Diversity Decisions in GLO's

[Kansas City]

The diversity at UGA thread got me thinking … for those GCers who had the desire and/or opportunity to consider both NPHC and NPC/IFC organizations as a collegiate member, how did you make the decision to join the council (and/or organization chapter) that you eventually chose?

The campus that I attended and now advise at could be described as a small, mid-western, “white bread”, rural farm community. There are only two “D9” chapters on campus (one sorority and one fraternity) each having probably less than eight members at any one time. There are currently no recognized Hispanic or Asian GLOs. On the other hand there are six NPCs and ten IFCs with a fairly active and positive image of “Greek Life”. It would seem to me that a minority or bi-racial student attending my school might have to make a choice between being hugely active as a collegiate member on campus (and maybe an active alumni) -- or -- focusing on other endeavors (sports, major, etc.) as a collegiate then striving to become an active alumni member following graduation. I just don’t see the NPHC chapters being very active collegiate members on my campus by comparison to the NPC/IFC chapters.

From the NPC prospective, our chapters are very open and interested in becoming diverse during recruitment with most PNMs receiving a bid no matter their ethnicity. Unfortunately, with the school attracting the student population that it does, there just isn’t that much diversity in recruitment (which is probably the same reason that the NPHC chapters are so small in comparison to the NPC/IFC chapters and Asian and Hispanic chapters are non-existent).

I realize that I am asking GC to compare apples and kiwi fruit to oranges with this question but think that it eventually gets to the bottom of what each of us wanted out of our respective organizations and councils and why we ended up making the decisions that we did at the schools we attended.