Yes, you are right. :)

Having diversity in your chapter is great, but if you focus too much on it you might miss the bigger picture.

In my interest group (we'll be petitioning on SUNDAY!), I'm the only non white member. The rest of them are predominantly Jewish and are very close. I think that because they are a clique--don't get offended--this particular group is---that may scare some people off. I have a friend who is a a very conservative Jew who quit the APO group because he was turned off by the people in it.

There are a few non Jewish members in the group that I do get along with. I don't really get along with a few of the girls for personal reasons, and I feel as if I don't have any common bond with them as a liberal black agnostic nonconformist. :p I've tried to talk to some of my friends to check it out, but they think it's a "nerd club":mad:

It's not like there's only 5% minorities here either, but there are many cultural and ethnic based cliques that prevent people from reaching out to a new group.:(

First of all, congratulations! :)

I hope this doesn't come out wrong...but what keeps you interested in working with this group despite these circumstances? Just curious.

I admire the principles of Alpha Phi Omega, and I'd like to put that petty nonsense behind me and work to uphold and maintain them. Although I don't have many cultural similarities with the other members, I'm not going to quit an org just because "there were too many White people in it." I know people who have transferred schools for those reasons, and I believe that's ignorant and fear of what's not in your comfort zone.

One of the advantages of Diversity as a chapter is that if your group consists only of Electrical Engineering majors, you have a more difficult timegetting people who would be good brothers who aren't EEs involved.

Staff helping with extension try to look at that in the Petitioing Group. High Membership Overlap with other groups is also looked at.

More specifically U of Hartford is about 20% Jewish (from the National website for Hillel) is there signficant overlap from the Hillel?

(Apologies if this doesn't come our coherently, I'm pretty tired.)

Randy

Actually, most of them are, and as I said, they're a very tight group. They're very tight in and out of their organization. So, yeah, it's very difficult to relate to any of them, but I do get along with the people who aren't in that group. It's hard to get anything with Greek letters attached to them up and running at my school, and minorities here don't want to be in GLO because they will be talked out of it by their friends. I've seen it happen before with social GLOs.