With Recruitment Week over at Kenyon, the College’s Epsilon Tau Chapter of Alpha Sigma Tau (AST) is facing a crisis in membership. AST was Kenyon’s first national sorority and, along with Delta Delta Delta (Tri Delta), one of only two such organizations on campus. But after losing the majority of its members and failing to recruit newcomers, the national AST organization has sent representatives to Kenyon in an uncertain attempt to revive its only Ohio collegiate chapter.

These representatives hosted Recruitment Week events, posted on the Kenyon AST Instagram account, invited students to come chat with them at Wiggin Street Coffee and tabled in the Peirce Hall atrium. When the Collegian asked one of the representatives for comment, she declined, stating that national AST bylaws prohibited her from doing so. She also informed the Collegian that the representatives will be leaving campus on Friday.

“When I joined AST as a freshman, it had a reputation as the most welcoming and inclusive sorority,” former member Megan Dellenbaugh ’26 wrote in an email to the Collegian. “It didn’t have traditional sorority vibes — it was small and many of us were queer in some way. For a while, our selling point was that we were the only national sorority on campus. Our dues were more expensive than the local sororities, but it was worth it because members would get benefits local sororities could not offer.”

Kenyon’s AST is one of 78 chapters across the country and is governed by the national Alpha Sigma Tau organization. On Kenyon’s Greek Organizations webpage, AST’s description says that it “welcomes women and nonbinary students into an inclusive, inspiring, safe and joyful space to grow as siblings and individuals.” But AST’s progressive values have led to a conflict with national representatives seeking to enforce other ideas.

“For as long as I can remember, we didn’t have the best relationship with Nationals,” former chapter President of AST Lucy Farnham ’26 wrote to the Collegian. “When I was a sophomore, I remember our president having some very tense conversations and interactions with Nationals. They did not like how we ran things, and my junior year (when I was president) we began to attempt to mend this relationship. It became very clear to us that our goals and Nationals’ goals were not the same.

“For example, we had a longstanding tradition of referring to each other as ‘siblings’ rather than ‘sisters,’ as we were a group that sought to create an inclusive and safe space for all, not just cisgender women. This was the main reason why I, and I suspect many previous members, joined in the first place. We accepted both female-identifying and nonbinary members, and Nationals was not fond of this and decided that we must only use the term ‘sister.’”

“That conversation was extremely difficult to have with the rest of the chapter and, for me, it is a big part of why I ultimately decided to leave the group,” Farnham wrote. “There were discussions of whether we could sever ties with Nationals and remain on campus as a local group, but these conversations never went anywhere. I think the difficulty in reconciling our local identity and values with the national organization is a big part of why AST is where it is now on this campus.”

Dellenbaugh noted the other factors that led to AST’s decline, including a dramatic drop in membership of a sorority with numbers that were already low: “When the class above me graduated, we lost a lot of members — plus, five of the people in our class were going abroad in the spring during recruitment. Because it was so small, events started being mandatory, which made the org less fun. Then, all the people in the senior class dropped.”

Like Farnham, Dellenbaugh saw a conflict between the values of Kenyon’s chapter of AST and those of its national representatives, especially regarding inclusivity. “One of my favorite things about AST was how inclusive it was — when I joined, a lot of us were queer, nonbinary and/or trans. Several of us were atheist or Jewish. When a representative came to campus, AST nationals made a point of requiring us to say ‘sisters,’ and saying a Christian prayer twice every meeting. In addition, they looked down on our choice to admit a trans member, despite her being a great member of the sorority. The thing that made AST wonderful was it was a national sorority but felt like a close-knit group of people that were genuinely friends with each other. It felt like a Kenyon sorority,” Dellenbaugh wrote.

On Jan. 17, before its failure to recruit new members during Recruitment Week, AST Kenyon’s Instagram account posted that “Alpha Sigma Tau is so excited for the Kenyon rebrand.” But despite these ongoing attempts to revitalize Alpha Sigma Tau at Kenyon, Dellenbaugh is not optimistic of a return to the inclusive culture that made her AST experience positive: “If the nationals representatives do restart AST, it won’t be Kenyon’s. Expect it to embody the negative stereotypes of a sorority.”

Editor-in-Chief Dorothy Yaqub ’26 contributed to reporting.

News Assistant Leah Beller ’26 is a former member of Alpha Sigma Tau.