphers, badges, grips, hand signs, passwords, flowers, and colors
