When looking into the history of UCA homecoming queens, one can’t help but recognize a prevalent pattern: Every single homecoming queen for the past 10 years has been nominated by her sorority.

The issue is not that sorority members are chosen for homecoming queen; the women who win homecoming queen have worked hard to get involved on campus and deserve their positions.

But when sorority members make up the majority of candidates running for homecoming queen, the diversity of what UCA offers when it comes to Registered Student Organizations isn’t fully represented.

Homecoming queens are nominated through a popularity contest. Essentially, any RSO can nominate up to three women for homecoming queen. From there, eight women are chosen to be on homecoming court and the student body votes for one of these eight to become homecoming queen.

According to UCA’s Orgsync, there are a total of 190 RSOs on campus in 2018. Of those 190 RSOs, 10 are sororities. Of those 10 sororities, only three, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Zeta and Alpha Sigma Tau, have dominated homecoming queen nominations in the past 10 years, according to Echo articles from the past 10 years. Five of the 10 homecoming queens in the past 10 years have been nominated by the same sorority: Alpha Sigma Tau.

This means three sororities — representing 1.6 percent of current RSOs — have dominated 100 percent of the past 10 years of homecoming queen competitions. Additionally, one sorority — representing 0.5 percent of current RSOs —  has dominated 50 percent of homecoming queen competitions.

These numbers are staggering, and with such a vast number of RSOs, having such a small portion of them win every single homecoming queen competition for the past decade makes one wonder what being homecoming queen really means. At this point, one might as well name homecoming queen for what she is: Greek Life Homecoming Queen.

This is not to say homecoming queens haven’t earned their titles. According to past Echo articles, many homecoming queens have been involved in multiple RSOs throughout the course of their college careers.

This also isn’t to criticize homecoming queens, but rather encourage an increase in RSO participation outside of just Greek life.

The problem is that many students not linked to Greek life don’t see the appeal of voting for homecoming queen. It’s seen as a Greek life competition because mostly people involved in Greek life vote. This means that mostly Greek life candidates are voted as homecoming queen and maid of honor, which repeats the cyclical belief that the homecoming queen title is reserved for Greek Life.

However, homecoming queen represents the university and is not just for people in Greek life. She represents the face of UCA. According to past Echo articles, homecoming queens have multiple responsibilities: They have to give speeches and show up at certain events, so their responsibilities stretch beyond beauty. Homecoming queen responsibilities require her to be the face of UCA, which means she should represent all of UCA.

In order to increase diversity, more RSOs should nominate three women for the application process. And even if their nominations don’t go through, more students should vote for homecoming queen. Essentially, make homecoming queen what she’s supposed to be and not just a popularity contest between three campus sororities.