June 2014

June 2014

Volume 1, Issue 7

HBCU Digest

June 2014

Greek Life

CONTENTS

Publisher Jarrett L. Carter, Sr. Editor Autumn A. Arnett Assistant Editor Kyle Yeldell Contributors Illya Davis Crystal A. deGregory Chauncey Dennie Imani J. Jackson Vann R. Newkirk II Shana Pinnock Christina Sturdivant Cover image by Torrance Alexander

5 Letter from the Editor

6 HBCU DIGEST OPINIONS

Black Greek Letter Organizations: Proposals and Possibilities

By Illya Davis

8 HOWARD’S GREEK LEGACY

The story of how one HBCU gave birth to five Black Greek Letter Organizations

By Kyle S. Yeldell

12 NEVER TOO LATE?

Grad chapter Greeks find value in late pledging

By Chauncey Dennie

14 DONE IN THE DARK

Despite national bans on hazing, initiation rituals likely to persist

By Christina Sturdivant

16 GREEK U-N-I-T-Y?

Recent debates have led many to ponder whether NPHC organizations are post-racial or behind the times

By Shana Pinnock

20 DIFFERENT DAZE

Greek life, HBCU culture intrinsically tied

By Autumn A. Arnett and Kyle S. Yeldell HBCU Digest is published monthly by Carter Media Enterprises, LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. HBCU Digest and the HBCU Digest logo are protected through registered trademark.

For advertising and subscription information, contact carter@hbcudigest.com.

24 COMMITTED TO SERVICE

Members of BGLOs remain dedicated to their original missions

By Vann R. Newkirk II

28 LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP

BGLOs have produced pioneers in nearly every imaginable field

By Dr. Crystal A. deGregory

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HOWARD UNIVERSITY Howard University, one of the nation’s leading research universities, is dedicated to educating students from diverse backgrounds at the undergraduate, graduate and professional levels. Guided by our extraordinary cadre of faculty, students are immersed in cutting-edge scholarship and innovation, including nanotechnology, human genome research and atmospheric science, as well as the social sciences, arts and humanities on four campuses.

Since its inception more than 145 years ago, Howard University has been at the forefront of preparing globally competent students for positions of leadership and social responsibility.

Howard.edu

twitter.com/HowardU

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HBCU Digest

June 2014

Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, It seemed appropriate, going into July—the month in which Phi Beta Sigma, Inc. is converging on Washington, D.C. in celebration of is centennial anniversary and many of the other Divine Nine organizations are preparing for their national conventions—to dedicate an entire issue to Greek Life. Because, as Digest assistant editor Kyle Yeldell and I examine in “Different Daze” (page 20), what’s a discussion of HBCU life without a discussion of Greek life?

For me, though I did not pledge a sorority while on campus, the answer is: there isn’t a discussion of one without the other. As soon as the weather broke on campus, Hump Wednesday and Thursday on the Strip (or Promenade) and Market Friday were THE social scenes on campus—and the site of many probates and spontaneous step shows and stroll-offs, or just a place where a number of folks in Greek ‘nalia were gathered there with the rest of us.

As with every issue, we worked to bring you a collection of articles that stays away from the obvious and mundane discussions of Greek life and works to highlight some of the less-talked-about facets of the broader Greek culture on campus. We asked questions that have been hot on people’s minds lately in “Greek U-N-I-T-Y” and “Done in the Dark.” We provided a few history lessons, highlighted the positive contributions of the organizations to their greater communities, and told what we hope you will agree are some of the untold stories of Black Greek Life.

I am particularly thankful to have had the assistance of one of Omega Psi Phi’s Psi chapter historians (in Kyle) to assist with every step of this process. I think you will agree that the additional insight is noticeable in this issue and made it that much more impactful.

Enjoy!

Most sincerely,

Autumn A. Arnett Editor HBCU Digest

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HBCU Digest

June 2014

HBCU Digest Opinions

Black Greek Letter Organizations: Proposals and Possibilities

By Illya Davis

H

uman institutions are often riddled with contradictions and conflicts. A brief examination reveals examples of institutions that promote social and educational development through direct engagement with targeted communities in need of their services. Still, the often honorable aspirations and noble ideals of many institutions fail to actualize these virtues and regretfully retard human flourishing through inappropriate policies and practices. African-American sororities and fraternities are not exempt from this observation. As social institutions, they are merely representative of these general characteristics found in broader societal institutions.

Nonetheless, Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLOs) are faced with particular adversities and tasks, to be sure, and their responses to these unique conditions must be appropriate to the needs and aspirations of evolving Black communities as a whole.

The social complexities of Black America translate to the founding and prevailing missions of these organizations. The genesis of these organizations is grounded in the particular responses Black college co-eds forged in light of social ostracization on predominately White campuses, circumscribed participation in the larger society’s social spaces and political intercourse, as well as minimal access to resources for the cultivation of substantive intramural social engagement.

