By Ceoli Jacoby

Summer 2020’s political climate led institutions across the U.S. to consider their role in creating and upholding racist power structures. Among them were Greek Letter Organizations (GLOs) on college and university campuses — many of which still lack diversity in recruitment and membership and remain cost-prohibitive for low-income students. 

Many marginalized racial and ethnic groups have formed their own GLOs. At the University of Maryland, there are five Jewish sororities and fraternities. There are also five fraternities and sororities that belong to the National Pan-Hellenic Council — the organization founded at Howard University which encompasses the “Divine Nine” historically Black GLOs in the U.S. 

UMD’s Multicultural Greek Council (MGC) represents groups that split from the Interfraternity Council (IFC) and Panhellenic Association (PHA) over concerns about representation, Matt Supple, director of the Department of Fraternity & Sorority Life, said in a Zoom interview. 

MGC-affiliated groups include Alpha Kappa Delta Phi, a sorority which focuses on Asian-awareness; Hermandad de Sigma Iota Alpha Incorporada, a Latina-oriented organization and Iota Nu Delta, a fraternity which promotes South-Asian cultures.

Jordan LeGras is a senior communications major who serves as the vice president of Diversity and Inclusion for MGC. Longing for a sense of sisterhood and emboldened by the glamorous sorority girls on TV and in movies, LeGras attended several rush events in the spring of 2019 for organizations in the Panhellenic Association  — which historically refused to bid African-American women. She dropped out two days before the end of the rush cycle.

“It was a lot different than I expected,” LeGras said in a Zoom interview. “I knew I wasn’t necessarily gonna see people that looked like me, but I was used to being in a diverse setting. So I was kind of off-put by the houses that I went to where the girls really all looked the same.”

“I remember when I was talking to some of the other [prospective new members],” LeGras continued. “I had dark hair at the time, and one of the white girls that was in our group was like ‘you look like Jhené Aiko.’ I was like, ‘Girl, I don’t look like Jhené Aiko at all — you just saw I was light-skinned.’” 

LeGras was initially disheartened when she was unable to connect with any of the PHA sororities. But the “dismissive and performative” behavior of certain predominantly white chapters at UMD during the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement proved to her that she was right to trust her gut.

“One sorority even posted a picture of a few Black girls that I guess were in their sorority to display their ‘diversity’ when their entire sorority was mostly white,” LeGras said. 

“Some of our students have had great success… and we have some students who have been stifled in their desire to change an organization and have left the organization because they felt like it wasn’t responsive,” Supple said.   

LeGras fell into the latter camp. Her experiences during the summer prompted her to search for a sorority in which she would not be tokenized or forced to correct the racist behavior of her sisters, said LeGras. She joined Kappa Lambda Xi Multicultural Sorority in the fall of 2020.

Supple said his department is often limited in its enforcement of diversity and inclusion in Greek life because “each of the organizations is a private organization so we don’t as an institution have any say over how their membership selection process works or who they take.” 

According to records obtained through the Maryland Public Information Act in March, UMD’s PHA is 82.8% white across all chapters — UMD’s entire student body was 45% white as of Fall 2021. And while Black students made up 11.8% of UMD’s student body, they made up less than three-quarters of a percent of PHA’s membership. 

The IFC is slightly more diverse than the PHA, with a membership that is 76.9% white. NPHC’s membership was 86.7% Black, while the MGC’s membership was mostly Asian with substantial numbers of Hispanic and and mixed-race individuals. 

“We do not make it a practice of saying, ‘here are the organizations that have more accepting intake or recruitment or membership processes and here are the ones that don’t,’” Supple said. “We simply encourage our potential new members to ask good questions.” 

Excluding Jewish GLOs, whose membership tends to reflect the fact that 92% of American Jews identify as white, the GLOs at UMD with the highest percentage of white members include Delta Delta Delta (PHA), Kappa Alpha Theta (PHA), Phi Delta Theta (IFC), Phi Sigma Sigma (PHA), and Tau Epsilon Phi (IFC). 

One of the above chapters, Phi Delta Theta, came under fire for members’ treatment of Dr. Stacey Pearson-Wharton, who spoke at a PHA-IFC Black History Month event in Feb. 2021. Phi Delta Theta suspended one member for sending emojis meant to represent male genitalia in the Zoom chat, the Diamondback reported. 

Phi Delta Theta attended the event in order to comply with the Chapter Expectations Policy — last updated in August 2020 — which requires all Greek institutions at the university to host a diversity program with attendance from 75% of their members. They are also required to appoint a Diversity and Inclusion Chair, who must attend a yearly meeting. 

According to the records, 52 of 54 recognized GLOs on campus completed the former requirement in the 2020-2021 academic year. The two organizations that failed to meet this requirement were Alpha Sigma Phi and Sigma Phi Epsilon, both belonging to the IFC. The latter also failed to send a Diversity and Inclusion Chair to the mandatory meeting that year, and their website indicated at the time of writing that the position has yet to be filled.

“Around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” Supple said, “I think we have a tremendous amount of work to do in the types of events we’re hosting, the way that we go about marketing and promoting our organizations, and the way that we not just provide access to folks who are different, but support those folks once they’re members so that we don’t isolate them.”

LeGras urged traditionally white GLOs to be aware of their reputations among minority students who attend predominantly white institutions.

“If you’re Black, and you’re finally going through recruitment when somebody makes a joke about how you talk a certain way or look a different way, you’re gonna think to yourself: ‘everyone was right,’” LeGras said.