I guess.

When I read "non-exclusive" I had one opinion. When I read "she looks forward to working with all of them to help bring change to their communities" I had another opinion. The latter seems like she doesn't want to be AKA-only in terms of participation and social change--not membership.

The article says "...But the wife of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wants to make sure people know that accepting AKA's invitation doesn't mean she'd rule out others..." (http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/po...kappa_alp.html)

It seems clear that Michelle does not plan to have exclusive membership in AKA and help the other sororities as a non-member. She wants to be eligible for membership in all 4.

I'm sorry but that absolutely reeks of the Obamas political path all along. Pandering to anyone and everyone.

If you have to say "but" then you're not really sorry. :)

I think some people just don't understand that an honorary GLO membership is as binding are any other kind of membership.

I'm not saying that's the case here because I have no idea, but "honorary" whatever (membership, degrees, chairperson) doesn't usually involve the real work that the same non-honorary position would. So I don't think people get that with Greek organizations (all of them as far as I know), if you get initiated, honorary or whatever, you're initiated.

Does any GLO have purely honorary members that don't get initiated?

I agree

You know the repubs will try and throw anything at the wall and make it stick. Won't even surprise me if they dig up the hazing incident in Cali just to paint their associations as bad like they have been doing.

I think she should have chilled out as well and not accepted just yet. I have my own thoughts about honorary membership anyway but that is neither her nor there

That is also what i thought

But i see now. Someone needs to explain to her she cant have it all 4 ways.

i dont want to see her like Hillary and accept, and then deny. I thought Hill was wrong for that, honestly

You're right, some people (including members of GLO's) think that honorary membership in a GLO is synonymous with having an honorary degree or something. In my org, honorary members are initiatied members and they can be as involved as they like. They can and are encouraged to even become members of alumnae chapters where they live.

Then we need to explain better beforehand that membership in our orgs is exclusive and that accepting the invite isn't the same as accepting an honorary degree from a university or something.

I met one of your honorary members when I was a teenager, Peola McCaskill. I was also in her namesake unit of the National Association of Parliamentarians, in which she still appears to be active, according to their website. :)

Since honorary membership was abolished in Alpha, I don't know how active our few truly were beyond speaking at conventions. Which, really, is all I would expect.

I agree with Elephant Walk that this is just typical Obama style political pandering but as for Republicans using some hazing incident politically? Come on! You know just about every greek on Capital Hill was involved in some kind of hazing or prank in the 1950s and 60s!

The hazing incident that was being referenced is a lot different than 1950s and 60s hazing or pranks.

I would hope that the Repubs wouldn't stoop so low as to use it.

I'm guessing that if the Republicans want to go after Michelle Obama they'd probably come up with something better than a hazing incident in an organization that she recently accepted honorary membership in.

Just saying.

Actually, it isn't uncommon to attempt to use people's old or new affiliations, of any type, against them by ignoring the 99% that's good and highlighting the 1% that's bad.

These are hypotheticals. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Our First Grand Anti-Basileus (Vice-President) consistently reaches out to our honoraries and tries to get them involved so it's not uncommon to hear that some of them are active and working with alumnae chapters. There is one in my chapter currently. She can't make it to every meeting of course since she is very busy but makes it a point to come thru sometimes; buys tickets to our annual events, and sometimes drops a check on us...like she did recently for a new scholarship fund we just started. Because of what I've seen in my own org, I have nothing at all against honorary membership and I can't wait to find out who the new honorary members are, to be inducted at our Boule this month.