DePauw, Delta Zeta and the White American Hubris

My friends are always surprised and shocked that I was in a fraternity during my first attempt at college. And, I have to explain to them that it was a different world. My college had 55 percent of people in the Greek system. In the fraternity, I met a large number of interesting forward thinking individuals. I have to describe that we were more than a glorified drinking club. In fact, my fraternity did more volunteering per person than the campus average.
Yet, my friends always have their own story why fraternities suck. However, each of these stories either involves a small number of individuals who belong to a specific chapter of a fraternity/sorority or the fact that the entire chapter at their school sucked. I will accept this as truth. Birds of a feather flock together; therefore, assholes, racists, and womanizers will probably all join the same fraternity chapter. I’ve heard stories of Kappa Alphas at the University of Georgia flying a 25 foot Confederate Battle Flag.
So, yes, specific chapters can have specific problems. Let me give you two examples that I have pretty good knowledge of. At my school, Allegheny College, the Alpha Chi Ro chapter had some sort of LSD driven “Vampire Party” and pictures of it ended up on the President of the College’s desk. Apparently there was some sort of mayhem where the police, local paper and county offices got involved. Well, both the National Alpha Chi Ro and Allegheny College revoked the chapter’s charter. When I was going there the “Crow House” was nothing but an empty lot as the school had torn down the house with the acquiescence the national Alpha Chi Ro headquarters.
A second example was while I was in school. My fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, had a chapter at Rider College in New Jersey. Well, the brothers at this chapter decided that it would be a good idea if they made pledges participate in a “Dress Like a Nigger Day.” Well, the information on this came out and the College President and the National Office both immediately suspended the chapter’s charter. Then, Maury Povich got involved. There were cries to ban Phi Kappa Psi nationwide. My chapter had to explain to members of the Association for Black Culture at Allegheny that the national office was not only suspending but also going through the process of revoking the chapter’s charter. (I’m sure other Phi Psis nationwide had to do this). Most members nationwide were disgusted by the idea of “dress like a nigger day;” while almost all members were amazed by the stupidity of it.
This gets us to the point of this column. Delta Zeta recently completed a virtual Stalinist purge at DePauw University under the euphemism, “membership review.” Per Delta Zeta’s national headquarters website, “Delta Zeta national leadership undertook the membership review and made decisions thereon based solely upon each woman’s commitment to Delta Zeta's recruitment plans moving forward.”
Yet, those who were not sent to the gulag of early alumnae status were all in the image of the classic white, pretty sorority girl. All those who were not? Got kicked to the curb. This included 3 of the 4 minority girls in the chapter and reportedly many of those who were overweight or had “geeky” majors. Former Delta Zeta Kate Holloway told the New York Times, “Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave.” The national headquarters of Delta Zeta then bussed in what were described as “Barbie doll” clones from Indiana University to run rush – the recruitment process.
Now this may seem as a silly isolated incident designed to keep the Delta Zeta house at DePauw University from closing its doors. But, the Delta Zeta nationals have a history of trying to affect membership at DePauw. The New York Times reported that in 1967 the national office attempted to keep the DePauw chapter from initiating a woman whose father was Black. And in 1982 the DePauw chapter kept a black woman from joining.
While, there is no smoking gun here, I do see a pattern. The national chapter said the sisters were sent to the gulag for not being down with the recruitment plans. Did the recruitment plans involve getting only the archetype sorority girls to join? Did the recruitment plan include not having minorities in it? To quote Public Enemy, “These days you can’t see whose in cahoots/ ’Cuz the KKK wearing three-piece suits.”
But the issue does not end here. Throughout the years America has been more and more inclusive. But on each step up the ladder of inclusiveness there have been backlashes. The 1982 incident corresponds with a time when the President of the United States had announced his presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi (site of Mississippi Burning) and blamed unemployment on women in the workforce. Now this incident shows the extreme hubris that racist prejudicial people and organizations are showing.
In a society where white Americans seem to be trying to marginalize anyone who is not a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Delta Zeta’s actions to reject traditional American democratic values is not surprising. Whites are angered over people who speak Spanish. 39% of Americans believe Muslims should carry special ID cards (you know like the Nazis made the Jews have!) There is a growing movement to further take away rights of immigrants by trying to repeal the 14th Amendment guarantee of citizenship at birth. And, there are people calling in death threats to pizza parlors seeking to make money by allowing people to buy pizzas with pesos.
I ask such covert hate groups as the Heritage Foundation, the America First Party and Delta Zeta to read the Constitution. It says “We the People of the United States of America.” It does not read, “We the White People” or “We the English-only speakers” or even “We the Rich, White Cheerleader looking People.” “We the People” is the central traditional American value. It is such a traditional American value that the framers decided to make it front and center of the most important document in the United States.
I would also like to see every college that has a chapter of Delta Zeta to do an investigation. It would seem likely that the national chapter would commit such un-American acts at other chapters as well. I would like to offer thumbs up to the six women who were not asked to leave the Delta Zeta chapter but did so in protest. Also, a thumbs up goes to TCU’s PanHellenic community for choosing Gamma Phi Beta over Delta Zeta to be the new chapter on campus.
The Delta Zeta national chapter did not respond to requests for comment.