GA State College White Student Union
 

Georgia State Student Forms White Student Union

Any thoughts?

On a side note, when I was in school, our chapter tried repeatedly to contact Alpha Phi Alpha, and Kappa Alpha Psi to have parties together, but we never got any responses. We were a brand new chapter on campus and maybe we didn't approach the groups correctly, or weren't clear about how parties worked with other groups at that time.
I was wondering if there are any campuses in which the traditional african american groups had events with the traditional caucasian groups?

"Why is it when a white person say he is proud to be white he’s shunned as a racist?"

Because he/she usually really is.

To your side note: While it was rude of them not to respond, BGLO chapters are typically smaller and stretched a lot thinner when it comes to programming. When it comes to Alpha, I know for a fact that if the chapter is in a district that has a spring conference, they are literally going to be tied up for half of the semester's weekends on official business (District Conference, Region Convention, membership intake activities) and that's not counting the road trips and performances in step shows on other campuses (which, if they win, are handsome fundraisers).

To piggyback on Sen's comment..

There's also the chance that they couldn't host a party. In my fraternity (not a BGLO, FWIW), the undergraduates are required to register the party with their regional directors (and sometimes the school itself), who then get together with our national board for approval (to make sure all the insurance stuff is in order). If someone tries to get an approval at the last minute, it's possible that it can be denied. No approval = no party.

At any point, did your chapter offer to co-sponsor a service event or any other type of programming? Or did you all support any of their existing programs? We were much more likely to mingle with an organization if they at least made an effort to check out what we were doing.

As far as the story in the original link goes, GMAFB. Quite frankly your ever so innocent tone with these posts is getting tiresome as all get out, badgeguy.

As far as pairing up among the conferences goes, there are service projects and activites done as joint efforts by the Tri Greek council at Vanderbilt, which matches NPC, NIC, and NPHC orgs together. They do some pretty cool stuff.

^^ This falls into the reasons why there isn't a White History Month or a White Entertainment Television or any other Privileged Majority things.

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And on the note of NPHC/IFC interaction, my fraternity has hosted a few events with NPHC orgs. The thing is, the ratio was usually somewhere around 30 SigEps to 1 NPHC person. So, it was understanding what they could do with their resources. Also, there were sometimes limitations to what types of events they would want to participate in.

Also, it is hard to bring an NPHC org into your social calendar rotation all of a sudden when no one has reached out to them for the past XX years they were on campus. You have to understand that to.

Ha! We (my young adult ministry) just discussed this last week though we were talking about incidents from high school BSUs. How ironic that this pops up this week.

Is it fair that it's not PC to have a White Student Union? No. We will leave it there and not discuss the historical context that makes people leery of lots of Caucasians getting together to celebrate their White pride. Was that what you were looking for?

Ok, do NPHC groups often try to reach out to NIC or NPC groups on their campus? I understood the difficulty in trying to set up events do to scheduling, but at the time I was in school I would have loved to been able to learn more about the whole NPHC culture and how it differed from what I was experiencing. At the school there was a definite desperation between "white" groups and the "non-white" groups.

I came from a high school where we had friends from all walks....and then going off to college and joining the fraternity...I'll say it, it was as if the whole system was a "whites only" thing....it really bothered me becuase even at rush events we couldn't attract any minorities, they usually always went to the NPHC groups....it was I guess a sort of "you go your way, and we will go our way..."

I just don't understand, in this day and age why that was the case.

As for my original post...amiblue? why do you feel this is tiring? Are you opposed to race discussions?? Unfortunately this country will always have a race issue becuase people don't really want to talk about it, seems that most people just want it all be swept under a rug.

I would love for the entire world to think of us all as human beings first....forgetting the religious, ethnical, skin color, and all that....

That makes about as much sense as having a "men's officer" on the student council

In certain situations this would make sense. The WSU makes sense in some situations as well, where the white students make up a small minority of the population. At GSU, not so much because they are still the largest single group.

This is ridiculous to me. I think people who create things like "white student unions" are so ignorant. Our greek week at UCF would include the NPHC organizations as well as other diverse greek chapters. We also had a step component to our Greek sing.

I said tiresome, not tiring. There is a difference. And I already told you in my post what I find tiresome: your pretended innocent, fence riding tone. Do you seriously not know what the problem with a white student union is? Were you recently transplanted here from Mars or are you just willfully obtuse?
h
I participate in race related threads frequently. I also assert opinions. I don't have a problem with the conversation. My problem is with you and your lack of opinions while trying to stir the pot.

Do you really not understand this? I'm with amiblue?. I think you're playing dumb and I have no idea why you'd want to do that.

When I was an undergrad, no we really did not try to do too much with the "white" groups, as you put it.

I think what you don't understand is the purpose for existence of NPHC groups. NPHC orgs are not so much social orgs as NPC and IFC are, but instead we are about community service, with an emphasis for the AfAm community. Our programs and fundraisers target a variety of community service projects. One joins NPHC orgs not so much for their socializing, but because one feels an alignment with their community service programs.

