Female transfer students will have an opportunity this fall that has not been offered at UNA previously.

Senior Kallie Butler is starting a new organization for women who were previously in a sorority but are no longer active due to transferring.

As an initiated woman of a sorority, one may transfer to a new school and join the same sorority if that school offers it. However with UNA’s four National Panhellenic Sororities the one she belonged to was not an option here.

“When you’re a transfer, you feel like you always have to be so outgoing, and it can be hard,” Butler said.

All sorority women whose chapter is not on campus can join the group, Butler said.

Butler transferred to the University of North Alabama in the summer of 2015 for her junior year. She said changing schools excited her, but she was sad to leave her sorority where she had made a new home.

Butler said she first got the idea from her adviser, Assistant Professor of Communications Beth Garfrerick, who encouraged her to start a new group for already initiated women who have lost that sense of home and sisterhood.

“It started as an idea for independent study,” Garfrerick said. “It was an idea I had thought about for years because my own sorority did not have a chapter on campus.”

Butler said multiple girls have reached out to join this group and possibly become founding members of this new sorority.

Junior Caroline Hargett is a transfer student interested in the group. She said she hopes this organization becomes official.

“There is not an organization like this anywhere else,” she said. “This makes this a unique way for UNA to stand out and offer something new and exciting.”

Garfrerick said this organization might make UNA more appealing to transfer students.

“We have been growing in the amount of transfer students we have each year,” she said. “For those young women who come here where their sorority isn’t, they are left out in the cold.”

For women who know what it is like to be in a sorority, it might be hard to find another group of people who are helpful and supportive, Hargett said.

“We don’t want girls to feel excluded,” Butler said. “I know how it feels to see something I used to be apart of on campus everyday and long for that feeling once again.”

For women who have transferred and are looking for a new beginning, this might be the perfect opportunity, Butler said.

“I am looking for women who will stand up and become founding members of this new RSO that may lead to outstanding opportunities not only while at UNA, but for a lifetime,” she said.

To make this RSO possible, Butler needs as at least 10 women to join the group to reach their deadline by Nov. 1, she said.

“Once we become an official RSO, we will reveal our name to the rest of campus,” Butler said.

If you are an initiated woman looking for a new home, contact Kallie Butler at [email protected].