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150 Years Strong
from MIZZOU Winter 2020
by Mizzou
150 Years Strong: COMMEMORATING FRATERNITY AND SORORITY LIFE AT MIZZOU
STORY BY ERIK POTTER * MIZZOU MAGAZINE * WINTER 2020
A century and a half ago, five young men gathered in Academic Hall to be initiated into the Missouri Alpha chapter of Phi Kappa Psi. Together, they formed not only the first fraternity at the University of Missouri but also the first fraternity at a public university west of the Mississippi River. Since then, fraternity and sorority members have not only put the sweat and spirit into university traditions but also served campus and Columbia through their volunteerism and philanthropy. Last year alone, Greek chapters raised more than $1 million for nonprofits.
Recent changes adopted by campus, Greek students and alumni are moving fraternity and sorority life into a chapter of renewed dedication to the values they are based on: leadership, scholarship, service, brotherhood and sisterhood.
ON BID DAY, tidy lines of students the length of Rothwell Gymnasium wait anxiously to discover which sorority houses have accepted them as members.
Emma Socolich stands in one of the lines. She holds a white envelope with her house assignment inside. Waiting to open it, she sways back and forth to calm her nerves. The education major from Hinsdale, Illinois, wants to join Sigma Kappa. “It’s a fun way to do community service and meet people you wouldn’t meet otherwise,” she says of joining a sorority. “It’s important to give back to your community wherever you are.” Socolich represents the “secret sauce” Dean of Students Jeff Zeilenga has been extolling recently. Zeilenga, along with strong leadership from Greek students and alumni, has been working to create a values-based change of culture in fraternity and sorority life for the past two years. “They are the same values we’ve always held, but we’re changing the culture and making the values a priority,” Zeilenga says.
The key to changing the culture is to recruit for the culture you’re trying to build: finding students who are devoted to service, leadership, scholarship, sisterhood and brotherhood. Recruiting people like that, Zeilenga says, will help Mizzou avoid harmful, high-risk behaviors that have brought scrutiny to Greek chapters across the country.
One example of the shift already underway at Mizzou is the scene on bid day. In the past, Greek Town was an outdoor party on that day, and sometimes it got out of control. For the past two years, the executive board of Interfraternity Council, the governing council for many of the fraternities in Greek Town, vowed that, out of respect, their members would stay out of Greek Town until bid day was over and let the event be about sorority life.
Outside of Rothwell Gymnasium on bid day 2019, the streets of Greek Town are quiet. Fraternity pledges fill an auditorium in a different building, waiting to hear their house assignments.
Inside the gym, Socolich tears open her envelope and jumps in the air. She’s gotten into Sigma Kappa. “I’m really excited — they were really nice and supportive of all the girls,” she says, as she runs to her new sisters in their hugging, jumping and screaming.
“When it’s done well, the Greek experience can take a place like Mizzou — a school with access to everything but that at times can be overwhelming to a person because it’s so big — and give you the best of both worlds,” says Bruce McKinney, BS BA ’74, a Delta Upsilon member. “You can also form relationships that are truly lifelong and meaningful.”
The next four pages celebrate the Greek experience done well: the students and alumni who exemplify the best of fraternity and sorority life — men and women who have put into practice the values those organizations espouse. The stories paint a picture of a proud past and a progressive future.
“The key to changing the culture is to recruit for the culture you’re trying to build: finding students who are devoted to service, leadership, scholarship, sisterhood and brotherhood.” — Jeff Zeilenga, dean of students
AS SEVERAL FRATERNITY BROTHERS gathered for a mandatory meeting in the chapter house’s common room, a few seniors stood to explain what was about to happen with the upcoming Campustowne Races. The young men, already lining up jobs for after graduation, easily could have quit caring and just done the minimum. Instead, they spoke with a voice of earnest authority.
“They talked about how the whole event was bigger than the races and about the impact we could make on the larger community,” remembers Steve Barbarick, BA ’90, a Delta Upsilon brother who recently stepped down as president and chief operating officer of Tractor Supply Co. Campustowne Races was a large event that raised money for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Mid-Missouri. Fraternity and sorority teams raced one another in pushcarts down Rollins Street, from Greek Town to Brady Commons (now the MU Student Center).
Planning the event required coordination, vision and a lot of helping hands. Rooting their task in a greater purpose galvanized the brothers and created the energetic, cooperative spirit they needed to succeed.
Barbarick, as an underclassman, took a lesson from those seniors. It informed his leadership style throughout his career in retail and in life. “Retailers sell a bunch of widgets with the goal of making money,” says Barbarick, explaining the textbook view of his business. “That’s not how Tractor Supply sees itself. We are here to serve a greater cause.”
For Barbarick, that meant putting employees in a position to meet their customers’ needs so those customers can live life on their terms. It meant establishing relationships with suppliers that both sides can feel good about. And on and on.
“Having the ability to lead is not a privilege but rather a burden of responsibility to the success of those around you,” he says. “I found that, in the fraternity house or any leadership role I’ve ever had, leaders who make it about themselves lose the opportunity to do something far greater.”
Speech!
