“Now instead of wearing all of our Beta shirts, we’ll have Alpha Sigma Tau, their letters, their pins, their colors,” said Samantha Lintner, junior English major.
The nine active members of BLA were inducted into the national sorority of AST Tuesday night in a pinning ceremony where members received pins and t-shirts for their new sorority.
“They are a small but strong sisterhood,” said Laura Clark, national director of extension for AST, when asked why AST choose to become affiliated with BLA. “They don’t have a house but they’ve been able to recruit and thrive. They have the highest GPA of all the sororities here. That tells us that they are serious about their studies and they are serious about responsibility and they are going to be good leaders.”
The ceremony was small and private and members of the media were asked to leave while the new members were inducted.
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Even though the nine women are considered members of AST, they will not be officially inducted until after formal recruitment in the fall.
“This is their official affiliation ceremony,” Clark said. “It’s when they make that commitment and pledge that they will aim for our values and our purpose.”
Members of AST and representatives of the national sorority were present to initiate the Betas into AST.
“AST was particularly interested in Emporia State because it has a strong and thriving Greek community that is really values based,” Clark said. “We were really thrilled to see that they opened for extension because we have been here before.”
The Ioata chapter of AST was originally a sorority on ESU’s campus from 1923 to 1989. Emily Readinger, freshman undecided major and new AST member, said that they closed for financial reasons.
“We were wanting to go national and it just seemed like a good fit so they could come back and we could go national,” Readinger said.
With the formation of AST on campus, BLA will cease to exist. However, the alumnae have been very supportive of the transition, Clark said.
“We don’t ignore the fact that they were a local sorority,” Clark said. “Their alumnae are wonderful and they’ve helped so much. We are happy that they founded that common goal and that purpose together but they are going to continue that now with Alpha Sigma Tau values.”
In May of 2008, the Panhellenic Association, the governing body of the sororities, voted to let BLA become affiliated with a national sorority.
“We sent out communication to all the national sororities to let them know that we were looking to bring another national sorority here,” said Jason Bosch, assistant director of student involvement for Greek life. “We looked pretty strongly at Alpha Sigma Tau because the Beta members found some similarities in their values and the history that Alpha Sigma Tau has here on Campus.”
BLA had a large role in choosing who they wanted to become affiliated with.
“We wanted to affiliate with Alpha Sigma Tau because they were here before and we’d have the support and help of past alum,” said Whitney Burrows, junior elementary education major and Ioata chapter of AST president and former BLA president.
The group made the decision based on the shared principles that both sororities were created with.
“The women wanted to affiliate with a group that they found similar values in,” Clark said. “The local sorority definitely had a role in that decision making. (The other sororities) really wanted Beta to have that choice of who they wanted to affiliate with.”
Although BLA was a local sorority, they were fairly active on campus. As a national sorority, they will be able to participate in activities that were off limits to them before.
“We’re really looking forward to doing formal recruitment,” Burrows said. “We weren’t allowed to do that before as a local sorority so in the fall Alpha Sigma Tau will be a part of the recruitment process.”
Now that AST has been reestablished at ESU, the members are already working to be a full sorority, like similar sororities on ESU’s campus.
“Our goal is to recruit to the average size of sororities here, that’s about 50 women,” Clark said. “We want to be an integral part of the Panhellenic community right away. So we will be participating in Greek week and informal recruitment.”
BLA was created on March 13, 2003 by three students who used their first initials to name the sorority.
Ashley Peaches/The Bulletin
Student loans saddle both kinds of seniors – graduates and grandparents
The Washington Post April 8, 2012 | Michelle Singletary Come graduation time next month, there will be grandparents – many with student loans themselves – sitting at the ceremonies for their grandchildren, who will leave college with their own education debt. Some in both groups will take those loans to their graves.
The balance of student loans in the United States has been growing for years. Until the Great Recession, people thought the level of debt carried by borrowers was manageable. They thought the good jobs would come, making the debt a good investment. This sentiment is changing in the face of the reality that the loans are a hardship for many, especially seniors who either took out loans for themselves or borrowed and or co-signed for their children or grandchildren.
Using data from Equifax credit reports, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that people 50 and older are carrying nearly $135 million in student-loan debt. Those 60 or older have student-loan balances of more than $36 million. here citi student loans
The total outstanding student-loan balance stands at about $870 billion, surpassing the total balances due on credit cards ($693 billion) and auto loans ($730 billion).
Of the 37 million borrowers who had student loan balances as of the third quarter last year, 14.4 percent, or about 5.4 million borrowers, had at least one past-due student loan account.
“With college enrollments increasing and the costs of attendance rising, this balance is expected to continue its upward trend,” the New York Fed report said. “In sum, student loan debt is not just a concern for the young. . . . Given that student loans are an indispensable tool for educational advancement, this form of debt will remain a critical policy focus for generations to come.” You see, this is the problem I’ve had all along with student loans. The loans have become indispensable. As far back as 2006, Deanne Loonin, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center, predicted that many student-loan borrowers would face a lifetime of debt with little or no chance of escape.
“For all too many Americans seeking to advance themselves through education, the student loan programs are similar to a bait-and- switch scam,” Loonin wrote in the report “No Way Out: Student Loans, Financial Distress, and the Need for Policy Reform.” “They are lured in at the outset, usually when they are quite young, by flexible underwriting and eligibility standards and the promise of economic rewards through education. After school ends, this aura of benevolence quickly disappears.” Just recently, the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys provided more evidence in yet another report that student loans are the next “debt bomb” that will result in another economic crisis. The group’s members say they are seeing an influx of people who want to file for bankruptcy to get rid of the loans but can’t. in our site citi student loans
During a massive overhaul of the bankruptcy laws in 2005, lenders succeeded in making private student loans as difficult to discharge through bankruptcy as federal student loans, which are backed by the U.S. government. Compared with private loans that often have variable interest rates, federal loans typically have lower interest rates and offer better repayment terms and options.
Student-loan debt can only be discharged if the debtor can prove that repayment of the loan would result in “undue hardship.” But few people have the money it takes to pay for such litigation, the bankruptcy attorneys’ association said.
Legislation was introduced last year in the House and Senate that would allow private student-loan debt to be discharged in bankruptcy. Borrowers would still have to pay off any federal loans, however.
Getting that legislation passed will be tough and, really, it won’t solve the problem. Ever since I started this column in 1997, I’ve cautioned against the growing reliance on debt to fund a college education. I never embraced the notion that student loans should be viewed as “good” debt. Hearing this kind of pitch, people didn’t see the dangers in having debt that could be stretched out for 20 to 40 years.
This is no Chicken Little story. The sky is falling for many borrowers who are dragging student-loan debt into their senior years. We have to act to come up with a comprehensive plan to eliminate the overreliance on debt for education because the debris from this debt bomb has already dropped on far too many families.
Readers can write to Michelle Singletary at The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, or [email protected]. Personal responses may not be possible, and comments or questions may be used in a future column, with the writer’s name, unless otherwise requested. To read previous Color of Money columns, go to postbusiness.com.
Michelle Singletary
