[FuzzieAlum]

I realize I sounded as if I'm being awfully hard on all of us for not being more diverse. I don't mean it that way exactly. The question is, how important should diversity be to an organization?

I think almost everyone on here agrees it is a bad thing if a chapter says, "We don't want Susie because she is black/Asian/Hispanic/white/Swedish/Zulu." It is a bad thing if rushees feel pressure NOT to rush a certain group because she's of a "different" race from most of their members. That is, I think we agree that ideally (and in some chapters, in reality), a woman of Korean heritage and a woman of German heritage and a woman of Namibian heritage should have the same chance in rushing any group she is sincerely interested in.

But if multi-culturalism or diversity is not a founding principle or a basic tenet of organization XYZ, how much further is XYZ obligated to carry it? Should XYZ be satisfied with the rushees that come to it? Should XYZ actively recruit sisters who would be in the minority in that chapter? More specifically, even if every member of a sorority at Bama is perfectly open-minded (which may or may not be the case of course), they can't pledge girls who don't rush them. So ought they be seeking ought black rushees? Do they have an obligation to do so? Do the HBGLOs have a similar obligation?

I'm sort of rambling here, but the question is, while exclusion based on race=bad, should diversity merely be something we are satisfied to have be possible, or ought we actively work for it?