LUCINDA RICE-PETRIE couldn’t believe what had just happened. As a Mizzou freshman in 1964, she attended a lecture by journalist Sander Vanocur, raised her hand during the Q-and-A and got an answer to her question. “This place is amazing,” she thought. Fast forward 27 years. It’s 1992, and Rice-Petrie, BS Ed ’68, MA ’69, as international director of alumnae programming for Delta Gamma Fraternity, attends a convention where a donor pledges to match $50,000 raised by any chapter to start a campus lecture series. Rice-Petrie, recalling her seminal moment at Mizzou, resolves to start a program here. By 1996, she finds the $50,000 through Mizzou Advancement and partners with the Office of Campus Activities in Student Affairs to plan the first Delta Gamma Foundation Lectureship in Values and Ethics, which happens in 1999. Rice-Petrie’s efforts — 25 lectures to date — not only have helped bring to campus the likes of primatologist Jane Goodall and fashion icon Tim Gunn but also increase the lecture series’ endowment to more than $500,000. “The speakers have broadened my perspective of what human beings who do the right thing can accomplish,” she says.
32 MIZZOUMAGAZINE SAVITAR PHOTO
GROWING UP IN ST. LOUIS in the 1940s and ’50s, Lake Stith paid attention to the city’s leading African American men. Kappa Alpha Psi, a historically black Greek-letter fraternity, had an alumni chapter in town. “They were some of the prominent black men in St. Louis,” Stith remembers. “Men of achievement.”
When Stith enrolled at Mizzou in 1958, campus had no Kappa Alpha Psi chapter. So, in March 1961, he joined with others to charter the Delta Omega chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi. They prized brotherhood and academic excellence. “My father told me that if I wanted to succeed, I had to work twice as hard as everyone else.” And work he did, graduating in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, then practicing as an electrical engineer at McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis. In 1966, he signed up for officer training school in the Air Force and stayed 26 years, rising to the rank of colonel. Looking back, Stith says, his fraternity days gave him all he could have hoped for. “I still remember the Homecomings and the brotherhood I shared with the young men at that time,” he says. “I feel blessed I was able to become a member of Kappa Alpha Psi and become a man of achievement.” A MAN OF ACHIEVEMENT
A GREEK WEEK EVOLUTION
BACK IN 1984, Greek Week service activities were arms-length affairs in which students donated food or money to charity. But they didn’t interact with the people they were serving. All that was about to change at the hands of Service Committee members Michael Basler, BSF ’85, a Sigma Chi; Mike Kateman, BS BA ’85, MA ’91, PhD ’17, a Beta Sigma Psi; and Susan Salzman, BJ ’85, a Chi Omega.
Basler had a connection to the Special Olympics, which was holding a regional track meet the Saturday of Greek Week. The trio proposed that
Greek students would be paired with a Special Olympics athlete, attend the track meet and cheer on the competitors. The plan had its skeptics, and even Salzman wondered anxiously whether anyone would come. Everyone did.
Then the races started. One of the fraternity brothers stood near the finish line, rooting for his runner. After the race, the student ran onto the track, peeled off his Beta Theta Pi shirt and gave it to the runner. A ripple had started, and, by the end of the day, nearly every athlete was wearing a Greek-letter shirt or hat. Greek Week’s connection to the Special Olympics has been going strong since 1984.
OPERATOR? LONG DISTANCE, PLEASE IN 1954, Phyllis McDandel Reesman’s sorority sisters took up an unusual collection. Paula Kurtz and others bought a plastic bank in the shape of a telephone and carried it from room to room in the Kappa Alpha Theta house gathering any coins the women could spare. Reesman was recently engaged. But her fiancé, Dale Reesman, BA ’53, JD ’59, who had graduated from Mizzou two years earlier and joined the U.S. Army, was stationed in Germany. She longed to hear his voice, but at the equivalent of $100 in today’s dollars, a 3-minute international call was out of the question. She didn’t have it. That is, not until her sisters presented her with the “phone bank” full of change. Reesman held the bank and cried. She had never felt a greater sense of belonging to her sorority. Kurtz, BS Ed ’56, who lives Columbia, and Reesman, BA ’55, MSW ’81, who lives in Boonville, Missouri, have grown even closer since then, and both have remained involved in the sorority. “It’s the quality of the people,” Kurtz says. “You want to keep them in your life.”
Grow Your Own
AS A KID, Gavin Spoor used to climb into his neighbor’s tractor and dream of owning his own farm.
But when he got older, he recognized that, without a family farm to inherit or the money to buy his own operation, his dream was unrealistic. Reluctantly, he put it aside. He would go to college, get a degree in agriculture and work in corporate farming. Then, after a couple decades, he could buy his own land.
In that spirit of compromise, he left Martinsburg, Missouri, for Columbia. At Mizzou, Spoor joined Alpha Gamma Rho. Immediately, he began talking to fraternity alumni who encouraged him to stop putting his dream on pause and to start working for it now.
Spoor concluded that starting with a few acres was within his reach if he put in the work. Excited, he began to wonder, if he could pursue his dream life immediately, why stay in college?
