The new millennium hasn't been kind to Lambda Phi Epsilon

[nwu43]

[quote=gphiangel624;1440204][quote=L.O.C.K.;1440080]nwu43,
Out of all of our chapters, the most diverse is UC Riverside - they have three Mexican American brothers, 2 white brothers, and one South Asian brother.

True- Pi Delta Psi at UCR is pretty diverse, as are most organizations at UCR. Being that UCI has comparable ethnicity demographics, I'm going to assume their orgs are almost as diverse, if not more.

My understanding of many ethnic-based or ethnic-interest Greek orgs were founded (in addition to what L.O.C.K. stated) is that the organizations have an interest in making the general campus and community more aware of the targeted ethnicity and the culture(s) related to it, and to provide services and/or philanthropic support to organizations related to the targeted ethnicity. For example, several of our organizations that identify as Asian-American (Greeks and non-Greeks) support local blood and bone marrow banks that specifically work with Asians and Asian-Americans.

Is my understanding in any way accurate?

Yup. I thought initially you were talking more about the social aspect of the Asian community (because you mentioned social GLO's) which would not be lacking in many California schools.

Ethnic Greeks do indeed provide services/philanthropy related to the targeted ethnicity, but I think the difference between ethnic Greeks and Asian clubs like CSA is that the ethnic Greeks are Greek! Just look up Pi Delta Psi on wikipedia you'll see that promoting "Friendship and Loyalty" is important just as it is important to promote "Cultural Awareness". Thus, many people choose to become part of the Asian Greek world because they are interested in forming bonds in addition to serving the Asian community.

[dbizzy]

Originally Posted by PeppyGPhiB

This may seem off-base, but I must say that I'm kinda surprised that UCI has an asian fraternity, since SO MANY of its students are asian. I'm guessing that many cultural GLOs come on to campuses when they feel there's a need for them, as in when their needs aren't being met...? If these are just social organizations, I'm surprised they didn't feel their needs were being met in the social GLOs on campus, which I believe have MANY asians. I was just looking at a photo of our Gamma Phi chapter at UCI the other day and was thinking how that photo was the complete opposite of one I'd see from another school...almost all the women were asian. It reminded me how diverse my sorority is from campus to campus.

I can definitely vouch for the diversity of your UCI chapter...a majority of the chapter is Asian, or at least not caucasian. Many other large panhellenic sororities on campus are just as diverse...Alpha Phi and Pi Phis come to mind. IFC Fraternities that have a large Asian composition at UCI include almost all of them...Kappa Sigma, SAE, Sigma Chi, Sigma Nu, Pikes, FIJI...the list goes on and on. Some of my friends from Alpha Phi told me that when a few of them went to a convention, people almost looked shocked to see that there were even any Asians in the chapter. Now I'm sure each of those orgs may have cliques that are somewhat divided by race/ethnicity, but that's a totally different subject...

Not to stray from the original topic but I think most greek kids across the nation have a tough time imagining such a diverse campus such as UCI. And even with so much of the greek population being Asian, UCI still has a flourishing Asian-greek scene. I am the president of the largest Asian-interest fraternity here and yet my org as well as some others transcend the greek lines and become very involved in the greek scene (philanthropies, socials, songfest, just hanging out, etc), and it is completely accepted here. It's truly a pretty unique campus when it comes to demographics and social interaction. Just some food for thought!