Immigrants, Traditional Cultures and Greek Life

[Sistermadly]

I'm especially interested in hearing from advisors and/or Greeks who have immigrant parents in this thread.

I advise a chapter here in the Pacific Northwest whose roster reads like a veritable United Nations. Because of this, from time to time we have new members who end up in family conflict because their parents believe the idea of sorority membership goes against their tradiational cultural beliefs. I've never personally had to deal with this as an advisor, so I'm asking here for some input.

Without going into too much detail (to protect the identity of the parties involved), if you're an advisor or a fraternity/sorority member who was in a similar situation, I'm interested to know how you handled it. What did you say to the parents to get them to reconsider? Did you ever have to give up on having a particular member in the chapter because parental opposition was so strong?

Thanks in advance - I'm kind of in a time crunch, so fast replies are greatly appreciated.