"Who are the chics in red making that noise?" 

 

That was how my introduction and first thoughts about the organization I learned to be, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc or DST, started. My interest began with a question. 

 

The only other person in my family to go to college was my cousin Tachumbi. All I knew was he left Miami and went to Howard University in DC. We never discussed his college experience. I knew nothing about Black Greek organizations, where they came from, or what they stood for. But I quickly learned that the girls in red stood for something. Something I wanted to be a part of.

 

Many people hear of my affiliation with a sorority and think, "Of course, you were an only child, you always wanted siblings, and a sorority was the natural move for you."

 

WRONG! 

 

I love and loved being an only child. I never longed for sisters or siblings. My interest in Delta was not to fill a void but to create a space. 

 

I was the weird college student who woke up early on Saturdays to volunteer, and the girls in red were there. 

I became active in student government and campus leadership organizations and the girls in the Red were there. 

I looked at the Dean's list, and the girls in

the Red were there. 

 

And as I came into my knowledge of self as a Black women and what it meant to be Black and impactful in the US, I began to look at the impact Black women had on shaping the world, and I wouldn't you know it, the girls in Red were there too.

 

From the Civil Rights movement to women's suffrage, to being the 1st woman to make a serious run for the President of the United States (first Black woman to run and first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination) to Black women founding colleges, these women in red were everywhere, and they were doing it. They were doing the "it" I wanted to do and being the type of women I wanted to become. 

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They were doing it, but they were doing it and looking fabulous while doing it. And while other organizations were known for their paper bag tests- a test which allowed organizations to discriminate based on skin color, this organization looked like the spectrum of Blackness (you know, inclusion has always been my thing). I was hooked.

 

Then there was getting in, which many thought was simply a popularity contest but was far from it. I had to prove my merits which included verifying my GPA; demonstrating that I had served the community and demonstrate my campus involvement and activity. 

 

Then there was the process of becoming a Delta. I learned many things that will stay with me even when my memory begins to fade. One of them is the phrase that almost every Black Greek can say on command, "Excuses are tools of incompetence, used to build monuments of nothingness, and those who use them seldom amount to anything." Through becoming a Delta, I learned that impossibilities are a construct we create when the work seems too hard for the average person. Since Deltas are not average, we can demolish the impossibility we constructed. 

 

Today, I credit my business success to the lessons I learned becoming and being a Delta woman. I can walk into almost any room and be connected because of Delta Sigma Theta. I have made some significant decisions, and becoming a Delta remains at the top.