This spring, Northeastern will be home to a new sorority on campus, Kappa Kappa Gamma. KKG will be the seventh Panhellenic sorority on campus, after Delta Gamma joined Northeastern in 2007.
Sarah Decker, the assistant director of Student Leadership For Fraternity and Sorority Life at Northeastern, said that a new sorority is being colonized because more students want to be a part of Greek life. Currently, almost 10 percent of Northeastern’s population is involved in fraternity and sorority life, according to Ashlyn Ruggiero, vice president of Recruitment for the Panhellenic Council at Northeastern.
“Last year at this time, there were 995 women in sororities at Northeastern,” said Decker. “Now, there are 1,152. That’s an increase from an average of 75 women per chapter to 94. It becomes difficult to hold a meeting when you have 94 women trying to get together.”
The Panhellenic Council decided to invite a new sorority to campus last year, Decker said. Council members contacted the National Panhellenic Council (NPC) and invited applications from the 20 NPC chapters that were not already on campus.
Northeastern received eight applications and invited two sororities, KKG and Alpha Delta Pi, to come tour the school and meet the council. Each of the six sororities got one vote.
Dani Cohen, President of the Panhellenic Council and a member of Delta Zeta, said that each sorority was graded on a rubric and such factors as the national support of KKG, their philanthropic efforts, and their new member education tipped the balance. It will begin recruitment in January and will be accepting 94 women into the founding class of the chapter at Northeastern.
Cohen offered a few reasons for the increased popularity of Greek organizations.
“We will have a different type of woman,” she said. “A woman who never thought she’d be in a sorority can be involved in starting something new on campus.”
When asked why there has been a sudden boom in interest in Greek life at Northeastern, Cohen offered a couple of reasons.
“I think that one thing is the freshman classes are getting larger,” she said. “But I also think that people are seeing the good work that we do on campus. And it’s an easy way to meet people, not just in your own sorority but in other organizations. This will also create new leadership opportunities on campus.”
Ruggiero said KKG is looking for strong campus leaders, “both ones that have already established themselves at Northeastern, but also up and coming leaders. It is a completely different experience being a founding sister of a sorority, and hopefully it will encourage women who have never thought about joining a fraternal organization before.”
Agi Letkiewicz, a senior and member of Kappa Delta who was on the founding council of the organization, said she is happy more women will have the same opportunities she did to found an organization. She said she joined KD for “the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a student group.”
“I knew that this would give me the chance to really affect what the sorority was going to contribute to campus and what we as a chapter would stand for,” she said. “I think that’s an amazing legacy to leave behind ... In the end, being on the first council for KD was the most challenging and rewarding thing that I have done in student life. It helped me learn how to figure things out on my own, inspire and lead a group of people, and become more confident in my abilities and my decisions.”
Kappa Kappa Gamma was founded in 1870 and has more than 230,000 members in 136 schools, including three in Massachusetts. Every sorority, has a specific philanthropic focus, and KKG’s is that reading is fundamental.
Cohen said she sees KKG working with the Boston Public School system to promote reading amongst youth. Students interested in learning more about Kappa Kappa Gamma, they can contact Sarah Draper at s.draper@neu.edu or Dani Cohen at cohen.danie@husky.neu.edu.
New sorority chapter to join Greek life
Published: Thursday, November 5, 2009
Updated: Thursday, November 5, 2009
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