He considered leaving after his first semester. His fraternity brothers, however, advised him to stick around. Think big picture, they said. Think about the lessons you’ll learn and the networks you’ll build.
They persuaded him — and then stood by him. His brothers kept him focused on being a full-time student while he also built his business.
He started with 6 acres of soybeans. In the past two years, he has converted them to popcorn, which has a much higher profit margin, and expanded the operation to 200 acres.
Now a junior, Spoor distributes bags, sacks and jars of Spoor Farms popcorn to 10 retail locations, including his high school concession stand. And his agriculture studies are still going strong. “Alpha Gamma Rho is the reason I stayed at the University of Missouri,” Spoor says. “Those guys wanted me to stay. They knew that I had it in me.”
SORORITY 180
HUONG TRUONG, BJ ’18, came to Mizzou thinking she knew what fraternities and sororities were all about, and she wasn’t interested.
She grew up in Oklahoma in a large Vietnamese American community. When she looked for a similar group on campus, she found the Asian American Association. She noticed that many of the organization’s leaders also were members of Alpha Phi Gamma National Sorority Inc., an Asian-interest sorority that is part of the Multicultural Greek Council (MGC). Huong’s skepticism toward Greek life gave way to interest.
Truong’s desire to tell the stories of marginalized communities is what brought her to Mizzou, where she majored in photojournalism. She discovered that she could serve those communities through a sorority. She also saw strong relationships. “I found sisterhood,” she says. “It goes beyond friendship. It’s a lifelong relationship.” Huong eventually served three years as president of MGC, where she worked to make campus more inclusive. Before long, Truong had to choose a graduate school. Kathryn O’Hagan, assistant director in the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL), asked if she had considered a career in student affairs. She hadn’t. Until then. Truong had been accepted not only into a master’s program in photojournalism but also one in educational leadership and policy analysis with an emphasis in student affairs. She chose the latter. She now works as a graduate assistant in the FSL office, advising programs such as Greek Week and Greek Allies. Because of the trust she’s built among students, staff and administrators, she can continue making Mizzou a more welcoming place. “It’s such a fulfilling thing,” she says.
Go, Babe, Go!
MOLLY MYERS had been taking her son, Will, to Cedar Creek Therapeutic Riding Center in Columbia for six years.
When Will first visited, he was 2 years old and unable to walk or talk. He is missing a part of his brain allowing him to reach across the midpoint of his body. Will’s ability to perform tasks such as eating, speaking and walking were delayed.
At Cedar Creek, he rode horses with the assistance of staff and volunteers from Mizzou’s Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. That activity helped to develop his core muscles and gave him a feeling for the hip movement needed for a proper walking gait.
Myers, BS HES ’03, hoped the therapy would be beneficial but never expected just how much Will would grow with the program — until, one day, he spoke.
“Go, Babe, go!” Will said, sitting atop his favorite horse, Babe. That sentence was Will’s first.
Although just three words, Myers says she started crying immediately. “I was so happy he strung words together, and he was commanding the horse at the same time,” she says. “I thought my heart might explode, it was so good.”
Myers is a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma herself. As a Mizzou student, she was active in her chapter and took part in its service mission, volunteering with what is now MizzouThon and visiting pediatric patients at MU Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
Will is now 8 years old and still rides regularly at Cedar Creek with the help of Kappa Kappa Gamma volunteers. The meaning of that isn’t lost on Myers.
AT PRESS TIME, Allison Holmes, BJ ’19, was set to graduate in December with a second bachelor’s degree (business administration). She’ll leave the place where she served as the president of the Epsilon Psi chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, a leader in the National Association of Black Journalists Alé student chapter, a site leader for Mizzou Alternative Breaks and a member of the Alumni Association Student Board. And where she befriended seemingly half of campus.
She is headed to Seattle where she’ll work as a product marketing manager for Microsoft.
Her growth on campus started as soon as she arrived. A self-described shy kid from Sugar Land, Texas, Holmes was determined to get involved right away. Her grandmother, mother and older sister are all Delta Sigma Theta Sorority members, so Holmes started there. More than just accepting her as a member, her new sisters recruited her to be chapter president during her senior year. Holmes says she was shocked: “They said, ‘We see these leadership attributes in you. We want to push you to do this.’ ”
Apparently, Microsoft saw the same qualities. After completing an internship with the company last summer, she landed a full-time job and was placed in their competitive ACE Rotation Program for promising new employees. “You never know where life can take you,” she says. “I’m always pushing to do my best work, putting myself out there and not limiting myself.” From Mizzou to Microsoft
WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK The weekend before Kevin Hasselfeld went home to St. Louis to start chemotherapy for testicular cancer, his fraternity brothers threw him a party. Many shaved their heads in solidarity. The gesture felt good, but during subsequent months of treatment and recovery, a quieter kind of support sustained him. “My [Delta Upsilon] pledge brothers would message me, following up to see how I was doing,” says Hasselfeld, BS Acc, M Acc ’11. “That meant a lot.” Now an assistant controller at a software company in Overland Park, Kansas, he knows what fraternities are all about: “coming together in times of difficulty or happiness and really having each other’s backs.”
