The first and only exclusively STU sorority, Pi Alpha Gamma, prepares to bid its roots farewell.
Pi Alpha Gamma’s founding mothers – Katelyn Rushton, Elizabeth Strange and Valérie Foulem – are stepping behind the scenes to let younger members spread their wings before they pass on the torch.
Next year, Rushton will step down from her position as president and take a year off before applying to social work and education programs around the Maritimes. Strange will begin working towards becoming a human rights lawyer, and Fouler will remain in Fredericton to complete her psychology honours.
Still, it was only three years ago that in hopes of finding a home away from home, they declared their intention to make a sorority.
“For the past three years, it’s always been the three of us,” said Foulem.
“We all wanted to have sisters, we were all interested.”
Currently the president of Pi Alpha Gamma, Rushton had always been interested in sororities. She researched them in her spare time and started pledging herself to the local UNB Chapter of Iota Beta Chi based out of the Alpha Chapter in Halifax, but it wasn’t right for her.
“They have over a hundred girls in their organization and I’m a pretty shy person, it can sometimes be overwhelming,” said Rushton.
“On an organizational level, it just didn’t feel like a family.”
It was at Vanier that the three founding mothers finally met and got to know each other before reaching for sisterhood.
As it turned out, Strange had also an interest in sororities, so when Rushton suggested forming a sorority, she seconded the idea. With her came Foulem.
“I kind of always wanted to be in a sorority. I really love Legally Blonde, embarrassing as that is to say,” said Strange.
They drafted many of their founding values in one night, though it would be later that they adopted the name Pi Alpha Gamma. It was the night before Strange turned 19. It would also become Pi Alpha Gamma’s birthday.
“We finished just after midnight and finished by singing her happy birthday,” said Rushton.
It took months of hard work before their dream became reality.
Starting out as a smaller sorority, members of Pi Alpha Gamma committed time towards supporting other members one-one-one as if they were sisters.
Separated from her hometown of Halifax, Gabi Wort struggled to find kinship all throughout her first year. But, in her second year she tested out Pi Alpha Gamma.
She liked it and became one of the first members. Since joining, her sisters have helped through her anxiety that you’d hardly notice today.
“I’ve become more outgoing and more confident in myself,” said Wort who was able to turn her life around in one year.
More common in the United States than Canada, larger sororities are often adopted into the Greek life organizations, societies that connect fraternities and sororities and require large budgets supported by numerous pledges.
Not so Pi Alpha Gamma. Though they share many of the same traditions, Pi Alpha Gamma exists independently from the international and national organizations, such as the National Panhellenic Conference, who form Greek life.
“The amount of money it cost to join an NPC is ridiculous, almost a quarter of our tuition in dues each semester,” said treasurer of the sorority, Cecilia Asbridge.
Free from the financial requirements that have come to shape sorority life, they ask twenty dollars per pledge.
They now have seven members, not including the founding mothers, and are recruiting their third pledge class this year. Public recruitment events will be taking place over the course of the next two weeks, ending on Oct. 23.
“On this campus and in this kind of economy, it’s a better decision to be a smaller organization.”
It also makes for closer family.
