I was visiting a campus recently, and in a conversation with
a group of Panhellenic women, a conversation came up about diversity. It was an
unexpected conversation, but one in which, given my previous experiences with the topic during my time at Alabama, I was eager to engage. This was a large
community on a campus that hosts Panhellenic recruitment before classes start.
As we were discussing some efforts the University was making with regards to
diversity and inclusion, a young woman asked the following question:
“Since our recruitment is such an organized system, and
chapters aren’t really engaged in recruiting women to participate in the
process, isn’t the lack of diversity in our community more of a systemic issue
instead of a chapter issue? Is there anything we can do about that?”
The question spawned a great conversation, and some ideas
that I’ll share in a minute. But the conversation also got me thinking – are
there structural barriers to diversity in Panhellenic sorority chapters? If so,
what are they?
First, I wanted to check the data, so I logged into Dyad’s data dashboard to check out the demographics of our fraternity and sorority
samples. Here’s what I found.
Fraternities, on average, are 27 percent non-white in terms
of their membership. Sororities, on the other hand, are 16 percent non-white.
In other words, in terms of the percentage of members, fraternities are nearly
twice as diverse as sororities. Fraternities are much more representative, in
terms of racial diversity, of the demographic breakdowns on the campuses at
which they exist than campus sororities, which are much more white.
Why? Are sorority members more racist than fraternity
members? Of course not – this notion should be immediately dismissed out of
hand as absurd. If anything, my experience tells me that sorority members are
much more attune to issues of inclusion and, if left to their own devices,
sororities would, in fact, be more diverse than fraternities. Our data at Dyad
shows no difference between fraternity and sorority members on the measure of
Openness to Diversity. But there are structural barriers inhibiting this
openness to diversity from manifesting into actual diversity. When I think
about what those structural barriers might be, three likely candidates
immediately come to mind.
1. Formal Recruitment and the Quota/Total System – The entire
formal recruitment process, including the total/quota system, particularly on
campuses where formal recruitment happens at or even before the beginning of
the Fall semester, is filled with structural barriers. First, many campuses
charge rather high fees in order to participate in formal sorority recruitment,
asking women to invest in a process with no guarantees that the process will
end in an invitation to membership. This is rarely the case with fraternities,
who charge small fees, if any, to participate in the process. Next, the timing
likely plays an issue. By hosting recruitment at the beginning of the semester,
or even before classes begin, we eliminate a large segment of potential members
who have little to no knowledge about the process based on information gleaned
from family and friends, and are thus less likely to know about registering in
time. Once they get to campus and find out about recruitment, we charge them an exorbitant late registration fee if they want to go through the process. Many chapters on
many campuses then require letters of recommendation, which can present a
significant barrier if the student comes from a family/community where not a
lot of people they know were in sororities. Then, because of the total/quota
system, very few chapters on any given campus will participate in any sort of
informal recruitment process. The COB process often involves only a handful of
chapters with a small number of open spots that are often hastily offered to
women who participated in the formal recruitment process, because there is a
negative stigma in having to continue actually recruiting people once the
formal recruitment process is over. Those chapters above total are given no
opportunity to look for and recruit a more diverse membership – they are left
to only choose from those women who participate in formal recruitment each
year. If that pool lacks diversity,
their chapter will be left with few, if any, options to recruit a more diverse
membership. This is all in stark contrast to fraternities, who generally have
less structured processes, often wait to recruit members until after the Fall
semester has begun, are more open to and willing to recruit other potential
members throughout the year without fear of stigma, are more likely to recruit
a second new member class in the spring semester, and are not governed by the
quota/total system.
2. Advisor Involvement in Recruitment – The challenge associated with too much advisor involvement in the recruitment process has been well-documented. On many campuses, advisors’ outlooks on diversity and
inclusion are more representative of 1978 than of 2018, and when we give these
advisors too much authority in the membership selection process, a lack of
diversity is the inevitable result. Advisors play a valuable role in assisting
their chapters during recruitment, but they themselves should not be involved
in the process of selections and voting, and national organizations and
campuses should do more to limit the role that advisors play with regards to
membership selection.
