The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

    Empowering our women, empowering our future

    Students involved in the three sororities that attended and hosted the “Put That Woman First” event got the chance to share some of their own positive and negative experiences involving their own empowerment. 
    Nathaniel Callaway/The Lion's Roar

    The National Pan-Hellenic Council’s sororities held “Put That Woman First-Empowering Our Women” on campus this past week.

    The event, hosted on Wednesday Feb. 8 from 6 to 10 p.m. in the Pennington Room 107 was exactly what the name implied. The night was meant to be an empowerment session for the women that were in attendance. The idea was to make it so that they could be confident in themselves, and to even help each other out in the process. 

    The night began with the presidents of each of the sororities present, Delta Sigma Theta, Sigma Gamma Rho and Zeta Phi Beta, introducing the ice breaker where they all split up into groups and shared some of the negative things that are said about them. They then shared those things with the rest of the groups and were asked to turn those negatives into positives. Angela James, the Assistant Director of UCC-Disability Services and the guest speaker of the night, helped to inspire the girls by playing off this activity to be “Petty with a Purpose,” with her point being, that it was okay to be petty as long as you used it for a good cause. James is currently pursuing her Doctorate in Counseling Education at the University of New Orleans.

    “Even if we are in a different group, we are still bound by this idea that we are black women who believe in excellence,” said James. “We are black women who are trying to achieve the highest ideals of ourselves. So, with that in mind, I would like for your petty from now on to have a purpose. I’m not telling you not to be petty. Be as petty as you like, but help each other out. We are going to work on our petty having a purpose. Because at the end of the day when all our colors are stripped away, we are still black women.”

    Mattie Hawkins, President of Delta Sigma Theta and a senior in sports management, also shared the reasons why she wants to do what she does for the university.

    “We’re helping build campus leaders,” said Hawkins. “It’s a mentor and mentee pairing where you’re helping your sister come up. We are helping each other up and that’s really what I get out of it. I got involved on campus my freshman year fall ‘13, I wasn’t too involved my freshman year, but then my sophomore year, I became a mentor. Then I got in Delta Sigma Theta, and ever since then, I’ve just been upfront as a leader on campus.”

    Angela James, the guest speaker for the night, gave a talk to the girls encouraging to not only be inspired, but to inspire each other.
    Nathaniel Callaway/The Lion's Roar

     

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