By
Lisa M. Bidwell
Montana State University - Bozeman

Accountants, including accounting students, are often wrongly characterized as being conservative and having an "all work and no play" mentality. In order to counteract these stereotypes, our Beta Alpha Psi chapter has made a conscious effort to include at least ten to fifteen minutes of entertaining and interactive activities into our meetings.

For example, we started our first meeting of the semester by having everyone take one playing card from a deck. Once everyone had a card, we instructed them to mingle around the room and find fellow students who had cards that together would make a good poker hand. The group with the best poker hand won. This activity allowed new Beta Alpha Psi pledges to meet other pledges and members, promoted interaction between participants and officers, and was fun. Also, we held a meeting on an officer’s birthday. We surprised the individual with a birthday cake and played party games such as pin the pocket protector on the accounting student. In addition, we have played accounting and television commercial trivia. A few of the trivia questions we asked were "Who was the accountant in the movie Look Who’s Talking?", "Who was the accountant that played on the television series Cheers?", and "Who ate all the Lays Potato Chips?" The winners of the games received little prizes such as Montana State University pencils and bumper stickers, candy, and even silly putty.

We strongly feel that incorporating entertainment into our meetings has increased the participation and interest in Beta Alpha Psi. We currently have a record group of Beta Alpha Psi pledges and members who are concerned both with scholastic excellence of accountancy and with having fun. I feel we have proved that accountants and accounting students have an "all work and ALL play" mentality.