Recently, a article in The Atlantic chastised the rest of the mainstream media for making fun of a email leak from the University of Southern California’s Alpha Chi Omega chapter, which detailed detailed wardrobe and makeup guidelines for its sorority members during recruitment week. Internet scolds have a field day with directives like, “If you don’t wear the required makeup, I will stop you and apply it myself” or “Your hair should be a normal color.” No crazy shades, no colors you wouldn’t see in nature.
The Atlantic article deemed the mandates harmless and criticism of them gratuitous. “Sorority recruitment outfits?” Please. There are better problems to solve,” says the author, pointing to alcohol abuse, hazing and sexual assault.
And of course, telling members to wear Spanx and straighten their hair is much less offensive than telling them to line up in order chest size. But calling the rules aimed at ensuring compliance with the physical appearance of commitments “harmless” is not entirely accurate either.
Circumventing the undermining problem of women’s body image anxiety – as a an astute observer said: “sisterhood should go against superficiality”: Sorority policies seeking visual identity are troubling for another important reason. Dismissing such practices as harmless fuels the idea that perpetuating the homogeneity of Greek life is acceptable. Promoting some physical resemblance when trying to attract new members means that the people you attract will look like you. Resemblance becomes resemblance.
Focusing on the appearance of pledges only fuels the elitist tendency of most fraternities and sororities; that is, they are predominantly white, wealthy, and Christian. (If we want to focus on appearance, let’s just take a look at the National Panhellenic Conference Board of Directors. Do you see anyone out there with “bushy” eyebrows?)
While other issues like hazing gained national attention and were condemned by the National Greek Life Organization, exclusionary recruiting policies continued to persist, largely unchanged.
Segregation and discrimination are illegal in fraternities and sororities, but they are far from nonexistent. Even though Greek institutions are not required to release membership demographics, a quick search provides plenty of anecdotal evidence demonstrating that institutions that have been historically dominated by the white elite have not suddenly become more diverse, especially when recruiting emails explicitly support uniformity. “We should not think that organizations traditionally based on exclusion will suddenly become inclusive. » declared Matthew Hughey, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut who studies the interaction between race and Greek life.
Take the University of Alabama as an example. The school was put in the spotlight in 2013 when the newspaper brought national attention to the fact that Kennedi Cobb, a perfect potential new member — never mind the fact that she was black — received no offers from any of the 16 sororities on campus. In its entire history, college sororities had previously only admitted only one black member.
Marie Claire reported that the reason sorority members gave for rejecting potential black recruits was that they feared it would prevent fraternities from inviting them to parties. Their fears were not unfounded. Hughey states in his research that “when a White Greek-letter organization (WGLO) accepts non-white members, such actions often create a stir within the “Greek-letter” population, resulting in praise from university officials and subtle forms of stigmatization from other WGLOs.
In the 1950s, white suburban neighborhoods that welcomed new black families saw their property values decline. White families would protest and even riot when black families attempted to buy homes in their neighborhood – the most famous example being Daisy and Bill Myerswho moved to the suburb of Levittown, Pennsylvania.
White sorority sisters at the University of Alabama also feared that admitting a black member would diminish the status of their organization. In response to this discrimination, 100 students demonstrated and university president Judy Bonner ordered a wave of informal gatherings, which resulted in 11 invitations being sent to black women. Marie Claire called it “a revolution in sorority conflict.”
However, despite these 11 invitations, many of our country’s Greek life organizations lack diversity. And that’s a real problem.
Diversity in Greek life is important. Like predominantly white neighborhoods, which typically have better housing, better schools, better transportation, and thus better outcomes for their residents, white Greek-letter organizations concentrate privilege and power among their members. Fraternity men, for example, have made up 85 percent of Supreme Court justices since 1910, and the same proportion of Fortune 500 executives. This is no coincidence. Greek nepotism through alumni networking is a big part of fraternity and sorority life.
Allowing racial exclusion to persist in Greek life will only further exacerbate the underrepresentation of minorities in the most powerful sectors of our country. A study by Hughey revealed that many of the non-white students he interviewed chose to flock to traditionally white houses precisely because they were aware of the networking opportunities these houses could provide. But he also noted that nonwhites admitted but choosing not to participate in such networks were often perceived by other members as lazy and ungrateful. For example, a Latina sorority sister stated in an interview“They told me I should be grateful to have been admitted to the sorority… that no one ‘like me’ had ever been a member before… and that I better start taking care of the benefits which they granted me so kindly.”
Allowing 11 black women into sororities at the University of Alabama in one year is a big improvement over admitting just one from the previous 112. But that doesn’t mean Greek-letter organizations are no longer bastions of discrimination. Looking at Alpha Chi Omega’s email through the lens of the homogeneity of Greek life, its intention to exclude “bushy” eyebrows quickly goes from innocuous to insidious.
Fighting a culture of segregation? Please. That’s enough of a problem to solve.