By Meryl Feld / Editor
The last historically Jewish sorority at the University of Kansas, Sigma Delta Tau, was shut down by their national headquarters, who told The Chronicle in a written statement, “The continued decline in membership resulted in too great a burden to continue chapter operations.”
The members of SDT’s Beta Chi Chapter at KU were informed via Zoom that their sorority was being forced to close its doors May 18 by two of the sorority’s national headquarters staff. Even the chapter’s executive board — their leadership team — was not informed of this decision before the call.
“It was waterworks. Everybody was devastated. It was such a shock and everybody took that opportunity to just attack Nationals and tell them how horrible and disgusting what they were doing is. And it went in one ear, out the other,” Sami Schechter said.
Schechter, who graduated in May, was one of the founding members of the reestablished Sigma Delta Tau chapter at KU her freshman year in 2016.
“We were saying, you know you gave us this false hope that we could change and keep our sorority and they essentially said it’s too late, you’ve already put too much financial burden on us and we can’t keep on supporting it,” said Schechter.
The Beta Chi Chapter learned shortly before spring break that they needed to recruit more members. Sisters were given a choice. “We were told that our numbers for the chapter were very low and we were given the opportunity to vote on whether sisters would like to continue recruiting and to attempt to gain more members through informal recruitment, a special recruitment kind of situation,” Schechter said.
The sisters decided to work hard to recruit more members in order to keep their chapter. From Schechter’s perspective, her sisters wanted try to save their house so younger members could have a shot at the college experience they wanted. Once you are initiated into a sorority, you cannot join another.
KU SDT was not able to participate in informal recruitment as planned, due to the pandemic.
SDT national headquarters said in a written statement, “Despite the work put forth by the members of Beta Chi and the dedication of financial and human resources from the National Organization, the chapter was not able to achieve chapter growth.” As of Tuesday evening, national headquarters had not responded to The Chronicle’s specific questions regarding the closure of KU SDT after requesting the questions be sent via email.
From Schechter’s perspective, Beta Chi was not able to exhaust every avenue that could help them keep their chapter. “They told us they made the decision to just shut down, instead of giving us the opportunity to do that special recruitment that we voted on doing,” she said. “It just didn’t make sense because we weren’t given what we felt was a fair chance.”
Junior Ariel Cohn, was on KU SDT’s 2018-2019 executive board. She said that this leadership position is the reason she was more prepared for the closure than other sisters. “Once our spring recruitment for 2020 got canceled because of COVID, I pretty much knew we were going to close,” Cohn told The Chronicle, “Of course I was sad, but I had seen it coming since the beginning of my sophomore year… The hardest part for me was seeing all of my sisters deal with the loss of the chapter.”
Being part of a historically Jewish house was meaningful to Cohn, but not a deciding factor in her decision to join. “To me, the fact that SDT was founded by Jewish women meant that my beliefs lined up with the chapter’s values. One thing that I love about SDT is that it was founded by seven Jewish women who weren’t allowed to join other sororities because of their religion. They founded this organization so that no one would be discriminated against, and that’s something that I wholeheartedly believe in.”
While the chapter didn’t host organized Jewish programming, Schechter said the chapter put an emphasis on utilizing their required community service hours to help with Chabad’s Jewish programming, as well as encouraging members to get involved with Rock Chalk Shabbat — a celebration of Jewish life at KU.
According to Schechter, members were told by representatives from national headquarters during recruitment to emphasize that SDT was historically Jewish, but not a Jewish house. “It felt really uncomfortable because the whole basis that we were told about SDT is that this sorority is meant to be very diverse and inclusive. So while yes, it didn’t necessarily have to be only Jews in the sorority, we shouldn’t be ashamed to have any sort of association with Judaism,” Schechter said.
Schechter feels that the way her chapter was closed did not fit with the values the sorority teaches its members. “I just find it really disappointing that the people who had claimed to be very supportive of diversity and inclusivity and to be a home for those people who didn’t feel like they had a home, to shut down like that, it’s heartbreaking,” she said.
For Cohn — and her sisters by choice — the sisterhood doesn’t end here. “We are such a tight-knit group, and I’ve definitely made lifelong friends through the chapter. Even though we aren’t a sorority, we are all still friends and I definitely plan on continuing those friendships.”
By Meryl Feld / Editor