Finding the Latina in Me Throughout my life growing up in a small town in northern Florida, I was always the only Latina in my class. When I entered the University of Florida in the fall of 2001, I searched for ways to explore my heritage. I attended an organizational fair with booths promoting different groups on campus. One was for Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority. At first I was skeptical of sororities. I remembered seeing the huge houses on Sorority Row and the hundreds of girls walking from house to house during rush trying to obtain a bid from their chosen sororities. The selection process seemed to be superficial and based more on looks than character. I was convinced I didn’t need to “buy” my friends. Still, something drew me to the table.

Ashley Cisneros graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in December 2004.

Two professional-looking women greeted me from behind the table. One happened to be Mexican-Japanese and the other was Cuban. I expected to be bombarded with heaps of fliers and pressured to sign their contact list, as I had experienced at other organizations’ booths. Not this one.

The women introduced themselves, and before long, we had been talking for almost 20 minutes and were laughing like friends who had known each other for years. The more I dug, the more I realized Lambda Theta Alpha was what I had been looking for my entire life. It was a sisterhood of positive women from various backgrounds and cultures who shared the desire to better themselves and their community. I could look at them and see aspects of myself.

I became a sister of Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority during the early morning hours of March 3, 2002. The orientation process brought me together with eight other dynamic women in my pledge class. It taught me more about myself than I’d ever known. The orientation process strengthened me and taught me to live my life according to the sorority’s principles of Unity, Love and Respect. I was now part of a national network and support system of other women who sought to empower minorities. More importantly, I gained Sisters whom I could count on no matter what — even to come pick me up at 3 a.m. if I needed a ride.

My sorority became my home away from home. My Sisters and I rented apartments near one another and often walked back and forth between them to visit. We knew everything about each other, visited each other’s families back home and cared for each other when we were sick. We cooked for each other, went to the gym together, went to church together, shared all-nighters before big exams and partied together. I grew to know everything about my sorority Sisters: their fears, their dreams, their allergies, and which ex-novio still made them cry.

Lambda Theta Alpha is still part of my family today. Since graduation, I speak to my sorority Sisters every day and make weekly trips to see them. I keep abreast of birth and wedding announcements, job openings, and calls to action on our national listervs. Lambda Theta Alpha gave me a second family, a mentorship program, a networking system, a counselor, a fitness trainer and a car-pooling system, all in one. It really became my way of life. Every day one of my Sisters inspires me, no matter if she pledged in 1975 or the spring of 2005.

Lambda Theta Alpha didn’t make me the woman I am today; it enhanced the strengths I already had and refined my way of thinking. I guess sororities weren’t so bad after all.