Nonetheless, BGLOs have not been immune to popular questions of relevance and viability that have plagued everything from affirmative action to HBCUs in general. Subsequently, in order to lay bare any redeeming virtues that may be forged consistent with appropriate historical principles associated with each groups’ founding charters, they must accept the task of rejuvenating their identities (collectively and individually) and actively develop new progressive visions and substantive programming—social, economic, and educational.

These aspirations must seek to extend the earlier visions of organizations set forth by their founders into the twenty-first century and beyond. To be clear, the organizations must acknowledge that the value of referring to their respective foundings and attendant histories for guidance does not reside in the mere fact that tradition is somehow to be honored merely because it is tradition. No, that is a blatant fallacy of appeal to tradition. The aim is to continue to promote and practice those

traditions that have been assessed and analyzed for their effective applicability to the flourishing of each organization and to the communities they seek to serve. Re-evaluating traditions and rejuvenating the organizations will help the groups as they promote practices and perform activities that reaffirm the organizations’ value and are appropriate on their own merit, and not simply because a traditional activity is simply a time-honored practice performed irrespective of its appropriateness. This suggested approach is only a beginning. The difficult task of redefinition may well refer to tradition, but it must not fail to invigorate the virtues found in progressive and challenging new ways of social engagement.

Here is a suggested layout of several proposals for social, economic and educational engagement that can support the future relevance of BGLOs. First, what specific activities might college co-eds undertake in this regard? It would be misleading not to recognize and celebrate the dynamic outcomes of the BGLOs on college campuses. Members are given opportunities to refine leadership skills, they offer intermittent food and clothing to struggling communities and often provide tutoring to local schools.

To be sure, the aim is not to attempt to mitigate the ethical failings that are equally a part of the fabric of the histories of these organizations. The effort here is to consider how best to move forward progressively and dynamically in order to maximize the gifts and brilliance of the individual and collective members of these groups. Toward this end, there must be a shift in emphasis to scholarship and embracing the intellectual and scholarly pursuits of members of BGLOs during their college tenure. It is unacceptable to merely bring in new members without simultaneously working to ensure the academic success and requisite intellectual development required for college graduation and future vocational and professional careers.

Each BGLO has anecdotes that give account of students who simply met the minimal academic qualifications in order to gain membership. It is incumbent upon BGLOs to maximize the academic success of its members by setting up tutoring and libraries accessible to its members. This should be offered irrespective of the particular academic support provided by their college or university. Well-structured libraries would include professional and academic indices of its graduated members in order to facilitate

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HBCU Digest

June 2014

HBCU Digest Opinions cultivation of mentorship and advisement. BGLOs should maintain alliances with one another and other campus organizations that purport to advocate for socio-economic and political justice.

Assisting our communities is not a competition and our social efforts must be inclusive—all are called to help Nationally, it is clear that Black sororities and fraternities have come to a juncture in their respective histories where discussions of their potential that is loosely aligned with their honorable foundings can no longer be sustained without new ideals of success. The goals now must include developing schools that are owned and operated by these organizations in order that the true value of their principles might gain expression through progressive and dynamic pedagogical instruction. BGLOs are populated with physicians and other medical experts, yet there is no clinic (mobile or stationary) owned and operated solely by any one of the nine representatives of BGLOs. The merit of many of these organizations’ social interaction and community service engagements are commendable, yet remain parochial and dated forms of interface. Economic and legal strategies are needed to

help guide members of communities with limited resources to financial stability and civic empowerment.

BGLOs have an opportunity (and an imperative) to establish community development corporations and credit unions to redress community concerns regarding predatory lending practices and costless banking services. After 100 years in existence, BGLOs are organized and primed to address these and other social conditions. The economic and intellectual capital to redress these needs are not limited to these groups, but the responsibility to contribute to their improvement is nonetheless a priority for them as structured organizations equipped to assist. The aspirations of these BGLOs must extend beyond their comfort zones.

More than similar groups in other cultures and communities, BGLOs are best positioned to be the change we want to see in our communities and beyond.

Illya Davis is Assistant Director of the Honors program at Clark Atlanta University and teaches philosophy at both Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College. He is a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

Members of the Tau graduate chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc., of which Davis is a member, pose on the campus of Clark Atlanta University. The chapter was founded on the campus of Atlanta University.

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HBCU Digest

June 2014

Howard’s Greek Legacy The Story of how One HBCU Gave Birth to Five Black Greek Letter Organizations

By Kyle Yeldell

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HBCU Digest

O

n December 20, 1907, Beta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. was chartered at Howard University with 19 initiates, becoming the first Greek-letter chapter at a Black institution. Just one month later, on January 15, 1908, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. was founded at Howard

by Ethel Hedgeman and her eight classmates. Hedgeman was assisted in her organization’s creation by her boyfriend and later husband George A. Lyle, a charter member of Beta Chapter.

Over the next six years, four Black Greek letter organizations were founded in the United States, three of them at Howard. However, the remaining organization was created by former Howard students. During the fall semester of 1910, Elder Watson Diggs and Byron K. Armstrong, then-sophomores, transferred from Howard to Indiana University. On January 5, 1911, just months after transferring, Diggs and Armstrong, along with eight other students, founded Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. At Howard months later, Oscar J. Cooper, Frank Coleman and Edgar A. Love, three of Diggs and Armstrong’s former classmates in the Howard class of 1913, founded Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. on November 17, 1911.

