Correction Appended
Evelyn Sample-Oates, a 1988 graduate of the School of Communication and an Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. sister, said seeing today’s sisters made her return to AU feel like coming home.
“It’s like déjà vu,” Sample-Oates said, AKA’s international regional director. “This was me 27 years ago.”
Exactly 34 years after the Lambda Zeta Chapter of AKA was chartered at AU, about 50 AKA sisters, also known as sorors, returned to AU for dinner and speeches to reminisce and celebrate their chapter’s history.
“They’re young enough to be our daughters, but they’re our sisters,” Sample-Oates said of the current chapter members.
Attendees included the five current chapter members, recent graduates, sisters from the 1980s and ‘90s and Soror Diane Johnson, one of the 19 founding members of Lambda Zeta Chapter.
“You feel like a proud parent,” Johnson said.
AKA Second Vice President Althea de Guzman spoke about Lambda Zeta’s history.
“I feel so honored to be in the presence of the living history of this chapter,” she said.
AKA sister and AU alumna Cherry Middleton Clipper said that it’s “wonderful” to return to AU and check on how her former chapter is doing.
“We hope they keep going and stay strong,” Clipper said. “We want to make sure they keep the tradition going.”
AKA is dedicated to sisterhood and service, with an emphasis on the latter, de Guzman said.
De Guzman said that she and her sisters perform monthly acts of community service, and that the older sorors often come to support their endeavors.
“We’ll be holding a car wash and you can bet that every soror in the graduate chapter will bring their cars through in order to help us,” de Guzman said.
Nancy Gaskins, Lambda Zeta Chapter’s graduate adviser, said the women of Lambda Zeta are qualified to carry on the traditions of AKA.
“To me, they exemplify sisterhood at its best,” Gaskins said.
Johnson and her line sisters —?those who go through the membership intake process together — made up the first Lambda Zeta line, which they called “Salongo.”
Salongo is Zairian for, “We come together to create something beautiful out of love.”
During her speech, Sample-Oates thanked the sisters of Lambda Zeta for staying true to the roadmap Salongo laid 34 years ago.
AKA President Christine Edmond said that it’s wonderful that people from Lambda Zeta’s past could reunite with old friends and meet the current sisters.
“They are the foundation of this chapter,” Edmond said. “Without them, we wouldn’t be here.”
llandau@theeagleonline.com
Correction: An earlier headline accompanying this article misstated the age of AU's AKA chapter. The chapter is celebrating its 34th anniversary.
