At Sororities, Likeness Becomes Alikeness

Recently, an article in The Atlantic chided the rest of mainstream media for making fun of a leaked email from the Alpha Chi Omega chapter at the University of Southern California, which detailed wardrobe and makeup guidelines for its sorority members during recruitment week. Internet scolds had a field day with directives such as, “If you are not wearing the required makeup, I will stop you and apply it myself” or “Your hair needs to be one normal color. No crazy ombre, no color you wouldn't see in nature.”

The Atlantic article found the mandates to be innocuous, and the criticism of them to be gratuitous. “Sorority recruitment outfits? Please. There are better problems to fix,” states the author, pointing to alcohol abuse, hazing and sexual assault.

And sure, telling members to wear Spanx and straighten their hair is a lot less offensive than telling them to line-up in order of breast size. But calling rules seeking conformity in pledges’ physical appearance “innocuous” isn’t exactly right, either.

Sidestepping the minefield issue of women’s anxiety over body image – as one astute observer said, "sisterhood should fly in the face of superficiality" – sorority policies seeking visual sameness are troubling for another important reason. Dismissing such practices as harmless feeds into the idea that perpetuating the homogeneity of Greek life is okay. Promoting a certain physical likeness when trying to attract new members means the people you attract will look, well, like you. Likeness becomes alikeness.

Focusing on the appearance of pledges only feeds into the elitist trend of most fraternities and sororities; that is, that they are predominantly white, rich and Christian. (If we want to focus on looks, then let’s just take a look at the National Panhellenic Conference's Board of Directors. Do you see anyone with “bushy” eyebrows there?)

While other issues like hazing have garnered national attention and have been condemned by the national Greek life organization, exclusionary recruitment policies have continued to persist, largely unchanged.
Segregation and discrimination is illegal in fraternities and sororities, but it’s far from nonexistent. While Greek institutions are not required to publish demographic data about their members, a quick search provides plenty of anecdotal evidence that institutions that have been historically dominated by the white elite have not suddenly become diverse, especially when recruitment emails explicitly endorse uniformity. “We shouldn’t think organizations traditionally based on exclusion will all of a sudden become inclusive,” stated Matthew Hughey, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut, who studies the interaction between race and Greek life.

Take the University of Alabama, for example. The school was put on the hot seat in 2013 when the university’s newspaper brought to national attention that Kennedi Cobb, an all-around perfect potential new member – minus the fact that she was black – didn’t receive a single bid from any of the 16 sororities on campus. In it’s entire history, the universities's sororities had only previously admitted a single black member.

Marie Claire reported that the reason members of one sorority gave for rejecting potential black recruits was that they were worried it would cause fraternities to stop inviting them to parties. Their fears were not without basis. Hughey states in his research that, “When a white Greek-letter organization (WGLO) does accept nonwhite 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 WGLO’s.”

In the 1950s, white suburban neighborhoods that had new black families move in saw their property values decline. White families would protest and even riot when black families tried to purchase houses in their neighborhood – the most famous example being Daisy and Bill Myers, who moved into the suburb of Levittown, Pennsylvania.

White sorority sisters at the University of Alabama were similarly worried that admitting a black member would diminish their organization’s status. In reaction to this discrimination, 100 students marched in protest, and the university's president, Judy Bonner, mandated an informal round of rush, resulting in 11 sorority invitations being extended to black women. Marie Claire termed it “revolution on sorority row.”

However, despite those 11 invitations, many of our country’s Greek life organizations lack diversity. And that’s a real problem.

Diversity in Greek life matters. Like predominately 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 membership. Fraternity men, for example, make up 85 percent of Supreme Court justices since 1910, and the same proportion of Fortune 500 executives. This isn’t a 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 underrepresentation of minorities in our country’s most powerful sectors. A study by Hughey revealed that many of the nonwhite students he interviewed chose to rush traditionally white houses precisely because they were aware of the networking opportunities those houses could offer. But he also noted that nonwhites who were admitted but chose not to participate in such networking were often seen by other members as lazy and ungrateful. For example, a Latina sorority sister stated in an interview, “They told me I should be thankful for being let into the sorority ... that no one ‘like me’ had ever been a member before ... and that I better start taking care of the advantages they were so kindly giving me.”

Letting in 11 black women to University of Alabama sororities in one year is a big improvement over letting in one over the previous 112. But it doesn’t mean that Greek-letter organizations are no longer bastions of discrimination. Looking at the Alpha Chi Omega email through the lens of homogeneity in Greek life, its intent to rule out “bushy” eyebrows quickly turns from innocuous to insidious.

Combating a culture of segregation? Please. That’s a good enough problem to fix.