Sigma Delta
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- For sigma-delta in electronics, see Delta-sigma modulation.
Sigma Delta is a local sorority at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. First established on the campus in 1972, Sigma Delta, known as "Sigma Delt" by students, as a chapter of the national sorority Sigma Kappa. Dartmouth's Sigma Kappa chapter was not only the first sorority on Dartmouth's campus, but also the first sorority established at an Ivy League institution. Women were not permitted to enroll at Dartmouth until 1972 and women only spaces were an imperative experience for the newly matriculated women.
By the late 1980s Dartmouth's student population had diversified. No longer was the student body primarily white upper- class males (although even in 2005, wealthy white male account for an unproportional amount of the student body), but peoples of ethnic, sexual, and religious minorities were slowing beginning to be integrated into the Dartmouth campus. With the diversification of the student body, the sisterhood of Dartmouth's chapter of Sigma Kappa experienced an influx of women of minorities who wished to have not only a female space, but also a space that would embrace their personal indentities as women regardless of age, class, religion, or ethnicity. In 1989, Dartmouth's Sigma Kappa chapter split from the national organization citing that the national rituals were too heavily steeped in Christianity. With this move, Sigma Delta was established as Dartmouth's first local sorority.