On October 11, 1912, 22 members were initiated into Alpha Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha. However, soon after joining, they became dismayed with the progress of the organization. On January 13, 1913, the undergraduate chapter unanimously voted to secede from the organization and created Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Nellie Quander, who served as the AKA’s graduate chapter adviser, stepped in and got the organization incorporated and began moving toward expansion, something they had not done in the previous five years.

Almost exactly one year after, A. Langston Taylor, Leonard F. Morse and Charles I. Brown founded Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. Six years later, Taylor and fellow Sigma brother Charles Taylor assisted Arizona Cleaver and four other students in founding Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. on January 16, 1920.

When policy and culture blocked many African-American students from higher education. Howard, with a distinct history of civic advocacy and government mandate to serve as the premier hub of education for Black students in a post-emancipation society, reared students with similar aims in activism, education and professional achievement. These students created their respective organizations to establish community and to address societal issue with combined resources and shared objectives.

Howard, it seems, has a certain je ne sais quoi for birthing scholarship and service to Black America, a legacy that is not lost on the young and older membership ranks of all nine organizations.

Dr. Evie Welch was initiated into Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. at Florida A&M University in 1955.

“At the turn of the century, you had laws that were deliberately written to suppress certain classes of people,” Welch, a scholar on Africana studies, said.

“Within the classes, you had racism beneath it. And then from racism, there was another layer, which was gender bias. In other words, the laws were written against Blacks… [They] were automatically second class citizens.”

Welch cited the Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which reinforced separate but equal in the context of “white” and “colored” railcars and used as a litmus to support and reinforce segregation nationwide. She added that since racial segregation came from the top, via the nation’s highest court, people of color and white people led largely divergent lives.

While segregation was the expectation and reinforced by law for decades following Plessy, Howard University was carving out a niche of diverse Black elitism.

She added that the university fostered an academically bourgeoisie atmosphere with students who modeled their organizations after students in fraternities and sororities at white institutions.

June 2014

Beyond Howard:

D.C.’s Dunbar High School served as a training ground for many BGLO founders prior to their arival on HU’s campus Located one mile from Howard University, often referred as “The Mecca” for Black Greek life, is the mecca for Black secondary education. This institution is now known today as Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.

Founded by Congress in 1870, the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth became the first high school for African-Americans in the United States. It was later named M Street High School and then Dunbar High School.

In addition to it being the first, it was widely revered in the early 1900s as the best school for African-Americans in the country, the best high school in Washington, D.C. and one of the best schools in the United States, regardless of race.

The school was created a time when African-Americans were just getting access to higher education, but upon completion, they still were not getting jobs in a segregated world. Dunbar became the destination place of employment for many African-Americans who earned undergraduate and graduate degrees, making their faculty a bastion of elite education.

Some of the past principals were Mary Jane Patterson, the first African-American woman to earn a college degree; Richard T. Greener, the first African-American to graduate from Harvard; Francis Cardozo Sr., who instituted the additions of Latin and Greek to the curriculum; Edward Christopher Williams, the first African-American professional librarian; Robert Terrell, the first African-American to receive a degree from Harvard Law School; and Anna Julia Cooper, the fourth Black woman in American history to earn a Ph.D. Due to the school’s exceptional staff, curriculum and reputation, it was sending kids to college all across the United States, including Ivy League schools. At one point, graduates could go to Harvard and Dartmouth without taking the acceptance exam.

In 1905, Robert Harold Ogle and Nathaniel Allison Murray graduated from the school and attended Cornell University. While at Cornell, Ogle made the initial notion to organize the fraternity that became Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., for which his classmate Murray was also a founder. He also proposed the fraternity’s official colors of black and old gold and suggested that they expand to his hometown of Washington, D.C. and create a chapter at Howard University.

And thus the connection between Greek life and Howard University was created through Dunbar High School. This relationship would continue, as Dunbar alumni would found three other Black Greek-lettered organizations. (cont. on pg. 10)

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Of the twenty women who founded Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., eight are from Washington, D.C. and four were alumni of Dunbar: Julia Evangeline Brooks, Margaret Flagg Holmes, Sarah Meriwether Nutter and Nellie Quander.

In 1911, like Ogle and Murray, two other Dunbar classmates decided to create a fraternity at their college. Frank Coleman and Oscar James Cooper, who graduated from Dunbar in 1909, went to Howard, and along with a former M St. teacher (Ernest E. Just) and a fellow college classmate (Edgar Amos Love), created Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. Two years later, Vashti Turley Murphy, a 1910 graduate of Dunbar, was one of the founders for Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Grace Coleman, Murphy’s classmate and sister of Omega founder Frank, was on the first initiate line into the organization and was valedictorian of Howard’s class of 1914.

In addition to being founders, Dunbar alumni had very specific and pivotal roles in the genesis and culture of these four organizations.

