What makes a house a home – For Delta Zeta sisters, their home away from home finally gets a house

When Page King came to college, she was not going to be a sorority girl. 

So when she transferred to University of Idaho from Idaho State University, she moved into an apartment. She made friends. She joined clubs. She loved Moscow — despite everything, though, she still felt alone.

“How do I explain it?” King said. “I didn’t feel immersed, I guess. I was missing something, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

That’s why, halfway through her first year at UI, she snapped into Delta Zeta. Here, she found a family of 90 sisters welcoming her with open arms. The sisterhood was like nothing she could have imagined.

“When my boyfriend and I broke up, I called them, and I didn’t even say anything,” King said. “Two of them were over within minutes, and three more went and got coffee. We’re always there for each other — we can be like, hey, can you give me a ride? Or hey, I’ve had a rough day, can you bring me coffee?”

As King goes into her junior year, looking forward to her first formal recruitment and getting her own little sister, she can’t imagine not being a turtle under the pink and green banners of Delta Zeta.

The UI chapter of Delta Zeta was founded on campus in 2012, and the final class of founding members graduated last semester — it was an emotional time for the house, King said. Two years ago, these founding members undertook the huge task of recruiting members, getting their charter signed to officially become a national chapter of the house, and finding a place for the members to live.

They were successful. Delta Zeta now makes their home in Wallace, where they have a floor to themselves. King said they were allowed to renovate and decorate their temporary “house” to make it theirs. However, without a house, recruitment has been difficult.

When a potential new member goes through recruitment to find a sisterhood of her own, she picks her house based on how well she clicks with the sisters and how well her values align with theirs — the idea of formal recruitment is to pick a family, not a house. On the surface level, though, it’s hard not to let the gorgeous hardwood floors in one house or the assortment of cute throw pillows in another affect a decision. It can be tough, King said, to get women excited about the house when they don’t actually have a house. That will change soon.

Last spring, the members of Delta Zeta invited the UI campus to the official groundbreaking of their new house, which is scheduled to be completed August 2015. The design of the house is heavily influenced by the girls’ ideas and preferences. Since it’s going up over what is now a parking lot between Kappa Alpha Theta and Sigma Nu, which were founded at UI in 1920 and 1915, respectively, it’s exciting to feel like she and her sisters are leaving a legacy on campus, King said.

For now though, King and her sisters are keeping busy with or without a house, doing service for their philanthropy, going to formal dances, playing tug-of-war over Jell-O, or simply running lunch to a sister who’s stranded at work.

Hannah Shirley can be reached at [email protected]

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