Kendall Wilson, president of the Delta Zetas, said the sororities decided to go through the extension process because it is an opportunity for the Greek system to grow and become more successful at WT.
“Alpha Sigma Alpha’s arrival to WT means Greek life will grow,” Wilson said. “This is an amazing opportunity for not only our Greek system, but for many women at West Texas.”
Maples explained that bringing a new Panhellenic sorority to Campus requires many steps.
“All of those sororities [Chi Omega, Delta Zeta and Zeta Tau Alpha] are governed by an organization called Panhellenic and Panhellenic has different processes that you would take in order to bring the chapter to campus,” he said.
After going through the process and speaking with different sororities, it was decided that Alpha Sigma Alpha will be the new sorority coming to WT´s campus.
“We spoke to a few sororities, but Alpha Sigma Alpha was very interested in putting in an application,” Maples said. “Last month, they had a representative from their national headquarters come here and basically gather data and learn about our campus and everything. Then towards the end of March, their national council voted unanimously to come here.”
Kati Matis, membership growth coordinator for Alpha Sigma Alpha, said the sorority is excited to start a chapter at WT.
“[WTAMU] is a growing campus in a great town of Canyon, and we wanted to be a part of it,” she said. “The fact that it is a midsize public institution in Texas, a state where we have grown rapidly in recent years with new chapters at University of Texas at El Paso, Texas A&M – Kingsville and Schreiner University.”
The arrival of Alpha Sigma Alpha will be beneficial for the other sororities as well.
“Typically what happens is that normally organizations are able to reach in a specific pocket of groups and they have a hard time branching out of that,” he said. “What bringing a new chapter does is it will help reach out a little bit further.”
He explained that if everything goes well, the addition of Alpha Sigma Alpha will make every sorority grow.
“If the expansion process goes well, statistically it should make all of the chapters grow,” Maples said. “For example, in Fall of 98 when we brought Omega Delta Phi and added them into our fraternities, our average chapter size within a year later have grown by about 12 people over the previous years, and that was across all chapters.”
Matis said that Alpha Sigma Alpha will be marketing throughout the summer and fall. They will participate in the open house event on Sept. 6 during formal recruitment, however because of Panhellenic rules, they will hold their own recruitment independently from the other sororities the week of Sept. 12
“We will be recruiting at least 45 women to be the founding members of our chapter at WT,” she said.
Wilson said that other sororities like hers are happy to have a new sorority in campus.
“This process is not one many people get to be a part of, and we are all very excited to support Alpha Sigma Alpha here at WT,” she said.
