sororities are still for rich white people

It’s no secret that Greek Life has long been a symbol of white elitism. Why wouldn’t it be? Like many other institutions, higher education was created to benefit the white male.

Meanwhile, Jim Crow schools for black children were likewise tailored to “fit the needs of the white economy and society,” but in a different way. In those days, the only jobs open to black workers were, to put it nicely, in domestic service or agriculture. School curriculums were geared to prepare students for such… career paths, and therefore only taught the relevant skills. Though the landmark decision from Brown v. Board of Education ushered in a new era of school integration and greater access to education, even the slightest bit of progress took quite some time to materialize. After over a decade of school integration with “all deliberate speed,” as decreed by the Supreme Court, there were universities that still needed to be court ordered before they would admit their first African-American students. Given this culture of exclusion, it’s easy to see fraternities as a means of escape from this changing social landscape.

It isn’t hard to come to that conclusion. In the ancient days of 1949, there were fraternities that had “only members of the Causasian race” written into their national charters. Only when university leadership threatened to ban organizations that discriminated against race or religion in membership decisions, did fraternities begin to reconsider their longstanding codes and charters.

Of course, the tides have changed in the decades since. Pretty quickly, described best from the mouth of a student featured in a New York Times article (“The Negro Student at an Integrated College: His Problems, Attitudes, and Goals”), tokenism replaced absolute exclusion:

‘Every fraternity and sorority wants a negro now — you know sort of the House N—–,’ a Bridgeport student said. ‘I had that for a while and then I couldn’t take it. I got sick of them making me an exception all the time. You know — ‘You’re great; I wish they were all like you.’

I would argue that not much has changed. At Vanderbilt, 47% of the student body is from the top 5% and 42% is in Greek life. On the surface level, Greek life at Vandy looks happy and diverse, like the cover photo on the Office of Greek Life (OGL)’s webpage.

I mean, a whopping 10 out of 31 faces are faces of color! What a phenomenal breakdown! Sadly, given my experience in a Panhellenic sorority, I knew better than to believe that mirage of public relations optics. A photo stacked with the few minority frat bros on this entire campus, does not say much about the campus climate. You see, OGL may boast of four Greek councils, which includes the historically black National Panhellenic Conference (NPHC) and Intercultural Greek Council (IGC), but on Vanderbilt’s campus, the historically white Greek councils reign. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a look at the statistics, and there are ten thousand more. When a mere new member class of any IFC fraternity or NPC sorority is larger than the entire chapter of the average NPHC or IGC organization, when the ten NPC sororities with chapters of 150 girls (on average) account for 90% of Greek women on campus, do the five other NPHC or IGC sororities really count for much?

Interestingly enough, when I tried to scour OGL’s website for diversity statistics to track how much progress we’ve seen in integrating our fraternities and sororities, it was blatantly missing. Not a single statistic of diversity measures could be found in their yearly membership statistics, nor in their so-called comprehensive report from 1997-2018 either. Not that I was expecting to see some impressive improvement in representation, but I didn’t realize there might be no improvement to show at all. Given the fact that everything else in OGL’s brochures and PowerPoint presentations and social media is a selling point for Greek life, the shocking lack of any mention of diversity made me wonder if the numbers could be so bad that they would be too embarrassed to report it.

But for the sake of this blogpost, let’s cut the Office of Greek Life some slack. After all, they are the ultimate governing body of all things Greek. They decide which fraternities get (temporarily) kicked off campus, and they are the ones who truly run sorority recruitment. For what it’s worth, they try to subtly influence and enlighten Greek members by ensuring that they interact with the larger Vanderbilt community. Their mighty tool? Greek Member Experience, or GME. As a part of a Greek organization, members are required to complete “a set of 16 minimum expectations for member engagement in programs and activities” in 6 tracks: Campus Involvement, Community Impact, Diversity and Inclusion, Faculty Engagement, Healthy Behaviors, and Personal Development. Note that Diversity and Inclusion is included as one of the required tracks. You might expect that that would do the trick. Force white sorority girls and fraternity boys to attend events that focus on diversity and inclusion, and they’ll turn out to be better men and women. Right? Wrong. Notice that, in the explanation of what GME is, it says minimum expectations as opposed to minimum requirements. In reality, this means that, while chapters are literally incentivized by OGL (and their rewards for GME progress), nothing truly binds them to following it. And so, they often either don’t complete GME, or partake in the common practice of swiping in to an event and leaving, to seemingly no consequence (I could stand to be corrected here, but I’ve definitely failed to complete the 15 community service hours and heard nothing in return).

The truth is, Greek life at Vandy still serves as a means of escape from continuously changing school environments. I’m not in one of the top-tier sororities notoriously rumored to use home addresses to assess family wealth or known to accept exemplar minorities as ‘Key’ Kappas (a pretty word for token, isn’t it?). And because of it, my interaction with the 23% one-percenters or 47% five-percenters has probably been really limited. I’ve seen pictures on social media of private jet Spring Breaks, but I’ve never befriended one of these people in real life. If school integration is a real goal for the Vanderbilt administration, something needs to change. And it should start with Greek life.