THE UNIVERSITY community should be grateful for the ethnic diversity the Board of Visitors ensured by voting to retain affirmative action. Without it we might be treated to only one fraternal faction instead of several.
This fall has seen the arrival of the Fraternity-Sorority Council, a fourth fraternal council which seeks to be a home for Greek organizations that don't fit into the Inter-Fraternity, Inter-Sorority and Black Fraternal Councils. The two chapters admitted so far, Omega Phi Beta and alpha Kappa Delta Phi, are groups with an ethnic focus - Latina and Asian respectively.
These organizations, combined with those under the jurisdiction of the BFC, have the potential to serve as an institutionalized form of self-segregation. This should not be the goal of a community that continually emphasizes - at least in rhetoric - the importance of ethnic diversity. Not all the blame for this, however, should fall on the BFC and FSC's shoulders. There's plenty of blame to go around and some should go to the IFC and ISC.
The IFC and ISC probably don't actively discriminate against minorities, but there's still a dearth of minority members in IFC/ISC chapters. Also absent are large-scale efforts to recruit minorities. Because of low minority membership, a cycle is in place - one whose interruption is difficult but imperative. Few minorities seek membership in these groups because there aren't many minority members. There aren't many minority members because relatively few seek membership.
Ending the cycle depends on both sides, and calls for proactive minority recruitment efforts by IFC and ISC houses, and efforts by first-year minority students to investigate advantages of membership in these houses.
Though attempts to bring more minorities into the IFC/ISC fold might be made during the rush process, these ventures must come prior. One idea is a separate rush orientation focusing on distinct advantages that minorities can attain from membership. Another would be a pre-rush forum led by current minority members.
Advantages include the ability to bring a new perspective to the organization. By interacting with a diverse group, minorities who join Greek organizations can meet the goal - advocated by both new presidents - of making others aware of cultural differences more easily than by isolating themselves. Regardless of the form these efforts take, their creation by the IFC/ISC and their acceptance by those they target are vital to achieving the kind of diversity recently emphasized.
Such diversity may not be beneficial, however, as long as more groups like those sponsored by the FSC continue to be created. A chief purpose of an ethnically diverse student body is not to highlight ethnic groups' ability to consolidate and perform positive tasks. Rather, it should focus on promoting ideological sparring between people of different backgrounds. While Greek societies such as alpha Kappa Delta Phi - an outgrowth of the Young Asian Women's Alliance - may say that membership is not limited to Asian women, the name itself is exclusive, making it unlikely that others will join. The result may be social self-segregation with limited benefits.
Perhaps the most troublesome is that the presidents of both alpha Kappa Delta Phi and Omega Phi Beta admit in personal interviews there are inherent social aspects of their sororities. While groups such as the Asian Student Union or the Latin American Student Association can perform valuable tasks and promote a sense of community among minorities, they have fewer social connotations than Greek organizations. It is in the social realm that ethnic diversity truly can be beneficial. Though it can be rewarding in the classroom, it is in a social context that one tends to converse about salient issues of the day. Cultural differences in opinion on these issues are more important than those on the more historically based issues encountered in the classroom.
Some will say that membership in any of these organizations does not preclude social integration - it simply provides another avenue for minorities to express their ethnicity in a comfortable atmosphere. Certainly, this is true. Nonetheless, alpha Kappa Delta Phi president Michelle Le admitted in a personal interview that "there could be a tendency for [self-segregation] to happen." Conversely, she states, "The reason we became a Greek organization was because we wanted to integrate." Hopefully, her latter statement will reflect the results of her sorority more than the former. While the creation of organizations such as these may not preclude social integration, it certainly could impede it.
Diversity having been secured by the Board's recent affirmative action vote, it is now the University community's responsibility to make the most of it. Placing additional obstacles in the way of freely exchanged ideas is not a step in the right direction.
Chris DelGrosso's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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