Still not a single brown face. Contrast that with Wellesley College’s societies:
http://theagorasociety.com
http://phisigwellesley.com
http://societyzetaalpha.org/members.html
https://alphakappachiwellesley.■■■■■■■■■■/members.html
So. Much. Cringe. in the video and website. I am truly at a loss.
@SculptorDad “Being accepted to a college is a privilege and not a lawfully protected right. My interpretation of law is differ from you.”
As someone smarter than me said “ you are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts”
And the fact is that the final arbiter of the law the US Supreme Court long ago and consistently since has held that First Amendment freedoms prohibit any government entity from punishing a US citizen for protected speech. This prohibition extends to both rights amd privileges. For example, driving is a privilege not a right. The government can regulate it. But it can’t bar you from getting a drivers licence just because it doesn’t like what you say. Same with entry and attendance at public colleges.
The reason the First Amendment is not just tangential here is that it’s central to why public Universities have their hands tied quite a bit in dealing with these issues. They are in a much easier position when Greek Life orgs have power.
Let’s not paint the entire sorority with Alabama’s contribution, here’s a more balanced recruitment video (and yes, some bubbles… their audience is 16-17 year old girls)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=OJxSXkL6pYM
Balanced, @dragonmom ? Aside from the one Asian girl and minus the bikinis, the makeup of that chapter is the same.
From the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education: https://www.thefire.org/beware-the-rolling-tide-of-constitutional-violations-on-campus/ “That a public university may not discipline a student for engaging in protected expression is settled law. * * * And it’s hard to believe that this also needs repeating after decades of legal precedent, but the First Amendment protects even speech that some, many, or even all, find hateful.”
I took @dragonmom’s post to mean balanced in the sense of the college lifestyle depicted, as opposed to the racial/ethnic makeup of the chapter. Depicting chapter members in the lab, the library, the ROTC locker room, etc. vs. just being fabulous in pretty environments.
Several members of Alabama houses have been dismissed for making comments about minority recruits. I don’t remember which house it was, but one member texted/tweeted/snapped something like "no ni**ers for XXX(name of house) after they took no minority pledges that year. She was dismissed immediately.
There is no tolerance for it from the national organizations. They are trying to become more diverse but it is a long road. Many black women at Alabama want to join the houses that their mothers and grandmothers are members of, and those are the traditionally black houses. The university is still almost 80% white. There are still only so many minority women who want to go through recruitment.
Existing racial segregation probably perpetuates itself, since highly racially segregated chapters are less likely to be attractive to those not of the same racial/ethnic group.
Of course, this problem of sorority segregation is not limited to Alabama, or the south, based on sorority chapter photos at a wide range of schools in many regions. Fraternities seem to have similar issues, though perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, based on the more limited number of fraternity chapter photos on their web sites. But some schools seem to have sororities and fraternities that are not highly segregated.
Most Greek houses tend to reflect the diversity of the schools. My daughter’s sorority is very diverse because her school is. Oh, and she’s a minority who adds to the diversity.
The south has the added growth trouble that it does have the historically black sororities and fraternities. Students have a choice that they don’t have in most northern schools.
When it comes to law, no new case is a fact, no matter how many similar past cases exist. I disagree with you on what is a fact and what is an opinion.
In fact, I don’t even know what the heck does it even mean by legal fact. Interpretation of law is always a legal opinion and not fact. Even those strong interpretations upheld for decades maybe challenged and changed.
I am pretty sure that Moynihan meant some historical or scientific fact when he said people are not entitled to their own fact, which I agree, and not legal opinions.
Historically black sororities and fraternities have chapters at many schools outside the south (e.g. Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, UCLA, UMass, etc.).
The situation at UCLA seems to suggest that integrating the chapters does not come that naturally.
http://fsl.ucla.edu/Chapter-Directory
I don’t believe that for a millisecond. What’s your evidence? Certainly the link ucbalumnus gives to UCLA shows that the opposite is true there.
The opposite is true at Alabama, too: Alabama’s traditionally white sororities integrated in 2013. Not exactly the distant past. If you look back at threads here, you’ll find it was discussed extensively at the time. In other words, some black women at Alabama have older sisters who could not have joined the sororities.
2013??? At a loss for words.
@“Cardinal Fang” As someone looking in from the outside (I’ve lived abroad for 30 years), I have found it so alarming to watch sorority recruiting videos and look at their group pictures and see this wall of white girls. I honestly can’t understand how it seems to be, I dunno, ignored (?) in the US. I’m trying to find the right word. Don’t parents see it? It’s bad enough how low the percentage of minority students is at the majority of colleges but then one sees what looks like outright racism right there in plain view. I dunno, it’s confusing looking at it from outside the US.
Not just white girls, but in some cases only attractive, slim white girls with long hair and bikini bodies. My husband wasn’t kidding when looking over my shoulder quickly he thought the Alabama ΑΦ recruiting video was a spoof in which the same woman’s image was replicated to appear in multiple roles. We joked that the person in the elephant mascot costume was a sister who had to be covered up because she’d gained 5 pounds.
Interesting that the “special interest” houses at UCLA are still mostly by cultural background and/or race (Armenian, Asian, Jewish, Persian, etc.) in contrast to the Wellesley College societies build around an area of academic study (political science, poetry, etc.)
Come, come. The website @ucbalumnus linked clearly shows at least one Asian member of the sorority in the big group shot, and it looks like there is a different Asian woman in one of the activity shots. That’s it for racial diversity, but it’s not without any nonwhites. I notice in one of the pictures it looks like the women were taking part in some sort of Holi celebration, although it isn’t acknowledged as such. And they’re not all blond; it looks like maybe 10% of the women have hair of color.
So, yay diversity at this sorority, I guess.
" it looks like the women were taking part in some sort of Holi celebration"
The whole “colors” thing is a fad - college campuses, fun runs, etc. Very, very little to do with diversity or cultural/ethnic celebrations.
What this young woman did was very wrong and she is going to pay a big price for it. But we all made some stupid mistakes when we were young. Most important part for her to learn from it and move on. I wish she embrace her fault and show the world that how wrong she was and how she has changed. After all we all are human and must forgive people for their stupid action.
And I am a person of color who has seen generosity of many many white, black, brown, etc. etc. people in my life time.
For years on this board, I’ve been suggesting the only realistic way to solve this issue is a lottery rush, with enough spaces in the groups for every rushee. There are many problems with recruitment, imho, but a major one is too many legacies for the most popular groups. It would be interesting to me to see what the photos look like after five yers of lottery rush. I have no idea who participates in rush these days. There may be a whole lot self selection going on, depending on the campus. But maybe more women would participate in a lottery rush system.
eta: of course, in a lottery system, some group still ends up with the young woman in the OP