ST. LOUIS
Magic Markers, bubble wands and jungle-animal stickers aren’t often found in the average college student’s backpack. But for the women of Mu Tau Rho, a new sorority for student-mothers at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, those toys are every bit as vital as laptop computers and e-mail accounts.
“I wanted to be in a sorority so bad,” says Danielle Cooney, a 22-year-old sophomore math major. “Then I had my son. I didn’t have a baby sitter to do all that.”
Cooney, whose son Jordan is 3, soon realized that other women on the UMSL campus — a commuter school where the average student age is 27 — sought those bonds of sisterhood while also struggling to raise and provide for their children.
Mu Tau Rho stands for “Mothers Together in Parenting,” members say. The uppercase Greek letter “rho” is identical to the English capital “P.”
Traditional sororities held little appeal for women such as Jessica Overstreet, 26, a recent graduate and mother of a 5-year-old boy.
“I did all my partying before,” she says. “Now I’ve got birthday parties.”
