UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, May 3, 1994
9A
Sororities: Building a tradition on a foundation of values and beliefs
KU's chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority is currently inactive. These sororities are nationally incorporated.
Members of these sororites include: Phylicia Rashad, Dionne Warwick, Nikki Giovanni and Marian Anderson.
The development of the Black sororities arose from a need for Black college students to create social bonds with one another while serving their communities.
1. Despite these qualities, these organizations sometimes are best-known for throwing parties.
Juanita Cothrine despises this stereotype.
"We're not all about parties and wearing our letters," said Cothrine, a St Louis, Mo., senior and member of
Alpha Kappa Alpha. "We're proud to wear our letters. That's why we joined. But the reason the sorority was founded was for community service and helping each other going through a predominately white col-
Kim Robinson, St. Louis,Mo., senior and member of Delta Sigma Theta, said she didn't like the "party animal" label either.
"It it bother me when people have a stereotype of the greeks," Robinson said. "First of all, I'm a member of a
Black greek-letter organization, not a Black greek. There's no such thing.
A foundation of service
"I would say that all Black greek-letter organizations were founded on principles of public service," she said.
Public service can involve devoting community service hours to help young children, the elderly and the homeless. In Lawrence, all of these sororities volunteer at the Lawrence Boys and Girls Club, nursing homes, soup kitchens and other community service projects.
Amy Solt KANSAN
Zeta Phi Beta was founded on the principles of scholarship, service, sisterly love and finer womanhood, Etta Canady, Kansas City, Kan., senior and member of Zeta Phi Beta said.
But Black sororites are more than just community service groups.
"As long as there are people, you will always have community service," she said. "That's what we do — community service. If person is the right person to be a Zeta, that person is never going to lose that zeal or zest for community service."
Paula Gildings, author of the Delta Sigma Theta history book, wrote that a sorority is a sisterhood that helps individuals mature through cooperation, leadership development and exposure to the leading figures and issues of the times. Black sororities and fraternities are different from other types of organizations because their focus is on the transformation of individuals, not necessarily society, she wrote.
Cothrine explained other benefits of belonging to a Black sorority.
"Being on a predominantly white campus, it's good to have Black
women you know you can talk to and count on at any time," she said. "You know you can always count on an AKA no matter what."
The process for joining a Black sorority is different from that of other KU sororities.
To join a Black sorority, women attend informational meetings given by each sorority. There they learn about the goals of the sorority. The meetings usually are held in a public place once a semester.
After investigating possible options, Cothrine said students needed to decide for themselves if a sorority was for them.
"Everyone needs to choose and look around to see what sorority will fit them," she said. "I knew I wanted to be a part of Alpha Kappa Alpha and no other sorority on KU's campus."
After the meetings, the sororities' members interview interested students. Sorority members screen the applicants to verify fulfillment of basic requirements, such as enrollment in college, minimum grade point average and previous community involvement.
Members use the interview to get to know the applicants.
Canady described the importance of the interviewing process.
"We're looking for quality, and you can only get that quality if you go out and meet that person on a personal basis," she said.
Membership for life
To show fraternal and sororal pride, chapters compete against each other in step shows. These shows consist of performances that combine precision marches, synchronized dance steps and cadences. Each organization is known for a style of stepping.
However, Black greek-letter groups share some additional traditions. One of these is called "stepping."
Derivatives of stepping are "walks" and "hops" which usually are done at parties. Although the hops and walks are done for fun, they also are examples of the tight brotherhood and sisterhood developed within the groups.
Noting another differentiation between Black sororites and other sororities, Robinson said that once someone becomes a Delta, she is always a Delta.
"One of the unique things about Delta sisterhood is, it's unconditional." Moore said. "Any differences we have can be put aside when it comes to a common goal, which is our community service."
Janice Moore, also a member of Delta Sigma Theta, who graduated in December, commented on the bond in her organization.
"We are Deltas for life," she said.
"There is no deactivating."
