Marquette University Interfraternity Council voted unanimously Wednesday night to invite Delta Tau Delta fraternity to establish a colony on campus.

“We’re really excited,” said IFC President Alex Landry, a senior in the College of Business Administration. “They have a lot of excited alumni that I’m looking forward to working with. We’re ready to hit the ground running and fall with them.”

Landry said Delta Tau Delta had a presence on Marquette’s campus in the past. He said it was the first fraternity to establish a chapter at Marquette after a ban on national social fraternities was lifted in 1968. Landry said, however, he was not able to find exactly when Delta Tau Delta left campus.

Although Delta Tau Delta was invited by IFC, it still has a couple more steps to go through before it can officially establish a colony. The organization still needs to be approved by both the university administration and the Marquette Student Government Student Organizations Committee.

The push toward expansion began last year when IFC was approached by an interest group hoping to bring a new fraternity to campus. That group is made up of Jason Kurtyka and Thomas Schick, juniors in the College of Arts & Sciences, and Matthew Walker, a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. The three had their request approved in October when IFC voted to open for expansion. In January, IFC accepted 14 applications from national organizations. The interest group ultimately selected Delta Tau Delta after narrowing down the list to a group of four that included Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Kappa Psi and Delta Upsilon.

Kurtyka, who spoke on behalf of the group, said they chose the organization because it aligned closely with its values.

“Their main motto is ‘Committed to Lives of Excellence,’ and that really resonated with us and with the values we wrote out last summer,” Kurtyka said. “But when they came to visit, I think that’s when we really locked it in with them. We liked the two guys who came out who shared personal experiences about what it means to be a part of Delta Tau Delta.”

After the university and MUSG approve the organization, the next step will be colonization. The representative that will be assisting in colonization would be the same one who led the process at Northwestern University in 2011, which Kurtyka said was important to their selection. The organization, while being involved with the colonization process, will likely encourage the interest group to shape the colony to reflect both their own values and the values of the Marquette Greek community.

The group will begin recruiting members informally next semester, and will host its first official rush next spring. Kurtyka said the biggest part of colonization will be finding members who will continue the development of the chapter.

“We’re going to graduate pretty soon and we need to know that we’ve found people who will really continue what we’ve started,” Kurtyka said. “That’s really the key to the whole colonization process.”