Greek Life Under Attack

Greek Life Under Attack

According to an article written by Jay Reeves, administrators at the University of Alabama are getting involved in integrating sororities and fraternities by imposing rules and punishments for those organizations that do not comply. Since the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960?s, Americans like to think that segregation does not exist in the United States. However, sororities and fraternities across the country are being viewed as segregated. Many people in society feel that it is the administrators job to enforce integration among fraternities and sororities, but others feel that it should be up to the students to integrate themselves and that the faculty should stop interfering.

Many of those who feel that integration should be left untouched by the administrations of the school know that historically Greek organizations have been segregated. For almost a century the groups have remained segregated naturally, or by choice. Since this has never been an issue before administrators should not even bother to integrate sororities and fraternities. Furthermore, what happens of no members of the opposite race want to join a traditional race oriented frat or sorority? How can administrators justify punishing Greek organizations if members of the opposite race truly have no interest in joining?

However, over the years this segregation has blindly detained people from limited backgrounds to be able to engage themselves with people of other backgrounds. This is the case for the family in Rodriguez?s ?Aria.? The family?s background limits them to having interactions with people of other backgrounds. Rodriguez says, ?it never occurred to my parents that they couldn?t live wherever they chose?despite their accomplishments the confidence of ?belonging? in public was withheld from them? (658). Richard cannot interact with the other children at first because his background uses a different language, which prohibits this interaction. These examples show that segregation causes barriers to be built, and once constructed are very hard to overcome if interaction takes place at a later time. Forcing integration reverses this problem by giving a chance for various backgrounds to interact with each other.

This forced integration can also bring many more options to those students who are interested in joining a sorority or fraternity thus increasing the overall memberships of the Greek community.