N.C. State’s Delta Zeta sorority supports Indiana’s DePauw University sister chapter’s recent decision to revoke active membership of 23 members, according to President Katie Paige.
The members asked to leave were ethic minority students or “overweight,” according to an article printed Feb. 25 in The New York Times. The article said six of the remaining 12 girls resigned to protest the sorority’s actions.
According to the article, the DePauw chapter re-evaluated its commitment to remain an active chapter after the results of a survey on its campus showed most students nicknamed the DZ chapter at DePauw the “socially awkward” sorority at the university.
A psychology professor at DePauw conducted the survey, asking students to nickname the university’s sororities. Among the student’s name for the sororities were “daddy’s little princesses” and “offbeat hippies,” the article said.
Paige said she felt the survey was “silly.”
“I’m more concerned as a student for my sisters in that chapter,” Paige said. “I wrote the girls a letter that were left in the [DePauw] chapter letting them know that we love them and support them.”
The DZ National chapter denied that the decision to revoke active membership was influenced by ethnicity or physical appearances in hopes of encouraging recruitment of new girls.
“DZ National would never discriminate against different races, religions, ethnicity, or body types,” Paige said. “It is in our national constitution that we do not deny anyone because of their color, religion, physical disabilities or other reasons.”
For a number of years, the DePauw chapter’s recruitment was low compared to the national standard, according to Paige.
“[The DePauw sisters] were tired of having to constantly recruit new members because it was getting too hard on their daily lives,” Paige said.
Paige said NCSU meets the national standards every year. The DZ chapter recruited 39 girls this year.
According to Paige, the recruitment process’s purpose is to show “what we do as a chapter as far as our sisterhood bonds go” by informing prospective members about the annual activities DZ is involved in, like community service events.
Paige said she feels DePauw’s struggle to satisfy the quota of new girls stemmed from a lack of “aggressive recruiting.”
After interviewing the members of DZ at DePauw, DZ National felt some of the girls’ were “burned out from having to do recruitment before,” she said. According to Paige, DZ National granted good standing alumna status to the 23 sisters revoked from the DePauw active collegiate chapter.
Melissa Funke, NCSU’s DZ college chapter director, said alumnae have several ways of remaining involved in their sorority.
“You’re a Delta Zeta for life,” she said.
Alumni can assist collegiate chapters or join a local alumni chapter to “do a lot of things with philanthropy, sisterhood events, and social get-togethers, like a Christmas party,” according to Funke.
“You can do as much as you want,” Funke said.
Funke said it is important to continue to support her DZ sisters at DePauw.
“[The DePauw chapter] is a very sad occurrence and very sad that it’s been painted in such a negative picture in the media,” Funke said.
Although DZ sisters at NCSU declined to comment about the situation at DePauw, some of the sisters supported the NCSU chapter.
Rebecca Head, a junior in biology, said she joined DZ last year.
“It was the best group of girls,” Head said. “They do a lot of things through philanthropy, campus community, and a lot of the girls seemed more down to earth and real than the other sororities [on campus].”
Paige said she felt the collection of the 112 girls in the DZ chapter at NCSU is diverse.
“You come in and see all these different faces,” Paige said. “You feel like you can belong because you feel like you can relate to someone in most situations.”