Dunbar alum Rayford Logan served as the 15th National President of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Senator Edward Brooke, the first African-American senator since Reconstruction, and Charles Hamilton Houston, one of the most prominent Black attorneys in history, are both members of Alpha Phi Alpha who graduated from Dunbar.

Quander and Brooks were amongst the women who helped incorporate AKA, known as “The Incorporators”. In 1908, Nutter sent Quander a piece of ivy from the grave of former President Grover Cleveland, who passed that June. This cutting was planted on the right side of the Manual Arts Building at Howard University and became the tradition of “Ivy Day” for AKA, which is continued today.

For Omega, Cooper was the second Grand Basileus and fellow

June 2014

Dunbar alumni Charles Drew and Mercer Cook wrote and composed the official fraternity hymn “Omega Dear.” In addition, William H. Hastie, the first African-American federal judge; Robert C. Weaver, the first African-American cabinet member; and Sterling A. Brown, D.C.’s first Poet Laureate and brother of Delta founder Edna Brown Coleman, are all Dunbar alumni and men of Omega.

Grace Coleman was the first undergraduate president of Delta’s Alpha Chapter in 1914 and Dunbar alumna Sadie Mossell Tanner Alexander was the first National President of Delta in 1916. Mary Church Terrell, who was a teacher at Dunbar at the time of Delta’s founding, was instrumental in their involvement in the Women’s Suffrage March in 1913. The march was the organization’s first public act as a sorority, and Terrell was later selected as an honorary member for the sorority.

Terrell’s home was the original fraternity house for Omega Psi Phi on 326 T St., NW. The Mary Church Terrell and Robert Terrell Residence was registered as a National Landmark in 1975. The couple met at M St. while she was a teacher and he was principal. Mr. Terrell is a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. Dunbar offered students the mental capacity and character building to create such organizations, as well as a network to advance their causes. It also sent many students to Howard University, which made for a natural incubator for aspirants of said organizations. In the class of 1914, of the 11 students who went to Dunbar, six were Omegas and four were Deltas.

The tie between Dunbar, Howard and Black Greek life is one that was extremely strong and has created a legacy for over 100 years. While Howard is known for its link to Greek life, one would be remiss not to acknowledge Dunbar’s role in the vitality of these organizations.

D.C.’s Dunbar High Scool, was the first secondary education institution for Blacks in the city and was home to many founders of Black Greek Letter Organizations.

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Never Too Late?

June 2014

Grad Chapter Greeks Find Value in Late Pledging

By Chauncey Dennie

F

raternities and sororities are portrayed as a party-lover’s paradise, fueled by irresponsibility and punctuated by violence. While this narrative appears to be well-earned, given the prevalence of college scandals, it is an incomplete picture. The pledging experiences of members of black Greek organizations are as diverse as the people themselves.

“I only ever wanted to go to a HBCU because step shows and sorority life are very much apart of the HBCU experience,” says Layla Brown who attended North Carolina Central University and pledged Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. in 2006 at the age of 19.

Brown’s affinity for sorority life, however, was nurtured long before she reached college. “As a child, I attended a community outreach program called Delta Carousel. They had fun events for kids, ran reading programs, and provided collegiate scholarships.”

Brown believes that the bond she formed with her sorority sisters was stronger because of their campus experience. I never really considered pledging grad chapter because I didn’t feel the same bond would form,” she says.

“I didn’t know the people I [pledged] with,” she continued.

“The most important thing during the pledging process was getting to know everyone…making connections, and learning to deal with forty women on a daily basis.”

“The collegiate experience offers something [unique].

Because once you are out in the world, other things like work become your priority” says Brown.

Several years removed from campus, Brown’s desire for community remains strong. “Black fraternities and sororities are still needed because we don’t live in a meritocracy. It’s about being qualified enough and then knowing people. Black organizations help us to pool our resources and counteract social inequality.”

Jonathan Freeman, who attended Lane College and pledged Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. as a sophomore, has similar sentiments and is critical of any fraternity or sorority that forgets the importance of service.

“As national organizations we are missing the mark,” said Freeman. “We need to re-examine our purpose. I don’t see why we would let over a century of history go to waste.” Freeman credits his “challenging yet exciting” pledge experience for instilling this sense of responsibility in him.

But Freeman believes that an authentic pledge experience can only occur in undergrad. “I never planned on pledging grad chapter. I wanted the undergraduate experience. I wanted the

same bond-building experience that I heard my parents talk about,” says Freeman.

“We had to study the history of the organization, sit in the front row of all of our classes, and attend chapel every Sunday,” says Freeman. While Freeman admits that pledging had its drawbacks because “it was hard giving up my weekends, doing things on short notice, and shouldering the nearly one thousand dollar financial commitment during my matriculation, [but] the process made me a stronger person.”

“I was very much involved in community outreach. I mentored elementary and middle school children in Jackson, Tennessee. I traveled to regional and national conventions. And I attended alumni meetings.” As a current graduate student at the University of California Los Angeles, Lane is not as involved in Alpha Phi Alpha as he used to be, but believes his 4.0 grade point average in undergrad was a byproduct of the time management skills he developed during his pledge experience.

