Quote:
Originally Posted by Imus
If the student body is not diverse then it is not likely that campus organizations such as eating clubs or greeks will be diverse. It is relevant because the President specifically criticized the greeks for being exclusive.
|
Here I assume by "diverse", you're referring to African-American students, not Asian or South Asian/Indian students. My University, Johns Hopkins, has pretty similar diversity statistics:
Caucasian: 47%
Asian/Pacific Islander: 24%
African-American/Black: 7%
Hispanic/Latino-Latina: 7%
Native American: 1%
Other: 7%
International: 7%
(apply.jhu.edu)
And as referenced in the earlier article, Princeton has 8% Black students, 1/3 of which are considered African-American, not African immigrants. I don't know how many of the black Hopkins students are African-American as opposed to African.
Back on track. I don't know what percentage of JHU Greeks are black, but it is not a huge number. In the fraternities, it is probably similar to 7%. In the NPC sororities, it is less than 7%. I'll use my sorority as a pretty typical example. My sorority had 85 members this spring, of which 2 identified themselves as black. One was from America but (I believe) her parents were Jamaican, and one was African-American, Hispanic and Chinese. If we're looking at other minorities, we had 5 South Asian/Indian women and 9 Asian women. That breaks down to 2.3% black, 5.8% South Asian/Indian and 10.5% Asian.
That is less diverse than the general diversity statistics for the University, but probably very similar to the diversity stats for the women who went through recruitment. We certainly welcome diversity in our sororities, and I have heard sorority women say that they wish their group was more diverse. There is absolutely no prejudice against minority women going through recruitment, and I would go as far to say that they might have an easier time getting a bid because groups want to become more diverse. (As a side note - is that racist against the white students? Who knows.
)
I don't know why fewer minority women go through recruitment. There are a few groups specifically for minority students, but they're small. Last semester Sigma Omicron Pi and alpha Kappa Delta Phi (the two "Asian-Interest" sororities on campus) had only 31 sisters combined - and some of those women were Caucasian or African-American. The only Latina sorority, Lambda Pi Chi, had only 5 members. The only African-American fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, had only 5 members. The University used to have chapters of Delta Sigma Theta, Sigma Gamma Rho and Alpha Kappa Alpha , but they are no longer recognized - they chose to give up University recognition in order to recruit outside the student body because they couldn't sustain their numbers. I don't know how many members they have now, but it is not many. In Spring 2008, the last semester they were recognized, the three had only 18 sisters combined. Delta Xi Phi, JHU's only multicultural sorority, had 29 members this Spring, over half of whom I know to be Caucasian (and the rest mostly Asian).
So - a lot of unanswered questions. Even GLOs created specifically for members of certain enthnic groups fall far short of attracting the number of women they should, given how represented those minorities are at the University. Heck, white students represent less than half of the student body at JHU, but the majority of the Greek women are white.
I don't know why this is, but given that our diversity stats and campus culture are pretty similar to Princeton's, I would hazard to guess that they're in a similar situation.
Maybe someone else will have better insight on the reasons why this happens.
ETA: This probably should be in a different thread... it's not really what we were discussing in the first place. But relating it back to the point: I don't think Greek Life is exclusionary to certain ethnic groups. Though minorities are underrepresented in the sororities at my school, it is probably because they also tend not to go through recruitment. Those who do almost always seem to be sought after and placed since the sororities seem to actively seek to become more diverse. If there were a large number of minority women rushing and not being placed/getting heavy cuts, I would see more of an issue.
Hybrid Mode
