By: Katie Betz, betzka@mnstate.edu

On Friday night, Spencer Van Beck and Autumn Schaeffer were coronated Dragon Frost King and Queen of 2019. The coronation was held at half time for the women’s basketball game.

Schaeffer is a second-year student majoring in paralegal at MSUM. She is also pursuing a certificate for American Sign Language at MState. Van Beck is a freshman from Freeport, Minnesota majoring in elementary inclusive education with a minor in psychology and special education. Their reaction to being coronated is one of surprise.

“I was even surprised to figure out that I was nominated, and then even more surprised to figure out that I made court. It’s just been a fun week, meeting all the other candidates and then to end it off with this, was a really cool experience and it means a lot,” Van Beck said.

“It’s really honoring knowing that people voted for me and think that I’m a good enough leader and have good qualities and traits that they see me in this type of position. I really take that to heart,” Schaeffer said.

She is currently involved in leading a wide variety of organizations, from president of club volleyball at MSUM to her involvement in the leadership of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority.

The members of Frost Court have attended different Dragon Frost events over the past week. Van Beck said that he enjoyed serving and interacting with the students at events like the mac-and-cheese bar and the French toast feed. For Schaeffer, serving at the different events gave her the opportunity to see more faces of MSUM that she hadn’t met before.

Van Beck and Schaeffer explained how they each ended up at MSUM. For Van Beck, MSUM was the first college he toured. He had heard that it had a good school for the major he wanted.

“And then when I came here, I loved it. It felt like home. MSUM has a strong sense of community and I just really fell in love with the school and being a dragon,” he said.

Schaeffer is from West Fargo, North Dakota and started touring campuses in the area because her mom encouraged her to look for a school in the area.

“It’s pretty in the fall, so I really loved it right away. I was a social work major at first and I knew this was a good school for social work so that’s also part of the reason I decided to come here,” Schaeffer said.

Schaeffer hopes to move onto law or graduate school after completing her degree at MSUM. Van Beck’s future plans include teaching overseas, maybe in Africa, and eventually coming back to the Fargo-Moorhead area to teach.

Schaeffer has a few people she would like to thank for this position.

“I’m pretty positive that Kappa Sigma nominated me, so I’d really like to give a huge thanks to them for getting the ball rolling. I’d also like to thank all of my Gamma Phi Beta sisters and my big, Abigail (Holmquist) and my twin, Katie (Condit),” Schaeffer said.

Congratulations to the Dragon Frost King and Queen of 2019.