Way to go dzrose! I agree 100%.
The Greek system at UF has actually tried to increase minority involvement but it's really hard. There are well-established, successful NPHC organizations and several Latin fraternities/sororities (sorry I don't remember the name of their council). They are very active on campus and tend to attract a large % of the minorities who would go Greek.
I mean, maybe I'm simplifying things, but it seems to me that the type of person who wants to go Greek, no matter what type of organization they pursue, is motivated by similar things. There are definitely different strengths of each type of system, but in general, everyone is looking for the friendship, the leadership, the activities, and the service to the community that Greeks provide. Greek life isn't appealing to everyone (even though it should be - people just don't know what they're missing!
) so when out of all the minorities who are interested in Greek life, the vast majority don't go through our Rush, guess what folks, the houses will remain majority white.
The other problem we encountered is that when minorities do go through our system, there is a LOT of pressure from their families, friends, etc. NOT to join. They are told that they are "selling out" by joining a "white girl sorority" instead of an NPHC sorority.
Some houses at UF the girls literally are all about the same size and have the same haircut/color. Attack of the Clones! My sorority never looked like "cookie-cutter" sisters. We had a great mix of tall and short, christian and jewish (and a buddhist), every hair color, etc. We had a number of hispanic and asian sisters. It never was a big deal to us. Our whole approach to Rush was looking for girls that we wanted to have as friends. I still remember what our Rush chair told us my sophomore year: "You want the girl who you can picture yourself watching silly TV shows with."
The 4 years that I was an active sister, we had only one black member, and she dropped out before initiation. Her mom made her quit because we didn't have any other black girls. Really made a lot of us upset - she was really sweet - i.e. someone you want to watch silly TV shows with! It's very frustrating when someone criticizes you for not having black sisters, when none will join because you have no black sisters! You can't win.