Knowing he wanted to study at Wichita State and having heard his father tell him stories about his days in Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity, freshman Daniel Joseph Pabst started letting WSU fraternities know he was interested in joining.

Then he heard something that changed everything.

“I was contacted by a couple of fraternities at first but then I heard rumors that Lambda Chi was coming in,” Pabst said.

As it turned out, that rumor was true.

His father had told him it was one of the greatest experiences of his life being in a fraternity and after one week of Lambda Chi Alpha being on campus, Pabst was the fourth person to make a formal bid.

“We started recruiting a week before school started,” said Brian Watts, educational leadership consultant for Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity. “We are currently at 16 guys who have made formal bids.

“We chose WSU because there has not been a fraternity expansion in 15 years. It was a campus we felt we could survive on and it would be a good fit for us and a good fit for WSU.”

Some things Lambda Chi looked at before deciding to start a colony at WSU were student enrollment, how many fraternities are on campus, and average chapter size.

WSU was one of five other chapters this fall to start a new Lambda Chi Alpha colony. The last successful fraternity founded at WSU was Sigma Alpha Epsilon in 1965 with the last non-successful fraternity being Pi Kappa Alpha, which closed down in 2001.

“We knew that it was needed, we knew that we had men out there who were not finding the opportunity they wanted with the fraternities that we had,” said Gina Stewart, coordinator of fraternity and sorority life at WSU.

Close to 5 percent of WSU’s population is Greek, Stewart said. The already active chapters do not want to grow any larger than their usual 30-60 men, so Stewart says the solution is to bring in new chapters and expand that way.

Next year Pi Kappa Phi will also be colonizing at WSU.

Before a colony can chapter, it needs to have met certain regulations within a minimum of one year. After that year it can officially become a chapter.

“I see us chartering in a year,” Pabst said. “I think we are going to hit the ground running. I see Lambda Chi going really far at Wichita State.”

Because the educational leadership consultants will only be at WSU a short time, some of the men who have placed a bid already hold offices within the fraternity.

Among them is Domanique Cary, the first president of WSU’s Lambda Chi Alpha colony.

Lambda Chi Alpha has been working on creating relationships with the other fraternities but Stewart said it might not be so easy with the sororities.

“The fraternities have done a good job working with Lambda Chi and reached out and introduced themselves versus some of the sororities who are still a little hesitant,” Stewart said.

To learn more about joining Lambda Chi Alpha, go to wichita.edu/greeklife.