3. Lack of Diversity in Extension – The biggest distinction
between fraternities and sororities may very well lie in the manner in which
they conduct extension. Several structural barriers to diversity exist in the
manner in which many sororities conduct the extension process. First, because
of the obsession with parity, many national sororities approach extension with
a simple, but limiting philosophy – we want our new chapter to look very
similar to the other chapters on campus. If those other chapters are mostly
white, then there is a high probability that the new sorority will also be
mostly white. The philosophy of fraternity expansion is basically the opposite –
how can we carve out a unique niche in a crowded market? If fraternities on
campus lack diversity, then a new chapter will very often come in and present a
much more diversified alternative. Over time, this adds a great deal of
cultural diversity within a community. Next, sororities tend to rely heavily on
women who participated in formal recruitment when adding a new chapter. If this
pool of women lacks diversity, the new chapter will likely reflect that.
Fraternity expansions, on the other hand, tend to focus in on students who previously
expressed no interest in fraternities because of the stereotypes, but who might
be interested in being part of something new and different. This lends itself
to much more diversity – not only in terms of racial diversity but also with
regards to socio-economic background and sexual orientation. Lastly, and
perhaps most importantly, decisions about members in fraternity extension tend
to be made by the younger staff members who are recruiting perspective members.
These younger staff members tend to be very open to racial diversity. On the sorority
side, however, the decisions for membership are very often not made by the
young consultants doing the recruiting, but by a much older committee of
volunteers and alumnae who, again, hold dated attitudes related to diversity and
inclusion. This presents a tremendous barrier for diversity. I have seen this
play out first-hand.
We see a number of structural barriers that limit diversity
in campus sororities. This leads to an obvious question - what can/should be
done about the lack of diversity in sororities? Here are just a few thoughts,
more designed around starting a conversation rather than being considered
full-blown policy recommendations.
Allow sororities to actually "recruit" – this seems rather
obvious, but on campuses that do not have recruitment before classes start, it
makes sense to allow sorority members to meet with and talk to prospective
members on campus in order to recruit a more diverse pool of women to be part
of the experience. Dated rules about “no contact” should be thrown out the window
and sorority members should be incentivized to go out and recruit women who
they think would add diversity to their chapters.
Eliminate letters of recommendation – Frankly, this should
have happened years ago. Requiring rec letters does nothing to educate chapters
about prospective members and ONLY serves as a barrier for women coming from
families and communities who lack connection to the sorority experience. It
adversely affects minorities and first-generation students alike. Rec letters
are a vestige of days gone by and their elimination would remove a tremendous
hurdle for would-be members from less privileged backgrounds.
Limit role of older alums in recruitment and extension – this
one seems like a no-brainer to me, and is probably the easiest to implement.
Older alums and volunteers definitely have a role to play, but selecting
members of a chapter is not one of them. Allow current members, or the young
consultants doing most of the recruiting (in the case of expansion projects) to be
the ones to select members.
Allow diversity-based exceptions to quota/total – This is by
far the least fleshed-out of my thoughts, but stick with me here. I get that
totally blowing up the total/quota system is not going to happen any time soon.
But what if we allowed each chapter to set its own goals with regards to
diversity and inclusion? And then, what if we allowed chapters to recruit
beyond total/quota in order to meet their own goals with regards to diversity
and inclusion if the pool of women in formal recruitment did not allow them to
meet those goals? What if chapters who felt their lack of diversity was a
problem and wanted to do something about it were allowed to work outside of the
formal recruitment process to go out and recruit those diverse members, even if
they made quota in formal recruitment and were at or above total? Some broad
questions, I know, but I think if we gave chapters the option to work outside
of formal recruitment to strengthen their diversity, many chapters would
willingly and eagerly take advantage of that opportunity.
In a world that is increasingly multi-cultural, and in a
workplace that requires our students to be culturally competent, we should all
be concerned about the lack of diversity in our campus sororities. We are doing
our sorority members no favors when we stick them in chapters full of women exactly
like themselves. The antiquated systems we use to recruit new members into our
chapters are barriers to that diversity. I hope we can begin a conversation
about what changes need to occur in order for those structural barriers to be eliminated.
