Although Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Kappa Sigma are no longer options for students looking to join Interfraternity Council fraternities this year, the two groups strive to remain part of the greek community-just with different names.
The former members of SAE and Kappa Sig have voted to permanently change the titles of their groups. The fraternity formerly known as Kappa Sig now refers to itself as Eta Prime, its chapter name, and SAE will now call itself Delta Phi Alpha.
SAE and Kappa Sig-which disaffiliated from their respective national organizations in January and November-wanted to associate themselves with the new names before recruitment begins.
"This is something we decided last week to do. Mostly it was due to the fact that rush was coming up and we want to have something to stand strongly with... without the problems of dealing with the use of a name," said Will Brown, president of the new Delta Phi Alpha and a senior. "Being able to refer to ourselves as something is very important."
Both fraternities are prohibited by their national organizations from using or wearing their official fraternity titles.
Junior Mark Boyd, who was elected president of Eta Prime Monday evening, said the Kappa Sig national organization informed his brotherhood that using its name was unacceptable.
"They told us that since we're not on-campus brothers anymore, we can't wear our letters. That's an illegal thing," said Boyd, adding they have no interest in ever affiliating with Kappa Sig nationals again. "It would not really be the direction we want the fraternity to be moving. The whole point was to get rid of that affiliation," he added.
Brown said SAE nationals never directly threatened his group, although they warned him to disassociate from the fraternity name when they saw SAE-a fraternity supposedly dissolved at Duke-printed in The Chronicle.
"We weren't being that proactive putting our name out there. Now with rush we want to put our name out there.... We wanted something that we could really stand behind," said Brown, adding that he does not anticipate that people will stop calling the fraternity SAE until more students graduate.
To create their name, Delta Phi Alpha members formulated different types of fraternity names and then narrowed down the potential options to two choices, which were put to vote last week.
"We wanted to still have a fraternity name as opposed to some type of society," Brown said. "The actual meaning of our name is something that we only know, and we're proud of what that stands for."
The decision for the former members of Kappa Sig to adopt their chapter name was an easier one.
"We have sort of all gone by our chapter name internally for years," said junior Jeff Adams, former president of Kappa Sig. "We chose the nomenclature we did to maintain our loyalty to our group of individuals and brothers that we pledged with and those who came before us."
Both groups said their name changes signify more than just a new title.
"We figured this was the best way to maintain continuity and maintain independence from the national fraternity," Boyd said.
Eta Prime and Delta Phi Alpha are collaborating to foster an off-campus presence by meeting frequently and creating an off-campus fraternity council.
"One of the things that we and Kappa Sig are doing with this new change is to create this new culture," Brown said. "Both our groups are really trying to [show] that this is not just a temporary or reactionary measure but something that's going to be around for awhile."
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