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When it comes to the word “sorority,” people tend to think of words like: parties, Greek, sisters, charity, events and even spoiled, and usually national sororities live up to these descriptions.

However, for newer and smaller sororities, expectations could be completely different. They aren’t upheld to expectations of previous chapters and they are building their sisterhood from the ground up.

Grand View University’s new sorority, Gamma Phi Kappa, officially started recruiting girls toward the beginning of the year. They have been growing more and more ever since and are working toward gathering girls into their Greek life and teaching them about giving back to the community and making new friends.

Sarah Sharairi, junior and sorority president, currently holds chapter meetings every week to get the girls together and talk about plans for the sorority, as well as how they’re moving along with their philanthropy.

“We focus on hospice care as well as veterans,” Renae Savage, junior and recruitment chair said. “We really want to give to the community in many ways but mostly health care.”

When it comes to officially choosing who can join, Gamma Phi Kappa differs from national sororities again due to the fact that there is very little that will change the board’s mind about inviting a girl into the sisterhood.

“You have to not really be a good person in order to not get into the sorority because everyone that has joined so far is a goal driven girl, has good grades, and a great personality,” Savage said.

One of the biggest things that the board looks at when determining a girl’s entrance into the sisterhood is their ability to keep the name of the sorority and the school in tact.

“If they post racial slurs or inappropriate things on their social media pages then we know better than to let them into the sorority and disrupt it that way,” Alyssa Stripe, junior and Scholarship chair said.

As for the years to come, the girls are hoping to keep the Greek life expanding and continuing the tradition throughout campus.

“We definitely see this continuing to grow after we graduate,” Shariri said. There are a lot of girls that would gladly step up and take an executive position. We’ve had a lot of questions about that recently on what happens if they want to be an executive. There’s plenty interested in at least taking our spot once we graduate and continuing to live on the Greek life on campus, which is a relief. I’ve even been talking to a guy about his interest in starting a fraternity as well here at GV.”