Most black Greek organizations have a long established tradition of promoting academic excellence, as Brenda Shelton can attest. “Everyone’s grades were up. We were in the library every evening from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.,” says Shelton, who attended Bishop College from 1966 to 1970 and pledged Delta Sigma Theta as a sophomore.

“We did a lot of community service in education,” said Shelton. “We had tutoring sessions for some of the poor youth of South Dallas on weekends.” Unfortunately, not everything that happened in Shelton’s chapter promoted sisterhood or encouraged social responsibility.

While many people believe that hazing during the pledge process is a modern phenomenon, Brenda admits that some of her older sisters “did mean, petty things” and “tended to prey on those who were the weaklings…by demanding that pledges buy cigarettes for them or calling you any time of night.”

“But they knew not to push me,” said Shelton. “I had common sense.”

And it is her continual reliance on “common sense” that makes her demand more from modern members.

“Our fraternities and sororities need to do a better job of actually preparing these kids for the working world. Prepare them to go beyond that degree. Social stuff and all of that is fine, but what happens after?”

But some who waited until after graduation to pursue their organizations say that the process meant even more to them as

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HBCU Digest

June 2014

adults than it would have if they had crossed into their organiby much. So, I got some of that college experience, in my mind, zations while still on campus. but overall, I didn’t miss too much.”

“It meant more to me as an adult,” says Angela Davis-McCoy, “It’s not all about partying,” says Davis-McCoy. “It was always a North Carolina A&T alumna who “was made by the Potoabout community service. I felt like I could do a lot more with mac Valley Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, the sisterhood rather than alone. … When you stand for an Inc.” at the age of 41. “We weren’t little college girls. We were organization, you don’t get drunk and fall down. You don’t use women. Some of us had kids, some didn’t. The average age foul language. You have respect for yourself and others and the was about thirty-five. So we were organization you represent.” mature.”

Alexander’s reverence for his orgaA lifetime member of the organinization was instilled in him by his zation, Davis-McCoy says, “It’s the parents at a young age. only sorority I ever wanted to join,” “My mother is a Delta and my father but says she did not have the option is an Alpha,” he says.“My mother was of joining the organization while president of her chapter and my father still in college. was president of his chapter. So, I was “As much as I desired & aspired practically raised to be an Alpha.” to belong to the wonderful sisterDespite such direct family ties, hood of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Alexander decided not to pledge in Inc., I could not afford to nor would undergrad because “the timing wasn’t my full time job allow me time to right. I was focused more on graduapledge,” says Davis-McCoy. tion than becoming an Alpha.”

Despite the fact that she could “When you pledge at the grad level not go on line as an undergrad, she you have a lot of audacity,” Alexander shared in the experiences of the says. “One thing my mother told me pledge process with friends who is ‘this is a life-long commitment.’ This were going through the process. isn’t like a white fraternity. You take “Instead of pledging, I was able to Alpha Phi Alpha to the grave. You help a couple of my girlfriends by don’t just wear a T-shirt on Saturday taking care of their laundry, sneakand that’s it. Anybody can wear a shirt, ing them food and carrying them but when it comes down to do stuff across campus hidden in my car,” who you gonna call?” she says.

The type of commitment expected When her time came, nearly 20 is why he believes that “a good pledge years later, Davis-McCoy says the process is supposed to teach instead of experience was even more valuable. trouble. “There has to be a reason be“My pledging process is one that I hind everything you do. Because if you will always cherish,” she says. “I have don’t know from whence you came, 23 line sisters [whom] I bonded with then you will basically be uneducated.” during this learning and growing exBut Alexander pledged not just beperience. Our bond is like no other.” cause of his parents, but also because Torrance Alexander, who was iniof his own devotion to service and the tiated into Alpha Phi Alpha in 2009 values the organization represents. He at the age of 24, agrees, and says he Top: Students at Spelman College stroll at Market Friday, is still an active member of Alpha Phi did not miss anything by waiting, a weekly campus event that is a major symbol of stuAlpha and volunteers as an assistant dent life on campus.

Some argue that the shared campus “other than the partying and college editor for the organization’s national experience makes the Greek experience better. Bottom: events.” publication, The Sphinx.

“I was mature and focused, it was Torrance Alexander (center) poses with fellow Alphas at Despite the differences in experience the Atlanta Greek Picnic this month. Despite pledging more than wearing Greek letters and and backgrounds, all of those who Alpha after graduation, Alexander believes he has had partying. For me it was/is setting a the full Alpha experience. have chosen to pledge a Greek orgagood example, a way of life and about nization agree that one’s commitment giving back. It’s about continuing to serve in the footsteps of the to both their organizations and to service has to be rooted in 22 dynamic and educated Deltas that paved the way in 1913.” something beyond the pledge.

