By Emily Goldberg
History was made this past weekend at Florida Southern College as the Greek community welcomed another sorority onto campus, Delta Delta Delta.
The process for adding another sorority onto campus started back in March. A letter was sent out to the national headquarters of all 26 sororities informing them that our campus wanted to extend its community. Tri Delta, Delta Zeta and Delta Phi Epsilon expressed interest. The Panhellenic Council, made up of ten individuals represented from each sorority at FSC sat down and interviewed the three sororities and ranked them on various categories such as alumni relations, philanthropy, number of chapters nationwide in order to determine whether or not they would be a good fit on FSC’s campus. Tri Delta was then selected.
Upon their selection, members at the Tri Delta national headquarters in Dallas, TX took care of organizing everything from assigning visiting consultants to planning informational events.
Starting in August, Tri Delta sent a live-in consultant, Christina Young, to be in charge of the extension process at Florida Southern. She implemented tabling events by the Buckstop and informational sessions about the organization and their own original recruitment process. Young leaned heavily on the support of the sororities and fraternities on campus to help potential new members become interested in Tri Delta. For her tabling events, she asked that current active members from both sororities and fraternities help hand out Tri Delta buttons and pamphlets, encouraging non-affiliated women to sign up for recruitment.
“The best part about helping out was seeing how supported the potential new members were from everyone in the Greek community. It was a great experience and I’m glad I could do my part to welcome new girls to the Greek community,” fraternity member Austin Crotteau said.
Tri Delta’s recruitment process was than previous recruitments. Recruitment started on Monday, Oct. 24 and ended with Bid Day on Saturday, Oct. 29. Those who signed up for their recruitment were scheduled an interview with a woman from their national headquarters. As the week progressed, potential new members got invited back for more interviews. Friday night was where girls found out if they received a bid from the organization to be a founding member of Tri Delta at Florida Southern.
A tradition on Florida Southern’s campus is for girls on Bid Day to “run down the hill” to their new homes in the Greek quad. Each sorority is grouped together and patiently waits to welcome home their new sisters. Since Tri Delta is new to campus and their bid day was much later, they didn’t get to run to existing sisters in the quad but instead, they ran home to the Panhellenic community. Each sorority had members holding up signs and cheering to welcome home the new girls of Tri Delta. Young didn’t want her new sisters to feel left out by not getting to run home so she was incredibly thankful that the Greek community stepped in and welcomed them with open arms.
“It was a great feeling seeing all the new members run home. Even though they didn’t have their own sisters to run to, our Panhellenic community came out to support and I know that it meant a lot to them to be able to run home to someone,” Panhellenic Treasurer, Payton Duwe said.
After officially being welcomed as a founding member of Tri Delta, the new and excited sisters made their way over to Mr. George’s Green where carnival games were set up to start the Bid Day festivities. Members of the Panhellenic Council were there to help facilitate the celebration so everything ran smoothly.
“I feel like this experience really paid off because this is the type of interaction that we as a Panhellenic Council work so hard for and I felt like all of our hard work finally paid off and it just shows how different and supportive our community is,” Duwe said.
The new members had their first meeting as a complete chapter this past Sunday where they started their new member process to become official, initiated sisters of Tri Delta.
Panhellenic Council looks forward to working with the 81 new member of the Epsilon Sigma chapter of Tri Delta and watching them make and impact on the community.
