While I had always known about sororities and fraternities it never crossed my mind to join one until I attended college. I attend a small, predominately White Catholic college and greek life is not a recognized part of our student activities. There are, however, 4-5 Latin fraternities and sororities on our campus. This was the first time that I saw Greek Life up close and personal. One of the reasons that I then wanted to join a sorority is due to the fact of the love that I saw among members of the sororities, especially Lambda Theta Alpha. The women is that chapter always looked out for each other and that sense of belonging was something that I valued but had yet to find among the female "friends" that I had encountered in the past.
However, I did not want to join Lambda Theta Alpha for two main reasons. One, is the fact that while I knew some of the members I was not very close to them (I live off campus). Second is the fact that I did not want to join a Latin sorority, no offense but I would rather belong to an AA sorority.
Therefore, during my junior year, I started to search for African American sororities and came across the four: AKA, DST, ZPB, and SGR. I decided that I would do online research through their official websites to see if any of them would appeal to me. Two stuck out in my mind, one being Delta Sigma Theta. Of course, this is when I found out that I could not pledge at the other college in our area.
So I thought, why not try to have a chapter started at my school? Unfortunately, this had already been attempted by a member of DST who works at my school. Since I knew that it would be impossible for this to occur, I set my sights on pursuing alumnae membership.
One of the main reasons why I ultimately decided to pursue membership with DST is due to educational point of the five-point thrust. I agreed with the sorority's idea of the Delta Academy to help young teenage women with, among other things, self-esteem and academics. In my opinion, if we start with the youth hopefully they will be educated enough to follow through with the remaining thrusts such as political awareness and economic development.
Currently I am still pursuing my goal but I have been doing as much research as I can. This includes reading
In Search of Sisterhood and also getting to know the members of the local alumnae chapter (who I must admit have
ALWAYS been helpful to me).
I think I'll stop, I could go on, but hopefully the reasons why I became interested in DST are clear.