AOII officially disbands Washington University chapter

[LaneSig]

Originally Posted by APhi2KD

Not all GLOs are on board at the national level, though. And chapters trying to enact real change have experienced significant stalling or even pushback. If these women truly believe the harm caused by the orgs has outweighed the good and that they will continue to resist change and be injurious, I can understand their efforts to end the system.

As to the part that I bolded: In my opinion, many times the undergraduate members want action "Right Now!".

But, what the undergraduates view as stalling or pushback is really their organization saying "Let us look at this. We don't want to go off half-cocked and make the situation worse."

It makes me think of the issue that happened at Tufts a couple of years ago. A sorority wanted to bid a transgender woman. They asked their organization what the rules would were on the issue. The organization asked the chapter for a few days to go over their bylaws and get back to them. Many of the undergrad members threw a fit that the leaders didn't automatically say "Yes, go ahead and do it" right away, and those members resigned. All their organization asked was to give them a few days to go over the issue.

[ASTalumna06]

Originally Posted by LaneSig

As to the part that I bolded: In my opinion, many times the undergraduate members want action "Right Now!".

But, what the undergraduates view as stalling or pushback is really their organization saying "Let us look at this. We don't want to go off half-cocked and make the situation worse."

It makes me think of the issue that happened at Tufts a couple of years ago. A sorority wanted to bid a transgender woman. They asked their organization what the rules would were on the issue. The organization asked the chapter for a few days to go over their bylaws and get back to them. Many of the undergrad members threw a fit that the leaders didn't automatically say "Yes, go ahead and do it" right away, and those members resigned. All their organization asked was to give them a few days to go over the issue.

But what those members hear is, "Give us a view days to decide whether we want to be inclusive or not." On the other hand, they asked the question, so one would assume they knew it wasn't going to be an immediate 'yes' and it may take some time to work through.

Of course, due to the nature of our organizations (and thinking about this issue in relation to what seems to be the main reason for the Abolish Greek Life movement), a person of color joining does not have the same implications as a transgender person joining.

One of the things I saw popping up on social media from sorority members this summer - including from my own organization - was the demand that we all be called 'siblings' instead of 'sisters'. Apparently some individual chapters are already doing so. I had never heard of this before and it certainly seems it hasn't been brought through proper channels of our organizations, but I'll let others speak to that, if they so choose. Either way, an angry rant on social media is probably not the best way to go about change. Our members have been calling each other 'sisters' for more than a century. Perhaps that may change one day, but that change doesn't occur overnight because you got mad about it on your Facebook wall.