New Sorority extenstion

breathesgelatin
Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:04:23 +0000

Minor clarification: it was technically Alpha Phi that was selected in spring 2005 for expansion. They later decided they didn’t want to come to campus without a house, so the baton was passed to AXO, who at first claimed they would come without a house. Obviously, they never did. Rather than go to the third choice (three groups presented in 2005 - the third was actually ADPi), they waited until a housing agreement had been established with the university so the 6th house would be guaranteed.

I wouldn’t say that Alpha Phi and AXO wimped out. Rather, I would say that the Panhellenic leadership at W&L - NOT students, but the Panhellenic advisor at that time - somewhat misled the groups about the house construction. She told them they would get a house soon, even though at that point no effort had been made to secure such an agreement with the university. It was later proposed by Panhellenic as part of the strategic plan and approved.

Just wanted to clarify on this account.

I would be extremely interested to hear from current students about ADPi’s PR efforts on campus this fall.

A final note on sororities, specifically on Tri-Delt, is that many many people mistakenly/ignorantly gossiped that Tri-Delt had been “promised” the sixth spot at W&L throughout my time at W&L (indeed, up until the time of the ill-fated extension presentations my senior year). For whatever reason, when they drew up the plans for the houses in the late 90s, they also designed the sixth house - and labeled it “Delta Delta Delta.” Interesting stuff. I know there were pictures of the plans in my sorority’s chapter histories from that time period, and I assume it would be in the other sororities’ records as well. It’s possible that there was an agreement made with Tri-Delt at the time that KD was selected for expansion that Tri-Delt would follow in two or three years given the overall success of KD’s colonization and the sorority system as a whole (which might also explain the rumors about Tri-Delt from my era at W&L). We’ve seen this happen at several universities recently - NC State and Alabama both come to mind. The idea is that if reduction in chapter size is really needed, it’s good to have two groups come on pretty close to one another, because that way no one is “the new kid on the block.” But I have no idea about that really - just my speculation. It would pan out, though, because KD’s colonization greatly changed the W&L sorority system in several ways, and then there was the focus on planning and building the houses, and expansion just never happened or wasn’t seen to be needed until the mid-2000s again. I’d be interested to hear what other groups presented during the extension period when KD was selected.

I’d really like to write a history of the W&L sorority system some day.

On another note, are we entirely sure that every fraternity will always come back in 4-5 years? When I was a freshman, there was still talk of Delta Tau Delta possibly coming back, and there was even a website run by alums at that time promising recolonization. Obviously that never happened. We have seen it happen now with two fraternities (SigEp and Beta) that they have recolonized in 4-5 years. I am pretty sure it will happen with Kappa Sig too. But are we so sure this would be the case for EVERY group? I’m not so sure. I agree with Dima that certain groups are “protected” by their status even from being kicked off. But I’m not so sure that the prospect of recolonization wouldn’t be difficult for some groups, were they to be kicked off.

I suppose you could attribute the fall of DTD to the fact that the increasing number of women at the school decreased the demand for fraternities throughout the 90s, and the size of pledge classes shrunk. I think it was coeducation that decisively killed ZBT in the 80s, as well - that and the fact that Jewish enrollment at that time was declining and Jews could then get into many other fraternities.

On another interesting note, in 1991 a national sorority tried to expand at W&L and failed. They conducted recruitment after formal recruitment (rather than during) and had poor results. Thus, in 1992, Pi Beta Phi colonized during formal recruitment.

That NPC is still listed on W&L’s alumni database as a Greek affiliation option, even though presumably no W&L women were ever initiated into that group.