“Alpha, much like anything, is what you make it,” he says. “I “Twelve years later and we still serve in different capaciwas 24 when I crossed, so I was young enough to still do some ties, we still care and, for the most part, stay in close contact,” collegiate activities with the college chapter that my alumni Davis-McCoy says. “I have at least eight sisters that are closely chapter mentors. I was a little older than the brothers, but not knitted, share special occasions, outings or travel together.” www.hbcudigest.com

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HBCU Digest Digest

By Christina Sturdivant

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Done in the Dark

n 1989, Joel Harris was a sophomore at Morehouse College pledging the oldest Black Greek-letter fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., which touts members like Marshall and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Weeks after being initiated onto the pledge line, Harris laid dead on an apartment floor at a gathering with 19 other men interested in joining the fraternity. The coroner’s report concluded his death was caused by irregular heartbeat, along with sustaining numerous blows to the chest and face.

Dr. Walter Kimbrough was initiated as an Alpha in 1986 and served on the national board when news broke of Harris’ death as an undergrad.

“Being a board member right before that happening and knowing the inner workings was like whoa … this stuff is getting out of hand,” says Kimbrough, now president of Dillard University and author of Black Greek 101: The Culture, Customs and Challenges of Black Fraternities and Sororities.

Hazing has a different meaning for different people, despite its legal definition and the many it serves its purpose.

“Hazing [is a series of] tactics used in a pledge process and hazing only gets bad when the pledge process is not structured properly or the [organizations] are not executing it properly,” says Richard Parker, a Spring 2003 initiate of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc.’s Gamma Epsilon Chapter at Hampton University. “To me, there are different types of hazing: physical, mental and time. Senseless hazing should be abolished, but hazing as part of a structured and organized pledge process, I have no problems with.”

Whether harmed by physical, mental or emotional challenges, Harris’s death was not the first instance of Black Greek pledging rituals going south. However, after Harris’ death, a historic stand was taken by the National Pan-Hellenic Council, Inc (NPHC).

In 1990, all organizations that were part of “The Divine Nine”—Alpha Phi Alpha

Fraternity, Inc., Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc., Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc.—agreed to disband traditional pledging practices as a form of admission for past incidents.

In exchange, the Council instituted a more controlled system to be known as the Membership Intake Process.

To this degree, the act of hazing, described as “any action taken or situation created that involves or results in abusive, physical contact or mutual harassment of a prospective Fraternity or Sorority member … whether it occurs on or off the Fraternity or Sorority premises, campus or place where chapters or prospective members meet…. to include any action that results in excessive mutual or physical discomfort, embarrassment or harassment,” was to be no more.

In recent years, however, in the absence of permitted pledging rituals, Greek organizations have initiated an underground process for potential members to continue to prove their worthiness into such prestigious groups.

“The whole idea has been that the newest members of a group have to come and prove themselves,” says Kimbrough, who traces the beginning of hazing back to college life in the 1800s when entire freshman classes engaged in institutional rituals before becoming accepted by upperclassmen.

Across the country, freshman hazing continued into the 20th century and universities worked toward national prevention laws and the obstruction of institutional rituals.

Thus, hazing became infiltrated into campus groups like fraternities and sororities.

“One of the places where it’s documented the best is Lincoln University in Pennsylvania,” says Kimbrough. “It’s very clear they had hazing early on with freshman then. Starting in late 1920s and early ‘30s, it was documented in fraternities.”

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bers, present-day hazing has continued because it’s more difficult to regulate than entire classes of freshman—and more tragedy has come with its survival.

In 2009, Donnie Wade, Jr., a 20-year-old student at Prairie View A&M, died after an early morning exercise session with a group of young men pledging Phi Beta Sigma, Inc. In a lawsuit against the school, which was filed by Wade’s parents, he was said to have undergone a strict bread-andwater diet, paddling and mandatory rigorous exercises during his pledge process.

While the case was under investigation, Prairie View A&M President George C. Wright suspended all membership intake process activities for all registered student organizations.

Black Greek sororities have also had their fair share of disparaging instances, so much so that the national executive board of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. released a moratorium where from July 2014 - June 2015, a re-evaluation process will take place and the intake of all Delta chapters will be suspended.

A statement by Delta national president, Dr. Paulette C. Walker, says “a part of that re-evaluation includes reexamining the membership intake process and its impact on the organization, which reexamination, of course, includes continuing to explore ways to eradicate hazing.”

While administrators attempt to regulate underground activities in fraternities and sororities, other student-groups have emerged with identical issues.

“We’re seeing hazing more in athletics—particularly at HBCUs now, we’re seeing it at bands. That’s been the new frontier,” says Kimbrough.

While advocates against hazing have come out in droves, the prevention of activities seem to lie in the hands of members and aspirants who continue precarious behavior to uphold organizational values.

“In an ideal situation, pledging is designed to teach you history, to reveal your character, to challenge you in ways that will allow you to see pass colors and symbols, to see a version of yourself that

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Despite National Bans on Hazing, Initiation Rituals Likely to Persist perhaps your young college ego isn’t ready to face,” says Merary Soto, a Spring 2002 initiate of Delta Sigma Theta’s Rho Chapter at Columbia University.

