Kansas State University

Each year toward the end of the spring semester, the members of Smurthwaite hold a banquet to celebrate our accomplishments throughout the year. Awards are given for having the most Smurthwaite spirit, perfect desk duty attendance, perfect house meting attendance, a GPA over 3.5, and other academic and house-related accomplishments.

This year, the event was combined with our 60th anniversary celebration, which was originally planned for the spring of 2020. To celebrate the history of our house, our Alumnae Chair, Codie Boyd, reached out to the house’s first members from 1960. They responded with statements about what they remembered most about living in the house.

For the house’s first members, their Smurthwaite experience was especially memorable because while waiting for the house to be built, they lived in West Stadium. They have all kinds of stories from that experience, including planting geraniums in the urinals of the unused men’s restrooms.

As we move quickly toward finals week, this event was a great way to close out a long and tiring, yet rewarding, semester. Thank you to Codie for organizing this event and to our kitchen manager, Evie, for preparing a great meal!

Every spring semester, Smurthwaite’s new members get officially initiated into the house. The weekend is packed with fun traditions and bonding activities. The first tradition of the weekend is having an alumna read a bedtime story to the new members. Then, the new members get to have a sleepover in the living room.

Of course, all of these events are a surprise for the new members. What we also didn’t know was that they were going to wake us up at 7 in the morning to take us to Top of the World. On the Saturday morning of initiation, it is tradition to bring the new members there to read wills and prophecies. Each new member gets to hear what the old members have predicted for her future and just get a little bit of encouragement.

The new members may not have been too excited to get up at 7 in the morning, but we ended up enjoying the sunrise ceremony.

After this, we came home and played a real-life version of Among Us and had a lip sync battle. Saturday was a great day of bonding events for the whole house.

For the last event of the weekend on Sunday night, we had our formal dinner and initiation ceremony. Each new member received a Smurthwaite necklace and a white carnation and officially became a member of the house.

Because last year was cut short, last year’s new member class never got to have an initiation ceremony. To make up for last year, the third- and fourth-year members presented last year’s new members with their necklaces and carnations after the new members had all been initiated.

This year’s initiation was really fun and a great way to celebrate the new members of the house. Big thank you to Hally for planning the weekend’s activities!

The spring semester has begun and the Smurthwaite girls are finally back together under one roof! As per Smurthwaite tradition, we kicked off the semester with Spring Retreat.

This semester’s theme was Candyland, so executive board members decorated the house according to the theme before members arrived.

Once all the members had moved in, we started retreat with a game. All of the members sat in a circle and competed to unwrap a giant ball of plastic wrap with pieces of candy inside.

Of all the bonding activities we did during retreat week, a fan favorite was the marshmallow game. The group had to work together to get each member across the “hot chocolate” on just five paper “marshmallows.” The catch was that some members couldn’t walk, some couldn’t talk, and some couldn’t hear. We tried all kinds of methods, including having everyone coordinate their steps to walk across, carrying people on our backs, and having one person at a time walk across on two marshmallows. It was challenging, but in the end we were successful and had fun working as a team.

As our final event of the weekend, we went ice skating. This was the perfect way to end a great retreat week! The spring 2021 semester is off to a great start, and there is lots of fun to come for Smurthwaite this semester!

One of Smurthwaite’s ongoing traditions is spams and fuzzies. If someone does something nice for you, you write a “warm fuzzy” and if someone says something funny, you write a “spam.” All of these get read aloud to the whole house at the bi-weekly house meeting.

For this week’s post, I decided to compile a list of my top ten favorites.

10) Spam to Kayla for quoting Romeo & Juliet like this: “Romeo, Romeo, let down your hair.”

9) Spam to Alley for saying, “Crossing the street not at the crosswalk is the edgiest life gets for me.”

8) Spam to Codie for saying, “I really feel I connect with this deer on a personal level.” (In reference to the screaming deer vine.)

7) Spam to Lily for saying, “The real question is, did you feel for Romeo and Juliet like you feel for Bob Ross.”

6) Warm fuzzy to Evan for helping me figure out how to include both of my sisters in my wedding, even though I don’t even have a boyfriend.

5) Spam to Megan for singing something that goes a little like this: “I don’t want to work, I just want to sit in my bed and eat chips.”

4) *conversation between Rhi and Kaeden while listening to music in the car*

Kaeden: “Is this Owl City?”

Rhi: “No, this is Manhattan.”

3) The biggest fuzzy to Cami for killing the brown recluse the size of a gorilla while I was trying to shower.

2) Spam to Brianna for saying, “What if we just print more money? I know there’s inflation, but why can’t we just… not let it inflate, stop it from inflating.”

And last but certainly not least, my personal favorite:

1) Spam to Rhi for saying, “He looks like a stretched out Sour Patch Kid.”