HAILEY MANGRUM
SHOW ME YOUR POLICIES AND I’LL VERIFY YOUR STATEMENT
“Show me your best friends and I’ll tell you who you are.” A similar proverbial message is shared within the fraternity/ sorority industry about values alignment. It suggests by your life’s work, everyday behaviors and presence, others should have an inkling of your membership with a fraternal organization. The same is true about racism. In May and June of 2020, many campuses, councils, and inter/national organizations released a surge of statements affirming support, defending justice, and condemning racism. Amidst this, I couldn’t help but wonder how these entities were denouncing and condemning the same systems in which they maintained their existence. Many statements failed to mention how they are part of the problem. Instead of addressing issues within infrastructure, mapping out systemic changes they could work toward, and/or providing strategy rooted in action, statements focused on words such as respect, kindness, grace, and love. None of these sentiments can address the actual problem — receipts from these same campuses, councils, and inter/national organizations in the form of staffing models, membership demographics, curriculum, allocation of funding/resources, programs, and generic history on the development of fraternity and sorority tell us otherwise. Frankly, the fraternity/sorority industry has a responsibility to be actively anti-racist because the industry is, in fact, the system to which it exists.
