[astroAPhi]

AlphaXiDiva, I think a lot of the reason why some of our chapters don't have more women of different races is because minorities sometimes don't go to college. It's unfortunate because sometimes they aren't given the same opportunities as caucasians. I'm from the suburbs of Chicago, and most of the kids around here go to college. Unfortunately when you travel into the city, most of the schools are full of poor black kids who can't afford tuition to a university, or their teachers have unfortunately taught them not to count on anything. The lucky ones get athletic scholarships because a lot of the Chicago schools have extremely strong basketball programs. It just plain sucks and those kids never break the cycle.

At my school, we have a very strong international population (25%), but when I think about it, not too many kids from the States are minorities at my school. Most of the ones that are are from the area and are on sports scholarships. Most of the international students join Caribbean Students Association instead of joining a fraternity and a sorority. My sorority teamed up with the CSA girls for a flag football team this fall, and those girls rocked. I'm hoping that they'll think about rushing because we all had a lot of fun and maybe it would break those stereotypes. I don't think of them as black girls, I think of them as awesome chicks who I'd like to hang out with more. One of them might be joining the soccer team and I'm excited that we'll get to play together.

I hope that we haven't struck you as shallow AlphaXiDiva. I don't even think of the girls in my chapter who are "minorities" as that. Leslie from Honduras is just a wacky girl who cracks me up all the time, and Annie from Pakistan is just a bubbly girl who likes to talk a lot. Only when I was trying to show smiley how diverse chapters can be did their nationalities come out. I think most of the other girls on here think of their sisters as the same way: not as "the black girl in my sorority" but as "Diana, my sister who likes to go with me to pick up guys", etc.

I hope that we haven't given anyone that impression. I don't want anyone to think I took my sisters simply because we wanted to say we were good people and take girls from different ethnic backgrounds. We took those girls because they kick ass and because we knew they'd make great Alpha Phis.