“Everything that will give you an identifier—Ph.D., M.D., Esq., Black, Latina, female—should be work towards [attaining, and all] come with a right of passage,” says Soto. “Pledging is designed to [be said right of passage], to teach you history, teach you the positives and negatives that will come with this new association you will have, and that this new association comes with a legacy of people who have accomplished many great things.”

“Where our organizations go wrong is that a majority of college students can’t distinguish between ego and character, so they haze initiates with their egos,” she continues. “[They then] create initiations to appease them[selves], whether it is excessive physical abuse, financial abuse [or] verbal abuse. In the end, people that finish are abused and they pay that forward.”

Because of the official ban on hazing activities, technically, pledges do not have to engage in hazing activities but not doing so is tough for youth who typically pledge between the ages of 18 – 21.

“As youth, they figure the chances of me getting caught or something bad happening is realistically is low so I’m going to take the risk to do this because not only do I want to get in, I want to be respected,” says Kimbrough.

“If you get a whole group to say we’re not going to do this, they can change it if they stand together and go through the process the proper way but then they’re going to catch hell from people in other chapters of that group and so they’ll be a pariah on their campus. If it’s an organization based on brotherhood and sisterhood, who wants to be in an organizations where no one treats you brotherly or sisterly,” says Kimbrough. “At 18 years old, I don’t know if I could have said I’m not doing x,y and z.”

For Eddie Francis, author and presenter of the Black Greek Success program, advocating against hazing did not come easy.

“I participated in the traditional, aboveground pledging process in 1989—I had a shaved head, I wore my black and white outfit and I pledge-walked across campus,” says the member of Alpha Phi Alpha, who trains undergraduate fraternity and sorority members on tactics to excelling in the professional arena. “I was someone who, even when pledging was abolished, I still believed in the way we were doing things and so it took a lot of maturation for me.”

“Those who are victims of hazing have names, they have families and their families will no longer see them again and tell them they love them,” says Francis.

“Those of us who have changed our way of thinking have to be more outspoken against hazing—we can no longer sit in the shadows of our chapters.”

The necessity for one to prove himself happens on all aspects of our existence, says Francis, but Greek-letter organizations must devise a more logical way to initiate members—one without violence.

“If we start to concentrate more on how to make our processes more intellectually rigorous, then we can see a change in the behavior—the thing that has to happen though is that we have to really believe that intellectual rigor holds just as much weight as physical rigor,” says Francis.

Another vital aspect of the initiation process is missing from today’s Black Greek initiation process, says documentary filmmaker James Davis.

“The journey is supposed to be spiritual— that’s why you’ve got people dying and getting injured, they’ve lost their way,” says Davis.

In his three-part documentary series, which began with Black Greek Organizations: The Foundation and will continue with Black Greek Organizations: The Beginning, one of Davis’ goals is to inform how Black Fraternities and Sororities originated out of Masonry. Davis was initiated as a Mason by his great-grandfather at the age of 18 years old.

“In Masonry, you had the older generation in there with us so it kept order,” says Francis, “I think one of the biggest

problems is that those grad chapters have to get back to the campus and teach those young adults because if you fully understand the spiritual aspect of pledging and initiation it will be your duty to love that person who’s going through and not do them any harm.”

On college campuses, the advisory role of Greek organizations is given to the dean of pledges. A former dean of pledges, Kimbrough agrees that this new generation of leaders doesn’t meet the needs of providing guidance and protection.

“I’ve talked to people in the last ten years or so and the dean is one of the worse ones—they don’t even know what the role of the dean is,” he says. “The dean is supposed to protect the line so that nobody should get hurt—somebody has to be there with common sense keeping an eye on things and at some point say that’s enough. Right now, I don’t see that’s enough—I don’t think those people are in the room, just like common sense is not in the room anymore.”

A push for legal penalties is the latest in the move to curb Greek hazing. In January 2014 a bill introduced by U.S. Representative Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, states that students convicted under state law of hazing would lose eligibility for federal grants and loans.

For many years, Greek organizations have resisted such penalties, but the North-American Interfraternity Conference, which represents 75 international and national Greek fraternities, including Alpha Phi Alpha and Phi Beta Sigma, hasagreed to the legislation if the loss of federal financial aid is tied directly to a criminal conviction.

Kimbrough believes that the rise of lawsuits and additional penalties around hazing will only continue to threaten the groups’ existence and create an increased culture of underground pledge processes.

“There will always be a sense that people want to belong to groups that are exclusive—so there will still be that need to prove that they are a member of the group and that becomes the challenge.”

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Greek Recent Debates Have Led Many to

By Shana Pinnock

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his year, the 10-year anniversary of the annual Atlanta Greek Picnic brought with it massive dialog concerning race and the role it plays within NPHC fraternities and sororities. During the weeklong celebration of Greek life, amid the thousands of African-American faces belonging to Divine Nine members were also sprinkles of non-Black devotees. One photograph in particular that portrays three Caucasian members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Sigma Gamma Rho, Sorority Inc., and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., posing together in Greek unity, gained widespread social media attention.

