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FORMAL PROCESS TO ADD NEW GREEK CHAPTER HAS NOT BEEN STARTED

SEMO exploring option of adding sororityCONSIDER

ATHENAEUM SERIESDr. Jennifer Bengtson will present “Toward an Archaeology of Childhood in the Central Illinois River Valley.” The event will be at noon Feb. 6 in Kent Library.+

Five of the six social Panhellenic sororities are over their totals

ANDREA GILS COPY EDITOR

As Greek recruitment grows at Southeast Mis-souri State University every year, university officials contemplate the idea of making new sorority additions to Southeast’s Greek life options.

Christine Loy, interim assistant director of fraternities and sororities and Greek hall director, said she has talked about the possi-bility of additions to a number of sororities casually, but no process has been started yet.

Loy said she has received requests from transfer and new Southeast students who are interested in starting a new chapter.

Sophomore Samantha Vogel said she likes Delta Zeta chapter because its members volunteer for speech and hearing organiza-tions like the Starkey Hearing Foundation.

“When I rushed I dropped out halfway through and only got asked back to one of the six houses,” Vogel said. “That feeling was absolute rejection. I was aware a lot of

women were feeling this way, so I decided to do research and take action. If you don’t like something — change it.”

Loy said adding a new sorority on cam-pus is a structured process, which could take anywhere from a semester to a year.

“Our sororities have been growing pretty much every year for the last few years, and currently five out of the six are over total,” Loy said.

Southeast sororities have a limit of 80 members, but they are allowed to go over that total if they reach quota through recruitment.

Five out of the six sororities on campus are over total. The other, Sigma Sigma Sigma, has 58 members. The bigger a chapter is, the grea-ter the quota is during formal recruitment. Any chapter that has not met its membership quota can do informal recruitment during the spring semester.

“The fact that the sororities are so different in size and some of them are so much hig-her over total, means that if we were to add another sorority, it would kind of equalize things,” Loy said.

The process to add a new sorority would begin with forming an interest commit-tee that would go through statistics and recruitment numbers to analyze if Southeast can support another sorority on campus.

The committee would provide the Panhe-llenic Council with a recommendation about whether a new organization should be added or not.

Loy said they have not even started the process.

“A lot of people are worried that we are just gonna add one [sorority] and they are gonna come in a month or something, but it’s a long process, so it’s possible we won’t have it at all,” Loy said.

National headquarters of the sororities that are not at Southeast have already been contacted.

“Our National Panhellenic Conference has advisers for every district, and the adviser of our district has already talked to headquarters

to see what they would think about it and they said that nationally, they are all interes-ted,” Loy said.

Having more sororities on campus would mean potential new members would have more options to choose from.

“Some people are worried that it would take away members that they could get, but I don’t really think that’s much of an issue since there are so many women that go through recruitment, and not that many spaces for them,” Loy said.

Public relations major and the annual pro-gress report chair of Alpha Xi Delta, Elaine Quitos, said new sorority additions would be good for Greek life at Southeast since there are more fraternities than sororities on cam-pus. Quitos said she believes her sorority’s recruitment would not be affected.

“Having new chapters will allow for eve-ning out in numbers for each chapter,” Gamma Phi Beta member Chelsea Nesbit said in an email. “This could also go in a nega-tive direction by having more girls/guys being more interested in a new chapter that does not have any title already.”

Any sorority that opens a chapter at Southeast would have one or two consultants that work for the organization to recruit and get an interest group started at Southeast.

“Most sororities like to expand and have more chapters, it just means a bigger sis-terhood,” Loy said. “If they [other chapters] would see the benefits of SEMO, that we do have a strong student population, the Greek system is very strong here and it’s growing, it’s something that would be attractive to other sororities.”

A new chapter would mean the need for a new Greek house. The housing issue is one of Nesbit’s concerns.

“There is already not enough room for living on Greek hill,” Nesbit said. “Not having all the chapters on Greek hill already places some fraternities to be shunned from some events and being noticed. There just isn’t any room for the increase of new chapters.”

Loy said that if a new chapter opened, it would not have a building on Greek hill.

“If they are here at Towers, they would be close enough and probably just as benefi-cial. ... But it is possible that they do not have a house,” Loy said.

She said that there are some Greek organi-zations in other universities that do not have a house and if this were the case, they would just need to find a place to have their mee-tings and events.

“The most important thing to remember is that it’s not definite yet,” Loy said.

Sorority members representing all chapters at Southeast posing for a photo during 2012 fall recruitment. Submitted Photo

“A lot of people are worried that we are just gonna add one [sorority] and they are gonna come in a month or something, but it’s a long process, so it’s possible we won’t have it at all.” Christine Loy

Southeast may add new sororities to campus

Social sororities on campus Alpha Chi Omega

Alpha Delta Pi Alpha Xi Delta

Delta Delta Delta Gamma Phi Beta

Sigma Sigma Sigma