NPHC orgs have a strong presence in the AfAm community, and that can impress an AfAm youngster to want to join that org. I typically don't see NPC and IFC orgs actively working in the AfAm community, so when AfAm kids go to college more often than not NPC and IFC orgs aren't on their radar.

Sure.:rolleyes:

It seems you're making a few errors here. First, you seem to assume that there is such a thing as the AfAm community. Second, you're assuming NPHC=NIC/NPC for black people.

Both of those assumptions would be wrong. Just because we all have Greek letters doesn't mean we're all created for a similar purpose. I belong to a social fraternity. Service certainly is part of it, but it's definitely not the focus.

Now, yes, we've had co sponsored events with NPHC groups--had a great fish fry with the Deltas when I was an undergrad 10ish years ago... that should've become a thing... but as someone else said, those groups, at least on my campus are nowhere near our size and they already have plenty of programming without really needing to reach out.

It just seems you're assuming GLO=GLO, which is just wrong.

I'm not a fan of the "why can't we all be color-blind?" approach. I think it encourages us to accept a false uniformity by asking us to ignore the things about "them" that (1) make "them" who they are, and (2) make them different from "us." At best, it is disrespectful; at worst, it carries an expectation that everything would be okay if everyone could just be like "us." (As in, perhaps, suggesting that it's somehow wrong that the NPHC don't act like "the rest of us.")

Instead of trying forget or ignore these things, I think the better course is to strive to accept and respect the many things that make us all different -- my religious perspective would say strive to see how all of those differences somehow reflect the image of God -- and to understand how those differences can be enriching to us all rather than alienating. And in my experience, that can be much harder work than trying to "forget" the differences.

Yes.


If you want more response than that, then perhaps you should offer thoughts of your own first rather than just plopping it down in the middle of the room and then waiting to see what happens.

You said this flawlessly. I'm probably going to quote this elsewhere at some point, if you don't mind.

Thanks, and be my guest.

I agree with amIblue? about badgeguy.

It isn't about fair and PC. It is about the fact that the majority doesn't need reminders that they are the majority. White people are everywhere. White people do not forget their presence and neither do nonwhites. That doesn't mean that white people do not fall on hard times but these hard times are rarely a direct or indirect result of "whiteness."

That is also why there is no Heterosexual Student Union. Most organizations are either directly or indirectly based on heterosexuality. Do heterosexuals need another reminder that they are the power majority around the world? Do heterosexuals need another reminder that their sexuality and interactions are not monitored and controlled as the LGBT community? Nope. And we can apply that same logic to any other power dominant group.

I was referring to the fairness of the situation if White students were the minority, as the young man quoted in the article said:

He seems to be have figured out that he can pull the minority card by adding all the other ethnicity percentages together to intentionally outnumber his own group but I was trying to pretend I didn't notice.

:) Soror, thanks for clarifying.

You already know that white people who are the minority on campus can just leave campus from time to time to be reminded that they are relatively empowered whites. There is no shortage of reminders once they leave campus. On some campuses in which whites are the population minority, whites remain the power majority. You don't have to be the population majority to be the power majority---South Africa, anyone? That doesn't mean that things will always be in white people's favor and that whites will never struggle. It just means there are more buffers to being told "no" or falling on hard times.

I have seen HBCUs bend over backwards to have an abundance of white faculty and white students. These schools can make more money and increase their ranking if they are "historically" Black but not predominantly Black in terms of its most successful and money making programs, including graduate programs. PWIs that focus on diversity are typically not doing so to increase the school's competitiveness, academic ranking, and finances. The only exception is when attracting certain East Indian and certain Asian populations.

And I wish people (not you) would stop saying whites will ever be a minority (power-wise or population-wise) in this country. That is not true but it works for good dramatics and to scare whites against "brown immigration" and into "white pronatalism". Hispanic is an ethnic category that includes white Hispanics. Whites can find solace in the fact that there is no shortage of non-English and English speaking whites from around the world. As for Spanish speakers, there are plenty of whites from South America, the Caribbean, and Spain to buffer those "scary non-English speakers that are sending the U.S.A to hell." An example is one of my Cuban friends hates it when I say "Afro-Cubana/o" because it is technically redundant. I say "Afro-Cubana/o" because there are plenty of people from these countries who consider themselves white (even if they call it something other than "white").

I had the same issue in the 70s at my campus. We - the Unified Fraternal Organization (we didn't have separate Panhellenic and IFC except on paper), the dean of students (who was black, but not a member of one of the chapters on our campus), and the student government representative - all tried to find a framework for the groups to work and socialize together, but got no response other than "not interested" from the three or four traditionally black organizations.

I would have liked to hear it had gotten better.

I think things have gotten better.

