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News on bents, taxes, chapter pages1. You can now find if you are required to file the 990-e postcard tax form by going to your chapter page at the website, www.pitausigma.org, and clicking on the Chapters tab and then your chapter link. This is based on last year's list I received from IRS and may not be up-to-date. If you have received a letter from IRS indicating that your tax exempt status has been revoked for failing to file your 990-e postcard tax form, please read instructions on how to be reinstated in the Chapter Guide tab of our website. If you do need to file, please read the instructions found under the Chapter Business tab and then clicking Chapter Guide and then IRS Tax Status. There is information about the advantages of being tax exempt and how you can become one if you are not already. Please submit your tax form in September following the instructions at the website. Please forward your confirmation email you receive from IRS after successfully submitting your tax form. 2. In Chicago's convention this past February, it was decided that the national office, starting in the fall of 2011, provide a bent, free of charge, to each candidate whose name is submitted for initiation to the national office. To reflect this change, there are new excel forms for both registration and paraphernalia (stoles-cords-plaques) order. Please take your time when you fill these forms by filling your complete chapter name and emailing me the excel forms. Chapters are responsible for shipping charges of the bents. The important thing is to provide the bents to the initiates ahead of time in order for them to polish, mount on plaques, and bring to initiation. If you still need to purchase some bents ahead of time, to have them in hand for the fall initiation, please send me an email requesting that. The bents are still at $7 each. You will then get your free bents when you submit your registration that you can use for spring initiation and replenish them each time. The national office is also selling the plaques that the bents are mounted on, for $1 each, and you can order them or have the initiates make them themselves. Dimensions for the plaques are provided in the Chapter Business tab, Keys and Stoles page. When you fill the registration excel form please indicate the number of bents that you want the national office to send you, as some chapters may already have bents and the cost of the each bent now exceeds $5. Several schools have adopted the tradition of staining the plaque on the side that the bent is mounted, while printing the PTS chapter name and their own on the back side, and requesting initiates to collect signatures of PTS faculty, officers and members before initiation. Several schools also provide prizes for the best looking bent/plaque after the initiation ceremony. 3. This past summer, there have been major updates to the website. · All recorded initiations in the archives of the national office have been uploaded for all chapters and can be found in each chapter's page. These are arranged in decades for easier access. You now have a record of all members that have been initiated since the inception of each chapter, that are in the archives of the national office. · Useful information for the operation of chapters has been updated and is listed in the Chapter Business tab – Chapter Guide as links to documents pertaining to * Pi Tau Sigma Chapter Manual * Pi Tau Sigma Constitution and Bylaws * Pi Tau Sigma Rituals * IRS Tax Status · Your tax exempt status is indicated at your chapter page. If your chapter is tax exempt, your EIN number is given under the Chapter Info tab in your chapter page. Please note that the EIN numbers are in public domain. · An updated version of The History of Pi Tau Sigma can now be found at the home page of our website. · Information about the establishment of each chapter along with a campus picture that could be found in the 1994 The Story of Pi Tau Sigma booklet were uploaded and are featured in each chapter's page. There are several schools that were established before 1992 that although a short paragraph on their chapter creation exist a picture is missing. Of course, for any chapter established from 1993 and on there is no such information. I urge each chapter to check their chapter page, and if the history, picture or both are missing, to do some research (maybe a chapter project?) and provide me with such information to upload to their chapter page. Please visit other schools' pages to get a taste of what is mentioned, and attempt to contact the first initiates and chapter advisor at the time to investigate and put together some interesting facts that give due credit to people responsible in establishing your chapter. If you could also find some pictures of your campus near the year of your chapter's creation it would be great but otherwise provide a fitting picture of your campus. |