Are Sororities and Fraternities Killing Diversity?

The college I go to prides itself on being diverse. Nearly every class manages to discuss issues like racism at some point or another. When you open up a brochure about the college, you see dozens of images of happy students, half of whom belong to a racial minority group, even though in reality, for every 20 students at the college, there appear to be only about 3 who aren’t white. This hypocrisy is an issue pretty much everyone is aware of, but there are other ways in which the school isn’t diverse that most people seem blind to. And if you know anything at all about me, you know I like to point out what other people tend to neglect.

Now I’m not exactly trying to bash the school. They give out a lot of scholarships, it‘s a nice looking campus, and I wasn‘t able to find any other college that offered a degree in the major I wanted, so I wouldn‘t say I‘m not happy with the school in general. And in terms of diversity, they have handled some things extremely well, like when the gay pride flag on campus was vandalized, the college put up signs informing students that the college welcomes everyone and doesn’t approve of homophobic attitudes.

The thing is, when I think of diversity, I usually think of it applying to all people based on all aspects of their identity, including nationality, sex, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability or lack thereof, and class. Yet at the college I go to, the whole issue of class seems to be completely forgotten about. Perhaps it’s because the college is located in a fairly wealthy area, but don’t they realize that not everyone who goes there lives within a three mile radius?

This semester I’ve actually taken a class on diversity in the workplace, and in the class, subjects like sexism, ageism, disability, sexual orientation, and religion were each talked about for approximately an hour and a half while the whole other half of the semester was dedicated to racism. The class discussed pretty much every imaginable type of racism except racism against Native Americans, because apparently they think that isn’t an issue in the United States. Yet neither the teacher nor the textbook even attempted to address discrimination on the basis of class.

It seems the college has no idea that there are people of various income levels attending their classes. After all, everywhere you go on campus, you see signs of the sororities and fraternities, and while I don’t know much about the fraternities, I do know that students who aren’t rolling in dough could never afford to be in a sorority. From what I hear, it costs hundreds of dollars to join a sorority, and the girls I know who belong to one say that if they miss a sorority event, they have to pay $50 or even $100, even if the reason they missed the event was because they had to attend class. Additionally, those of us who spend a great deal of time doing work outside of school would never possibly have the time to go to all of these events, so the sororities seem to favour those who not only live on campus but also do not need jobs in order to afford their classes.

So ironically, in this age when Greece’s economy has failed, the people here who take part in “The Greek Life” end up making the rest of us look like we come from the ghettos in comparison, and colleges that hope to eliminate discrimination don’t even recognize that they’re supporting a kind of discrimination that affects a large majority of the student body.