Members of the Zeta Phi Beta sorority sit at a table to promote registration for bone marrow donors. This is one of many activities that members of Black Panhellenic and Black fraternities participate in to benefit the community.
Mae Jemison, the first Black woman to successfully complete a NASA space shuttle mission, took more than standard equipment with her into space. Among her belongings was an apple green and salmon pink Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority banner.
On the eve of her appointment as ambassador to Luxembourg in 1965, Patricia Roberts Harris said, "While there are many things in my life which have prepared me for what I'm about to do, it is largely the experience in Delta Sigma Theta which gives me the most security."
Harris was the first Black woman to become dean of Howard University's School of Law.
Women from all walks of life, who belong to Black sororites, seem to have an eternal admiration for their organizations.
the sororal experience has been lifelong.
Paula Giddings, author of "In Search of Sisterhood," described this admiration with the term "beloved organization."
"It struck me that Black women may be among their freest, and their happiest, and in some ways, their most fulfilled when they are together in their organizations." Gildings wrote.
For more than a quarter of a million Black women who belong to the four major Black sororities — Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, Zeta Phi Beta and Sigma Gamma Rho —
Women such as Zora Neale Hurston, Mary McCleod-Bethune and Coretta Scott King are members of these organizations.
Norma J. Norman, a 1967 KU graduate and former associate director of the Office of Minority Affairs, said that most women join a sorority for personal reasons.
She also said that many women join a sorority because they know family members or someone who has served as a role model who is a sorority member.
For Norman, her decision to join AKA came before she enrolled at KU. While in her senior year in high school, Norman had the opportunity to stay overnight with a cousin at the old AKA house, which use to be in the 1200 block of Indiana Street.
"It was an overpowering experience for me," she said.
Products of Kansas and the Midwest were influential in the development of the two oldest Black sororties, Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta.
The Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, the oldest Black sorority in the country, was founded in 1908, when Ethel Hedgeman Lyle of St. Louis, Mo., gathered together a number of her classmates at Howard University.
Seven years later, the Delta Chapter of the organization was founded at the University of Kansas. When one of the original founders, Beulah Elizabeth Burke, came to Kansas City, Kan., to teach she organized the KU chapter.
Kansas also played an early role in the development of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.
Bertha Pitts Campbell, one of the founders of the sorority, was born in Winfield. According to the history books of both groups, Campbell and 21 other Black women at Howard University joined Alpha Kappa Alpha, became dissatisfied with the organization and formed Delta Sigma Theta Sorority in the Spring of 1912.
The Psi chapter of Delta Sigma Theta was founded at the University of Kansas in 1925.
The Zeta Phi Beta Sorority also was founded on Howard University's campus. In 1920, with the help of a founder of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, Zeta Phi Beta became the first and only Black sorority to be constitutionally bound to a brother fraternity.
Zeta Phi Beta also was the first organization of its kind to charter a chapter in Africa and to form adult and youth auxiliary groups.
The Omega Theta chapter of Zeta Phi Beta was founded at KU in 1979.
Rwandan refugees anxiously flee to Tanzania
The Associated Press
NGARA, Tanzania — Terrified Hutus traveling in small groups slipped past rebel patrols yesterday, forded the rain-swollen river that divides Rwanda and Tanzania and joined 250,000 other refugees at a squall camp.
"The border is closed, but they are coming every day in groups of about 100. We have 79 so far today," said Jacques Franklin, head of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office in Nagara.
Frankin said soldiers of the rebel and mostly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front were trying to prevent people from crossing the border. He said the refugees were terrified of the rebels and said it was difficult to avoid rebel patrols along the Akagera River.
Several hundred refugees carrying mattresses, baskets, cooking utensils and some driving goats walked toward the camp along the road from the border.
"They are crossing the river in small canoes, or boats or whatever they can find," he said.
Bodies floated down the river at a rate of about one every five minutes. About 20 of the bodies floated in a pool near the border bridge at Rusumo near Ngara. It was not clear who killed them.
