While walking down campus streets, members of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority can cry out with a shared call and know that soon after, a succession of returned yells will be heard.
After Sunday afternoon, the women of AKA are calling out to a brand new beat.
Installing themselves as Sigma Delta, the newest chapter of AKA, 13 undergraduates joined women across the world who are members of the United State’s oldest international Greek letter organization focused on African-American women.
“To me, Alpha Kappa Alpha is like that great redwood tree,” said Grace Strauther, an educator who is also a member of the graduate chapter of AKA, Upsilon Gamma Omega. “More than 900 chapters [are] branches. Sigma Delta today is the newest of those branches.”
Undergraduate students from both the University and Oregon Sate University comprise the new charter, and they gathered Sunday in the Eugene Water and Electric Board building to celebrate their new membership in AKA. The graduate chapter has been installed on the University campus since 1994.
AKA is unlike many other sororities in that it doesn’t station itself in a house.
“With our sorority, it’s not really about a house,” said Kim Hutchinson, a junior ethnic studies major and president of the Sigma Delta chapter. “It’s basically about community service and having fun.”
AKA makes it a point to get outside and provide service to those around them.
“We pledge to help our community and leave them better than we found them,” Strauther said.
Among their activities, AKA members have a partnership with the Red Cross, participate in mentorship programs with children and put on a fashion show to benefit a homeless youth foundation through Looking Glass.
“It’s an organization about helping the community, and that’s one thing that I really, really love doing,” said Isa Burns, a freshman marine biology major from OSU and one of the newest members of Sigma Delta.
AKA was founded in 1908 at Howard University and has since then claimed such members as Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Jada Pinkett and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Taryn Thompson, a graduate student studying journalism, said the sorority is not exclusive to just African-American women; all women are welcome to join, and the charter at the University is proof to that.
“This is more about relationships with one another, service to all mankind, sharing African-American culture [and] serving our community,” she said.
The women of AKA got their due Sunday, as speakers at the reception expressed confidence that they would each pave paths no one could ever imagine.
“They’re beautiful, and they’re smart, and they have this poise and grace about them that enticed me to join the sorority,” said Brandy Alexander, a sophomore public relations major.
Kelly Coleman Johnson, president of the graduate chapter of AKA, marveled at how far the women before her had come and how much they had accomplished. In the early 1900s, she said, African-Americans were not even allowed citizenship in Oregon. Now they were chartering a sorority.
“I’m sure that the founders of Oregon are rolling over in their graves,” she said. These are “women who are intelligent, bright, vibrant, who are making history in the state of Oregon.”