Kappa Sigma, one of the largest fraternities in the United States and Canada, might be joining Plattsburgh State soon.
It was founded in the fall of 1869 at the University Of Virginia, Charlottesville by five students.
The fraternity, which has over 200,000 living members, including more than 20,000 undergraduates and 320 chapters, visited the campus Tuesday to present an information session about potentially starting a chapter here at PSU.
Held in the Alumni Conference Room, the information session ran for about an hour, and was attended by about 30 students, including some sisters from the Theta Alpha Lambda sorority who come bearing cookies to show their support for the potential arrival of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity.
The information session was hosted by Tyler Herring, director of recruitment and expansion for Kappa Sigma, and Matthew Bishop, the North East area recruitment manager.
“One of the main reasons as to why we would like to open a chapter here, at Plattsburgh State University, is due to the similarities that exist in our core values and beliefs,” said Herring, who was a 2013 initiate of the Theta-Zeta chapter at Eastern New Mexico University. “Kappa Sigma stands on four main pillars: fellowship, leadership, scholarship and service.”
Since its inception, the Kappa Sigma Endowment Fund has awarded more than $4.5 million in scholarships to qualified undergraduate members who have excelled in academics and campus involvement as well as about $1 million to the Military Heroes Campaign.
Matthew Bishop, who was a 2019 initiate of the Upsilon-Omicron chapter at the University Of New Haven, talked about how joining Kappa Sigma motivated him to excel academically.
“I joined Kappa Sigma with a GPA of 2.7 and was on the verge of dropping out of college,” Bishop said. “Kappa Sigma provided me with a sense of community and provided me with the motivation to actually start attending class and work towards my goals.”
Bishop also mentioned that Snapchat was actually developed by Evan Spiegel, and his two Kappa Sigma brothers, while they were undergraduate students at Stanford University. Spiegel was serving as the social chair at that time.
Neel Adalja, a current senior from India who is majoring in computer science and minoring in computer security, as well as a current member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity talked about the potential response that Kappa Sigma could receive.
“I think that their presence would be a great way to have some healthy competition and for expanding Greek life on campus,” Adalja said. “We would like to build strong relations with them and arrange events together in the future too if they decide to come here.”
