I am thrilled to offer this blog post from our news staff member, Meghan Gaffney Wells, M.Ed. Meghan comes with great fraternity/sorority and higher education experience and often goes deep into the cause of many of the challenges we face today. I hope you enjoy reading her thoughts as much as I enjoy sharing them!
In our last podcast, we talked about the history of sororities and the historical timeline of fraternities, sororities, and multicultural groups as we know them now.
As a former fraternity and sorority advisor, a question I was asked by members and non-members alike is, “Why are there so many different groups?”
The answer is belonging.
As Amanda highlighted in the podcast, white men were the lone students on-campus at the inception of fraternity. When white women arrived, their initial interest may have been to join the men’s organizations, but ultimately that opportunity was denied. And so, women gathered and created their own communities.
When people of color arrived on college campuses, the narrative was much the same. Students seeking community within existing structures were denied, and they built their own. This is true, too, of college campuses. The first Historically Black College/University (HBCUs) was founded in 1837, and designed to educate former slaves and their children. Today, 101 exist across the United States. Of the nine NPHC groups, six were founded at HBCUs (5 at Howard University, and 1 at Morgan State University).
Years ago, on one of my former campuses, student-led governing boards were creating dyads and triads for all fraternities and sororities across all councils to participate in Homecoming. A well-meaning but uninformed fraternity president asked me, “Can’t we ask the D9 (“Divine Nine”) fraternities to just become members of IFC?”
His intent was to diversify the current North American Interfraternity Council (NIC) groups (historically white fraternities, struggling with diversity among their rosters). However, the impact is much larger.
Most fraternities and sororities are 100+ years old, especially in the NIC, National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), and National PanHellenic Conference (NPHC), or D9 councils. No matter how inclusive or willing the current members are to diversify their chapters, no one has the right or ability to erase history, and no one could undo storied traditions, values, and rituals.
The other councils for students of color are much younger than the original 3 councils mentioned above, but no less valuable to the fraternity and sorority experience. The National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations (NALFO), National APIDA Panhellenic Association (NAPA), and Multicultural Greek Council (MGC) provide membership experiences for students across races and ethnicities. Even now, they are commonly unrepresented on many campuses. Because NPHC, NALFO, NAPA, and MGC groups tend to have smaller rosters, most FSL offices govern the chapters as one council to save resources and keep student leaders of color from being more overextended than they already are.
Folding multicultural chapters of any age into the historically white councils would be a negligent attempt to whitewash the rich pasts of racially and ethnically-based chapters.
Instead, we should talk openly about how and why so many chapters exist. We should familiarize our students with councils that exist on their campuses, and those that don’t. We should create spaces for our students to talk about diversity and history across councils, and we challenge the idea that students of color (or white students) choose their own populations in college groups to perpetuate race-based groups.
To revisit the original theme, students are entitled to, and must have, feelings of belonging.
According to Hurtado & Carter (1997), belonging has been identified as a lever to promote students’ success, engagement, and well-being in college. In other words, when we feel we belong, we thrive.
Imagine going to a networking dinner and having uncomfortable conversations with everyone in the room. Would you return? Some of us might say yes because of the potential status gained from membership. In reality, I’d love for students and advisors to focus on the truth that being uncomfortable in a setting is indicative of one thing: these are not your people!
Belonging is a human need everywhere, not just in college. Feeling unwelcome, uncomfortable, or disingenuous in any setting is likely a red flag that authentic belonging is absent.
Search any higher ed institution’s student organization website and you will likely see hundreds of groups. Belonging is the cause! When a student arrives on campus and existing organizations do not meet their needs, campuses encourage students to create new groups.
Having worked in student organizations, my experience is that groups must be formed with unique missions and values. So, no campus is the host to 40 chess clubs, but if one student somehow combined a love of chess and Quidditch, and they could find other interested students to join them, the group would be approved.
Remembering that our values, rituals, and traditions are the founding pillars of our fraternities and sororities helps us answer the question about why so many of our groups exist. At face value, our chapters may look like duplicates of one another, but they are not. Each has a unique meaning, and provides space for members to experience genuine belonging.