There are many organizations we can join as collegians and alumnae. However, Theta isn’t like other organizations; we’re different. Our members are different. We aren’t afraid to stand out; to be authentic or to make a difference together. It may not always be easy, but it’s
unwavering and real. We are women supporting women, and we inspire one another to be our best selves every day.

We’ve been doing this since our founding at Indiana Asbury College (now DePauw University) on January 27, 1870. But we can actually trace our beginnings to three years earlier—specifically, September 11, 1867, when Alice Allen, Laura Beswick, Bettie Locke, and Mary Simmons entered Asbury as its first women students. They were taunted by male students who feared that the admission of women students would sully the college’s reputation, and they endured both tacit and overt discrimination from faculty and townspeople. In establishing Kappa Alpha Theta, our founders created a women’s fraternity in which they could learn, grow, support one another, and be part of something larger than themselves. In her later years, Bettie Locke Hamilton wrote, “We realized somehow that we weren’t going to college just for ourselves, but for all the girls who would follow after us, if we could just win out.”