Soldiers from the Hutu-run government army abandoned the border Thursday after the rebels
About 75 relief workers at the camp toiled yesterday to distribute food to the refugees. Each got a three-day ration of just over 2 pounds of red beans.
seized control of the province along the border. Within a day, about 250,000 mostly Hutu refugees terrified by the rebel advance swept into Tanzania.
Thousands upon thousands of refugees,including some Tutsis, huddled in open fields or under tents made of plastic sheeting. They cooked their meager rations over open fires that shrouded the camp with smoke.
Workers also pump water from a nearby lake.
This helps to lower the water levels of the lake.
Refugees and some relief workers worked with shovels and hoes to hastily dig latrines for the camp.
Ancient animistics between Hutus and Tutsis have rekindled the civil war and fueled the violence that has ripped Rwanda apart, but so far officials say the groups are coexisting peacefully in exile.
Fighting in Rwanda began April 6 after President Juvenal Habyarimana and the leader of Burundi — both Hutus — were killed in a suspicious plane crash in Kigali, the Rwandan capital.
U. N. efforts to arrange a cease-fire have been unsuccessful. The rebels said in a radio broadcast that they would not attend peace talks today in
Mortar rounds exploded Sunday at a church crowded with Tussi refugees in the center of Kigal. Kabia said 12 people were killed and 113 wounded.
However, U.N. representative Abdul Kabia said by telephone from Kigali that Tanzanian authorities told the United Nations the rebels had agreed to send a delegation to Arusha, but that they would not negotiate with the government.
Arusha, Tanzania.
Meanwhile, the war and the killings continue.
It was not immediately clear who fired the mortar rounds or if the Sainte Familie Church was the intended target. Kabia said both warring parties blamed the other for the attack on the church, which was sheltering about 2,000 refugees.
"We had no problems there until yesterday when these shells fell on these poor, innocent people who had been running away from the danger only to be attacked at the church that could easily be identified as a place where people were seeking refuge."
"We heard reports a few days ago that the displaced people in this church and at the Notre Dame school were earmarked for massacres," said Kabia. "We immediately established a presence at those areas to try to protect the people."
At least 100,000 people have been killed in nearly a month of ethnic savagery in Rwanda, and more than 1.3 million have fled their homes.
The Associated Press
Officers in King beating ask court to review convictions
PASADENA, Calif. — Attorneys for two former Los Angeles policemen imprisoned for the Rodney King beating asked a federal appeals court yesterday to reverse their convictions.
Prosecutors responded by attacking the 30-month sentences imposed on Sgt. Stacey Koon and Officer Laurence Powell as insufficient and asked that the convictions on federal civil rights violations be upheld without question.
The defense appeal was taken under advisement by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which did not indicate when it would rule.
"This jury already knew that the
In arguments that met with a chilly reception from the judges, defense attorneys criticized a videotape played at the officers' federal trial last year. They also cited witnesses' exposure to statements the officers were compelled to make to police internal affairs investigators, and claimed that the government made improper emotional appeals to the jury as the conscience of the community.
eyes of the world were on them," attorney William Kopeny said, arguing for Powell.
The videotape cited in the officers' appeal was not the infamous recording of the March 3, 1991, beating of the black motorist by white policemen, but a tape of state court testimony that was played during the officers' federal civil rights trial.
Koon, Powell and two other officers, Theodore Briseno and Timothy Wind, were tried on the federal charges after their acquittals in a state court assault trial triggered the city's 1992 riot. Briseno and Wind were acquitted again.
Also yesterday, King's lawsuit for damages resumed in federal court in Los Angeles after the judge refused to grant a delay sought because Brisoen's lawyer, Greg Peterson, suffered a possible stroke last week.
The jury hearing the lawsuit has already awarded King $3.8 million in compensatory damages to be paid by the city. The panel has been hearing more evidence to determine if 15 individuals should pay punitive damages.