The Girls in Gold are back: Kappa Psi Nu renews charter

Years after turning in their charter, the girls of Kappa Psi Nu are bringing gold back into the colors of the Greek Council at Lee University.

Salada Alderman, junior bioscience major and the President of Kappa Psi Nu, always thought about joining Greek Life at Lee University, but never felt like any of the clubs were the right fit for her. 

“I met a lot of the Greek clubs and I never found a part where I kind of fit in,” Alderman said. 

When talking to her mother, a Lee alumna and former member of Kappa Psi Nu, she would always hear about the great things that went on in the club and she decided she wanted to be a part of that community. 

“I was talking to my mom and she was telling me all about Kappa back in the ‘90s when she was in it was always like ‘oh, that's really cool. I would love to be a part of that,’” said Alderman. “I would love to honor their legacy by joining this fantastic community.”

In January , Alderman began looking into restoring the club’s charter. Joined by Maddie Mennenga, Kappa vice president and a junior theater major, and Isabel Slater, Kappa chaplin and a junior intercultural studies major, the three emailed administration and began the process. 

Mennenga and Slater do not have direct ties to Kappa Psi Nu, but Slater’s mother is a Lee alumna  who knew  members of the club.

“She actually had a lot of friends who were in Kappa,” said Slater. “She was going to functions with her friends for rush and she never rushed but that's one of her regrets.”

When asked why Kappa Psi originally lost their charter, Alderman said Kappa turned in their charter due to financial stress caused by the recession. 

“We had a lot of families in Kappa. We had people that had kids that were already starting their lives, which was great, but they had decided we needed to be able to focus on our families during this tough time, and we actually gave our Charter to focus on them,” Alderman said.

Bringing back their charter was a process with a few bumps, one of them being finding a sponsor. 

“So right now our head sponsor is Ann Gruber who's part of the [Church of God (COG)],” said Alderman. “In the event that a faculty sponsor cannot be found or with deep ties to the club, COG is able to step in.”

The club is very grateful to have Gruber on board.

“It was a blessing from the Lord that Ann was able to be here and be right next to campus for us to be able to be a part of this. We couldn't do without her,” Mennenga said.

As a club, they have felt very welcomed by the rest of the Greek Council. 

“[We] are having support from other clubs as well. We have a lot of people that are supportive and are like ‘hey if you need any help’, it's nice and that's what's nice about Greek life is the community aspect,” Slater said.

As a service-oriented club, they are hoping to bring back Kappa’s connection to nature through different service projects. 

“We want to help clean up the river and just keep everything nice because we are a nature-oriented group,” said Mennenga. “We really just love doing things outside. But also another one that we've thrown around is more of a community garden aspect, just bringing life to Cleveland.”

Another thing they are changing up is the club colors.

“The original colors were white and gold. We added in black because a lot of us have backgrounds where we've come from something deep inside of us,” said Mennenga. “So we added black as a representative of what we have come out of and also as Christians, what we have come out of when we are brought to Christ.”

The gold and white also have meanings.

“And you know gold represents that new life and white represents the purity that God gave us when he died,” Alderman said. 

This tap night, the club chose not to take in any new members, and instead are looking to foster relationships between the new potentials. 

“[We want] to be intentional with how we tap and with how we induct because we don't want to just be flying by the seat of our pants and our induction doesn't have any meaning and our tap night doesn't have any meaning. That's not how we want to start Kappa,” said Alderman. “We have a couple of alumni that are gonna come out and show us our colors and we're very excited to participate for the first time in.”

While the three girls are currently the only female members of Kappa Psi Nu, they have tapped two auxiliary members, who they call “Knights.”

“You know, back in the day our knights protected the women, so we wanted to choose our protectors so that when people did start sweating, they had somebody to go to and to ask about us and to find out about the club because we thought that was really important,” Alderman said. 

They  have an interest form on their Instagram for potential new members. 

If you want to know more about the ladies of Kappa Psi Nu, you can find them on Lee U Connect or at @kappa.psi.nu on Instagram.