However, I would like to point out that no single organization is under any obligation to have an event with any other organization. When you were an active member, did your sorority accept every invitation from every fraternity for a mixer, etc? We didn't always accept every invitation. Was it because we didn't like the fraternity or sorority asking us? Of course not. You can't always work everything out and do everything with everybody. No matter your letters or council, a group's primary obligation is to their own members and their own mission, however those things may be defined. Individuals can be (and are) friends on their own time across organization lines and council lines.

When BG's fraternity invited Alpha and Kappa to have parties, Alpha and Kappa were under no obligation to do so nor were they under any obligation to explain why they couldn't or wouldn't. Just in the same way if my KKG chapter turned down an invitation from ABC or XYZ fraternity when I was in college. Unless the Alphas and Kappas came straight out and said "we're not hanging with you crackers," I wouldn't have assumed it was a race thing.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mc...8j04o1_500.gif

ETA: I chuckled at your Edit. Kappa, Kappa, Kappa ... but don't assume it's a race thing lol

Yeah, that didn't come out quite right the first time. :)

Of course not - but not a single work OR social event in years? That's not just scheduling.

Did he say it was years? That they actually tried for YEARS to schedule something with these groups? Because at some point, that's just stupid to keep trying when you keep getting turned down. Even so, that doesn't mean that it was due to race that they were declined. It could be that those extending the invitation were socially challenged. That's as good a conjecture to make as thinking it was race-related on the part of the invitees.

I think you need to understand that there is just a different set of priorities.

Its just not uber-critical for NPHC orgs to have socials, mixers, and formals. We don't base our year on social events.

And, you know, not to be snarky.... and it's been said more politely above....

But maybe we just didn't want to?

This and perhaps other reasons that have been discussed on GC over the years. I always find it funny when predominantly white organizations cannot handle being told "no" or being ignored completely. Welcome to the club.

Speaking of clubs, White Student Unions are a good place for whites to express outrage over being told "no" or being ignored. Not really.

*lightbulb*

Sometimes chapters just arent that into you.
Or perhaps those chapters are proving a point: we don't need you to have a good time. In fact, we never did.
It's been said already, but there's a lot of privledge in extending an invite to a group you typically don't do "business" with and assume its an automatic yes. Because how could they say no to us? *outrage* I think it's normal for both BGLO chapters to think "why us? Why now?" and be well within their right to say no.


Yeah: GLO =/= GLO. To be superficial, Ive been to white sorority and fraternity parties. They're different. Different enough that collaborating wouldnt make sense.

Yep. One is not better than the other. They are just different. At my school, we sometimes went to NPC and (non-NPHC) IFC socials. We didn't always have fun but there was nothing wrong with the event itself. It just wasn't our cup of tea. We didn't try to change the structure of their events to accommodate us.

On the other hand, whites are not accustomed to being minorities. With exceptions for when my chapter hosted events with an IFC fraternity (it was only awesome because we were all friends outside of Greekdom), there are times when white NPCers-IFCers and white non-Greeks either attended our event or stumbled upon one of our parties and scoffed or looked terrified. It just looked like a bunch of Black people and the most terrifying thing was a bunch of Black men--sometimes they wore suits and ties and sometimes they wore gold boots and fatigues. We didn't fuss at them for looking perplexed and not wanting to participate. We are accustomed to that. We wanted them to move along so we could go back to what we were doing.

I liken it to those multicultural church congregations that are really just white congregations with some non-whites added and the music and praise-and-worship styles do not mirror the supposed diversity of the congregation. No thanks. We don't dislike you, and we have similar purposes, but some of us don't want to always play in your sand box and by your rules. We have our own sand boxes and our own rules. Holla at us when you are willing to come to our sand boxes for a change or create a sand box together that isn't just your sand box in disguise.

White pride? I have pride that I'm a human being who doesn't believe in skin color making one iota of difference about who you are, what opportunities you should have, or how I judge you, period.

I hear the whole Black History Month, why don't WE have a White History Month, etc. etc.

When I was growing up, do you think there was a single blessed mention of anyone's color in our history books?

Example, I didn't know Crispus Attucks was a black free man until college. I had mixed feelings about it. One of the most prominent feelings was a conflict between well, he was a hero, and color shouldn't matter one way or the other, but then I was becoming aware of the fact that we were held back from learning that black people had serious roles in this country that we weren't supposed to know about?

So, I can understand why we have a Black History Month.

As to BSU's, the one at Florida State started when I was an undergrad. Black students had just begun attending FSU in increasing numbers and we had a unique situation because FAMU was just several blocks away. I know that some of the black students at FSU had torn feelings of not being sure how they'd assimilate - versus the far easier road for them at FAMU. When you're just sticking your toe in the water, it helps if someone just like you is standing with you, doing the same thing.

Today, FSU grants more degrees to black students than any other Florida university. So, I think it's worked out very well.