AOII officially disbands Washington University chapter
 

https://www.studlife.com/news/2021/0...uitment-cycle/

It is hitting all of us across the country. We are all going to lose chapters to this AGL movement. For collegians, it is not enough to simply resign their memberships. They insist on destroying the chapter entirely so that NO one can join. They don't want it and no one else can have it either. Like a bunch of spoiled children.

Amen! :mad:

This actually sounds like a lot of these kids are mentally ill.

Yea, I really can't understand the logic behind this. All of these articles have quotes by current or ex-members who essentially say, "Well the (inter)national organization won't listen to us and won't support our want to burn everything to the ground!" Perhaps that's because you've been a member for five minutes and don't even understand the very thing you're looking to destroy.

It's because they are thinking of this from a self-centered perspective. They seem to believe that this is *their* chapter and they want to close *their* chapter. The chapter is not "theirs", the chapter belongs to AOII.


Can anyone expand on this? Did some members resign their membership and then petition to rejoin the chapter or did they join a different GLO?

There is so much to unpack with this. I particularly love the idea that all of the issues will disappear if that evil Greek life would just go away. Its a very unrealistic view of life.

I live 4 blocks from campus and I routinely wear AOII-lettered clothing around when I walk the dog as a giant f-you to these shortsighted teenagers.

I don't understand why they aren't fixing it from within. They have the ability to be inclusive. So be inclusive and fix it that way, right?

They are devaluing and denying the positive experience many women of color and women of lower socioeconomic status enjoy. At my school, most students were far from rich, and many people enjoyed their GL experience.

I so love this.

Not all GLOs are on board at the national level, though. And chapters trying to enact real change have experienced significant stalling or even pushback. If these women truly believe the harm caused by the orgs has outweighed the good and that they will continue to resist change and be injurious, I can understand their efforts to end the system.

I can't understand it. Change comes from within. They need to be proactive, not reactive.

They also need to realize that not everyone feels the same, and that not everyone gives a rat's a** about them and their cause du jour. And that it's okay to not all think/feel the same way.

I wonder how many of these “disbanders” (or DBs if you will) have reached out to their friends who are members of these groups they are advocating for and offered them membership? Or who actually HAVE friends who are members of these groups? After all the negative publicity APhi got, I would think that “we offered my black friend a bid and nationals denied it” would be an easy way to get their way with their HQ.

As to the part that I bolded: In my opinion, many times the undergraduate members want action "Right Now!".

But, what the undergraduates view as stalling or pushback is really their organization saying "Let us look at this. We don't want to go off half-cocked and make the situation worse."

It makes me think of the issue that happened at Tufts a couple of years ago. A sorority wanted to bid a transgender woman. They asked their organization what the rules would were on the issue. The organization asked the chapter for a few days to go over their bylaws and get back to them. Many of the undergrad members threw a fit that the leaders didn't automatically say "Yes, go ahead and do it" right away, and those members resigned. All their organization asked was to give them a few days to go over the issue.

But what those members hear is, "Give us a view days to decide whether we want to be inclusive or not." On the other hand, they asked the question, so one would assume they knew it wasn't going to be an immediate 'yes' and it may take some time to work through.

Of course, due to the nature of our organizations (and thinking about this issue in relation to what seems to be the main reason for the Abolish Greek Life movement), a person of color joining does not have the same implications as a transgender person joining.

One of the things I saw popping up on social media from sorority members this summer - including from my own organization - was the demand that we all be called 'siblings' instead of 'sisters'. Apparently some individual chapters are already doing so. I had never heard of this before and it certainly seems it hasn't been brought through proper channels of our organizations, but I'll let others speak to that, if they so choose. Either way, an angry rant on social media is probably not the best way to go about change. Our members have been calling each other 'sisters' for more than a century. Perhaps that may change one day, but that change doesn't occur overnight because you got mad about it on your Facebook wall.

I see what you did there, DBs :D

Veruca Salt isn't just a 90s alt rock band or a character from a book and a movie.

And don't forget to look toward whom they had, for the past four years, as a 'stellar example' of leadership of a country.

“Siblings”
 

I assume this is because of groups pledging non-binary members.

I hate to break it to them, but I’ve gotten through 35 years being called a brother of Alpha Phi Omega and I haven’t suffered any long term issues from it.

Thank you!

I'm curious about where the AGL movement seems to have a significant amount of traction. So far, it seems to be Northwestern, University of Richmond, University of Washington at St. Louis, American University...which others? These are all pricy private institutions, and perhaps there are a higher than average number of "stereotypical, well-off" students in GLOs...and also more intellectually-focused students focused on being change agents?

We aren't seeing AGL activity/discussion where I teach (large state school). I'm just wondering if the chapter closings associated with this movement are going to be "self-contained." What are the other campuses where closures due to AGL seem imminent or appear to be a serious concern?

You hit it on the head. The weird thing is I haven't seen much of it on Ivy League campuses, or even more liberal schools like NYU and UC Berkeley, but the orgs there seem to be taking action at a local level and doing change that way. That's what it should be, not just stepping down en masse.

AGL
 

Add Vanderbilt to the list.

Has anyone reached out to their former sisters or brothers to try to gain understanding from them directly?

Doing it en masse brings more attention to those who seek it and is a much sexier story for the media. It makes it appear that important things are happening. :rolleyes:

I know we did with our Northwestern chapter. There was a sincere effort made to dialogue and work together for change. The concerns weren't chapter-specific.

Even within Alpha Phi Omega it gets *complicated*.

For starters, APO Philippines uses Brothers for all male members and sisters for all female members, and a campus will actually have a fraternity chapter and a sorority chapter (or conceivably only one, in which case only members of only that gender can join at that school) (The history there is that all of the Little Sister groups were unified as Alpha Phi Sigma nationally, then as Alpha Phi Omega Auxiliary Sorority and *then* true equality.

In APO-USA, the general reason for the global use of the term brother is that the women that were joining chapters underground for equality wanted to be called brother since the "sisters" that other chapters had were little sisters and thus treated unequally. However I have run into a few chapters (Georgetown University in Washington DC springs to mind) where a good number of the women have at various times wanted to use the term sister, however the term sister has no official meaning in APO-USA.

For non-binary members, given the general usage of brothers in APO-USA, I don't expect a problem there with the terms brothers. (I have *no* idea what APO-Philippines would do)

It happened in our chapter in Yale, they disbanded by wanting to go co-ed.

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2020/...nals-go-co-ed/

Not to mention the parents who raised them for 18.

If after everything the sororities at Harvard and Yale have gone through to simply exist, it would be ironic AF if they were to bail now.

AGL is for people with time on their hands. Ivy (and similar school) students accomplish higher purposes.

Two of the GLOs I interacted the most often with in college with, Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma, have dealt with membership like this even in the early to mid 00s. Not every campus would have both KKY and TBS, but because of Title IX rulings No one was barred from seeking membership in either group. Female members of KKY were still referred to as Brothers and male members of TBS would be called Sisters. At my campus, we had a couple of people that were male TBS sisters and female KKY brothers. No one made an issue of it then and from what I remember the reasons for an individual joining one over the other were personal and usually just meant they felt a stronger connection to one over the other even though both GLOs work in tandem for their service missions.

Yes, this. As a UMMB member, when I was there, there was only one male member of TBS and one female member active in KKY, and both clearly fit there well. We also had a lot of Sigma Kappa members (such as myself), I almost joined TBS, but definitely would have been a better fit in KKY had I had time to join another Greek org.