Other gender Advisors/Honorary?
 

For those fraternities/sororities which only allow undergraduate members to be of one gender (which is most of those discussed here on greekchat), does your organization allow either Advisors or Honorary membership of the other gender. More particularly, is there any situation in which someone of age 50 (for example) of the other gender would be able to either go through the initiation ceremony or attend it.

Note, my reason for asking is trying to get context for the efforts of some Alpha Phi Omega (which did not allow women full membership until 1976) chapters to grant Honorary membership to women staff members in the 1960s and one chapter being allowed to have a female advisor in 1969.

For Delta Chi: advisory positions are open to non-members, regardless of gender. The only position a non-member cannot hold is "BB" which is the primary chapter advisor. (He typically attends all or most chapter meetings and submits reports to HQ every semester) The majority of the Alumni Board of Trustees (which the "BB" is part of) must be made of Delta Chi Alumni, but I can think of a few chapters that have women, and non-Delta Chi men on their ABTs.

Delta Chi does not have honorary membership. For you 50 year-old woman example the answer is no. Alumnus Initiation, as the name suggests, is only for men and Initiation is a private ceremony. Not directly related to your questions but our Associate Member Ceremony is open, and female and non-Delta Chi advisors can and do attend.

CAVEAT: I don't know what the policy was in the 1960s-70s-80s-90s. Not sure how current information is applicable to what appears to be historical research on your part.

Kappa Alpha Theta: will permit non-Theta advisors, including those of the male gender, in CERTAIN advisory board positions (e.g. no positions that deal with discipline, or are related in any way to ritual, obviously). That narrows the field as to what positions can be filled by non-Thetas.

I would not be averse to having a male advisor or a non-Theta advisor, if it was a good match for the chapter and the potential advisor. That's the key, IMO - there has to be a good match.

We do not have "honorary membership"; nonmembers are not permitted to attend Initiation. There is no age restriction in the language at this time regarding membership; the definition is clear with respect to who is eligible for membership, and there is nothing about age that I can find anywhere. If I am incorrect, one of my Theta sisters will chime in and I will edit this post!

I believe that having "honorary" members or allowing anyone of another gender to participate in initiation in any way would jeopardize the single sex status of any NPHC, NPC or NIC organization. However, for other organizations, this might not be the case.

And Beta Theta Pi also allows female advisers and even gives awards for them. I would not be opposed to a male adviser in some capacity for my GLO though I'm not aware of any currently.

Sigma Alpha Iota has a title IX exemption as do the NPHC, NPC, and NIC organizations. However, we allow men who have achieved recognition for their contribution to the arts to be initiated as honorary members. They go through a very different, truncated ceremony--but they still learn our secrets. At the collegiate level, though, we are single-sexed. Men are never allowed to pledge and go through the collegiate initiation ceremony. Our having men as honoraries has never jeopardized our status as a Title IX exempt organization.

Sigma Alpha Iota prefers chapters to have advisors that are initiated members. While I was a collegiate, our entire advisory board were initiated members, but I know there are chapters with non-member advisors. Every chapter has to have at least one faculty advisor and the NEB recognizes that there may not be an initiated sister to serve in this role. But, of the 4 advisors required for each advisory board, the NEB would like each board to have at least one initiated member (to assist with ritual, membership, etc).

SAI's exemption for men is at the professional and alumnae level, not undergraduate. To my knowledge, no NPC groups have such a level. Also, I'm not aware of any NPC groups petitioning for such an exemption for men - though if they did institute different levels of membership which correspond to SAI's, I 'm sure they would look at that. However, with NPC's UA's that no men can participate in NPC recruitment (new UA this past year) and no women can participate in NIC recruitment, I doubt that they are looking at such a change.

No.

AOII does allow men as advisers in certain positions, but they would not be privy to discussions of ritual or allowed to attend ritual meetings. I actually served on the AAC at Theta Beta at Towson with an SAE who served as our Faculty Adviser and PR adviser. It worked out very well for the chapter. He was a very respected faculty member and was very enthusiastic about working with our chapter. BTW, PR was his field.

One of our chapters had a male advisor for many years. I think he was a Beta Theta Pi alumnus.

We can recognize males for contributions to the sorority (as a sweetheart, or as an advisor) and have ways of doing so, but they cannot receive honorary membership. And no, no boys at initiation (regardless of age of boy).

As for your original question...it was the 60s.

Do academic advisors count?

I know that the West Georgia Chi Omegas have had the same male academic advisor for years.

The AGD chapter had a male academic advisor for a very short time but unfortunately he died (can't remember how).

Alpha Phi Alpha has two kinds of advisors:

Alpha Advisors must be Alphas (and I believe must be members of the "sponsoring" alumni chapter in the area)

Campus Advisors may be Alphas but don't have to be; this position is concomitant with whatever position the campus requires. Campus Advisors have been women. In the past few years, we had a write-up in the Sphinx about a well-liked Campus Advisor who was a white woman.

Alpha Sigma Tau may have non-member/male advisors, including the chapter advisor. One of the more well-known male advisors among ASTs is David Stollman (of CAMPUSSPEAK, and member of Sigma Phi Epsilon), who is the advisor for our chapter at NYU.

As far as I know, this isn't a common occurrence, but it is possible.

They may not, however, participate in any kind of ritual.

Because of this thread, I am now putting "Become an advisor to an NPC org" on my vision board/bucket list.

Interesting. The only AST chapter I am familiar with had a male chapter adviser. He was a alumnus of Sigma Pi.

Women can be on our advisory boards and house corporations but they cannot be members. They cannot be initiated.