After two years of attempts at re-chartering, Tri Kappa Gamma is now the sixth women’s social club on campus.
After many conversations with the Office of Student Life, the second charter class has chosen sponsors and will begin meeting this semester.
Mark Jackson, director of Student Life, said TKG will have its first pledge class in the spring.
Last spring, there was an attempt to re-charter Tri Kappa, but Student Life said the process of re-chartering would take at least a year. The first attempt didn’t pan out last year. However, this fall, an increased number of girls wanting to pledge meant more of a demand for bids, but not enough supply. With these conditions at hand, Student Life said they felt like the re-chartering needed to be done in a shorter amount of time.
“For the past two years as the numbers have continued to grow in girls that are interested and girls that actually do pledge, we’ve known for some time that we probably need to get a sixth girls club on campus,” Jackson said. “With last year, it was one girl who was doing a lot of it on her own. There were other interested girls but at that time we really felt like it needed to be a yearlong process. This year, realizing the amount of girls wanting to pledge, we said we need to do this and do it sooner rather than later.”
Brooklyn Merkord, sophomore elementary education major from Round Rock, is one of the students who has been involved with the rechartering process. She said as of now, about 70 women have expressed some interest in Tri Kappa Gamma, with 30 of them “very serious” about joining. The club will hold its first officer elections close to Thanksgiving.
“I am most looking forward to having a group of girls that enjoy having fun together and building relationships that I would not have made otherwise,” Merkord said.
Tri Kappa Gamma has secured four sponsors for the club. Cindy Gravitt, office manager at the ACU Clinic, was a member of the Tri Kappa Gamma pledge class of 1989 and will now serve as an on-campus sponsor.
“When I interviewed in 2011, as I walked across campus, I remember thinking it would be so cool to get a job here and to help bring Tri Kappa Gamma back.” Gravitt said. “There were great people 20 years ago and I can tell there are great people now. It’s generated a lot of excitement among alumni.”
