Last week, Mississippi State University officially recognized the Starkville branch of Kappa Alpha Pi as a student organization. This was the result of multiple months of hard work on behalf of the organization’s executive team as well as collaboration with the MSU Center for Student Activities.
Kappa Alpha Pi (KAPi) is a gender-inclusive fraternity dedicated to connecting students with shared interests in professional development, public service and community engagement. KAPi was founded in 2007 at the University of Michigan and has branches all across the United States.
Abigail Tucker, who serves as president for the MSU branch of KAPi, first heard about the organization from one of her friends at Auburn University. Tucker then decided to make the opportunities through Kappa Alpha Pi available to the students here at Mississippi State.
After filing an online application through the national KAPi website and completing a series of interviews over the summer, Tucker was appointed as the first president of the KAPi branch in Starkville. Tucker’s first task for forming the rest of the club was selecting her executive team. Tucker had to select people she knew she could rely on to perform their given roles within the club.
These executive members currently include VP of Membership Suzanne Wells, VP of Standards Mary Evins Tapley, VP of Communications Madison Holcomb, VP of Public Relations Katie Pertuit, VP of Finance Nash Dowlen and VP of Recruitment Julia Ramsay.
Tucker’s next job for forming the club was to select a team of directors. These directors would work under the executive team to help organize events and recruit new members. Tucker promoted applications for the different director roles through the MSU KAPi Instagram. She would also digitally message various people within the pre-law and government programs at Mississippi State and ask them to apply.
“After I had everybody appointed, that’s when formal recruitment began,” Tucker said.
Recruiting members without being an official organization was a great challenge, according to Tucker. While the minimum requirements for an organization to be recognized by MSU is only six members, Tucker wanted to go above and beyond to form as many connections as possible.
Directors, executives and Tucker herself worked to recruit as many people as they could. Julia Ramsey, the Vice President of Recruitment, was highly involved in this process. Ramsey was able to use her connections within her sorority Phi Mu to spread the word about Kappa Alpha Pi to other members of Greek Life at MSU.
“Social media was also a big help,” Ramsey said.
The club would post recruitment events on its Instagram page, which was also used to send out follow requests and digital messages to any potential members. Tucker spoke about the club’s recruitment events as well.
“We had events off campus because we couldn’t do as many things on campus,” Tucker said. “We had an event in Bop’s. We’ve had things at local culture, just trying to get us to kind of bond with each other off campus as well.”
In the end, Kappa Alpha Pi ended up gathering 38 members total. These members each completed an initiation process during which they shared information about themselves and their background in public service. This included resume overviews and an in-person interview to show whether the student had a history or interest in public service.
After overcoming the barriers within the recruitment process, Kappa Alpha Pi was able to work with the MSU Center for Student Activities to become an official campus organization.
Taylor Roberson is a coordinator for the Center for Student Activities who oversees the Student Organization Committee and manages club registration on Cowbell Connect. Roberson worked closely with Abigail Tucker and the other representatives of KAPi to help finalize their club’s constitution. Once the constitution was finished, the Student Organization Committee, which is a student government branch consisting of both students and MSU faculty, were able to vote on the approval of Kappa Alpha Pi as an official club.
Roberson also worked with James Chamberlain, the advisor for Kappa Alpha Pi and an associate professor for the department of political science, in getting KAPi through the recognition process.
Roberson explained that there was a reason that the process took longer than usual for Kappa Alpha Pi.
“This summer, we had the most organizations we have ever had apply, so we were a little backed up,” Roberson said.
Roberson was also proud to announce that the Center for Student Activities has successfully caught up with approving and denying these organizations and is open to hearing from new applicants.
As of now, Kappa Alpha Pi is excited to arrange their future meetings and events as an official Mississippi State student organization. Their highlighted events include a semi-formal this week and a Friendsgiving later this month.
Tucker is also looking to the future.
“Then this spring, we’re going to have speakers come in,” Tucker said. “So I’m very excited about that.”
Kappa Alpha Pi hopes to continue growing and encouraging students to take initiative in connecting with others within their major.
