Dual Membership?

[naraht]

As has been pointed out before, 6B is only intended for "youth groups" like the Boy Scouts and Campfile. It talks about membership being primarily aimed at those below 19. which none of the collegiate Greek Letter Orgs are.

As for "social fraternities and sororities" that was left to the Deparement of Education (HEW at the time) to decide. Everyone know that the NIC and NPC groups qualified, but other groups were more nebulous. The eventual decision of HEW put the NIC, NPC and NPHC and similar groups into that category, but did not allow "recognition groups" (to use the terminology in Bairds) , honoraries and professionals into that group.

Alpha Phi Omega *did* try to get a Title IX exemption. We did not succeed. In order to keep the Fraternity from completely destroying itself, we came up with a compromise in 1976 that allowed chapters that wanted to go co-ed to do so. In 1986, the board changed that so that the only all-male chapters were ones that had remained all-male since before 1976, requiring that all new or rechartered chapters to be co-ed.

How are we able to do this given Title IX? The short answer is we can't. But the way Title IX is written, it is the *university* that is responsible for determining that all of its student groups fulfill the title IX requirements, not the organizations themselves either at the local level or at the (international) level. So what would happen if a woman *really* decided she wanted to pledge the Alpha Phi Omega chapter at Auburn (for example) and was denied, she would sue the school (and probably the fraternity as well, though not allowed under the Title IX rules) and then the school would decide to either fight it (and lose) or decide not to fight it and in either case would require their Alpha Phi Omega chapter to go co-ed or be derecognized. Since our chapters *require* school recognition to exist, derecognition by the school would force the chapter to be inactive.