 "Photo: Sam Grenadier")
Eighty-five members were inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honors society Wednesday, becoming Texas Tech's second group of inductees since the chapter was granted to the university in 2006.
Allison Blakely, the national president of Phi Beta Kappa and keynote speaker during the ceremony, said he enjoyed his time at Tech, especially because he has never been to West Texas.
"It's always an honor to be invited, to be considered interesting enough, to be the keynote speaker," Blakely said.
He was invited to come to the induction ceremony at Tech last year, but a scheduling conflict prevented him from coming, and he said it was even more of an honor that this chapter invited him again.
Because Tech is a big university in which liberal arts are only a small portion of the studies offered, Blakely said it is important that the Tech chapter members distinguish themselves as the premiere liberal arts students at the university.
"One thing we also want to do, from the perspective of the national society," Blakely said, "is to make sure that the students at a very large institution like this are aware of what Phi Beta Kappa is early in their academic career so that if they are among the high achievers and are invited, they actually will join."
He said even though the Tech chapter is new, it has "hit the ground running," and is doing the things that are pleasing to the national society. In light of the fact that it has done so well, Blakely said he was excited to come here because he wanted to encourage the chapter in any way he can.
During Blakely's keynote speech, titled "America Future," he made references to the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, and said people now are looking at the future of the United States and wondering if they can do anything to change it.
Blakely, who has been a member of the society since he was a senior in 1962, is a professor of European and Comparative History at Boston University and is a visiting scholar at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University.
John C. Baldwin, president of the Tech Health Sciences Center and member of Phi Beta Kappa, and Tech Chancellor Kent Hance spoke briefly during the ceremony.
John Kidwell, a junior biology major from Lubbock and a new member in the Phi Beta Kappa society, said he became interested in the society when his brother was inducted with the first group of members at Tech.
"I had a lot of people come up and tell me to congratulate him for them," Kidwell said. "I knew it was something that took hard work to get into, and I wanted to see if I had what it took."
Now he has reached his goal of becoming a member of the society, he said nothing will change, and he will continue to work as hard as he did before he was inducted.
David Kidwell, John Kidwelll's brother who was inducted into the society last year, said he was glad Blakely told the new members that good things could be done even if they were not recognized on a large-scale.
"I'm glad that the students who have worked so hard for the past three or four years are getting some recognition for that, some recognition at the national level," David Kidwell said.
The Phi Beta Kappa society is the oldest undergraduate honors society, founded during the American Revolution in 1776 at the College of William and Mary. It advocates excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, according to the organization's Web site, www.pbk.org.
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