The original photo, posted to Instagram by Paige McCarthy, a Caucasian 2011 initiate of Sigma Gamma Rho, featured a caption stating, “It’s all #love, #unity, & #respect over here!” Soon after McCarthy’s post, sites like Bossip, an online gossip and entertainment magazine, and Facebook, were set ablaze with debates ranging from progressive to downright outraged. Though many NPHC members were happy to see their organizations represented across the races, others felt as though these marked the steps to Black Greeks no longer “having a place to call home.”

“Seeing a White person join a D-9 organization instantly makes me wonder why they decided to take that pledge,” says Omar L., a member of Phi Beta Sigma who asked that his full last name be withheld from print.

“What do they gain from it? As a Black Nationalist, I wholeheartedly believe in racial separatism; there are already so very few things that we African-Americans can keep to ourselves as a culture before Whites decide they want to take part of that too. Our organizations were founded on the uplift of Black people—am I truly supposed to believe that random White members care about the betterment of my race?”

“Naturally, people want to know why a white man wants to be part of an organization founded to support the development of Black men,” says Rob Shorette, a 2010 initiate of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. “Obviously the scope of Alpha’s reach has broadened since its founding, but it is still explicitly committed to addressing issues most prevalent in communities of color. I

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U-N-I-T-Y? Ponder Whether NPHC Organizations are Post-Racial or Behind the Times

decided to pledge Alpha because the men who were present in my life as mentors, professors, classmates, and friends exemplified the values the organization espoused on paper, and it was ultimately those values that I connected with initially.

When you throw in the fact that I was passionate about issues in my own personal and professional endeavors, which include educational equity, diversity and inclusion in education, etc., that aligned with issues the fraternity and its members have historically addressed, it was a natural fit in my eyes.”

Most of the Divine Nine organizations were founded in the early 20th century, a time when the need to supply a voice and vision to the struggles of the African-American community were most prominent. Usually banned or ostracized from joining social organizations, the early 1900s proved to be trying times for students of color. Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity first began as a study and support group for Black male students at Cornell University who were met with racial prejudice while on campus. Even organizations founded on HBCU campuses, such as the sororities Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta, played instrumental roles in the Women’s Suffrage Movement with specific focus on gaining the right to vote for Black women.

“Young men and women of color founded Black Greek organizations during a particular time in history, this is true,” says Kristin Banks, a Black member of Alpha Kappa Alpha.

“However, I have no doubt in my mind that the founders of these organizations would be ashamed of any members calling for hatred and inequality rooted in racism towards their non-Black members. Today, our organizations are all about coming together to positively impact our communities through service initiatives, dedication to scholarship, and calling someone a sister or brother. Sisterhood and brother-

hood knows no racial lines.”

Still, many people argue that had the photograph featured three Black members of predominately white fraternities and sororities, their white counterparts would, too, feel as though another race were encroaching upon tradition.

“Because it isn’t ‘politically correct’, or publicly accepted, for whites to talk about people of color negatively, we would possibly never know how they truly felt if the reverse were true,” states Sharon T., a member of Sigma Gamma Rho. “I’m willing to bet they wouldn’t be supportive of it.”

Nevertheless, non-Black members of Divine Nine organizations say they have had few negative experiences from Black members when it comes to their race.

“With a few exceptions, I have always been embraced as a brother and haven’t been charged to prove my membership above and beyond what another brother would have to submit himself to,” says Shorette. “I am very proud to be an Alpha and I do my best to uphold my obligation as a brother, and I believe my brothers recognize that. Had I pledged and then been inactive, I’m sure my brothers would have received me much differently. I can only hope that I continue to hold the light of Alpha high and do my best to live up to the expectations my brothers have of me.”

Brandon Johnson, a Black member of Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, agrees. “I’ve seen D9 members across the whole racial spectrum from middle-eastern, to Asian, Latino, and beyond.

Your race doesn’t matter. What you do for your respective organization and the community does.”

But while racial identity can be a reason for prospective members to seek membership, it goes beyond that.

Madison Byrd, a Caucasian member of Delta Sigma Theta, and one of those featured in McCarthy’s photograph, argues that she isn’t attempting to take away from the Black community.

“I have no doubt in my mind that the founders of these organizations would be ashamed of any members calling for hatred and inequality rooted in racism.”

—Kristin Banks, Alpha Kappa Alpha

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Instead, her goal is to positively contribute to it, and the world.

“I may not know all things about the Black community, but I sure can try to in order to help bring unity in not only the world, but the black community as well. In my opinion, [African-Americans don’t] have to fight this world [for equality] alone; nobody should have to do that. We as people are more powerful as one unit.”

Alia Sabbs, a fellow member of Delta Sigma Theta, encourages Caucasian members of organizations to take a deeper look at what their membership means to racial constructs and their organizations as a whole.

“We keep minimalizing or altogether ignoring the real issue,” Sabbs says. “If we talk about race and the Divine 9, we need to address the power of White Privilege and its complete embedment within society. I would charge white members of D-9 organizations to recognize their whiteness carries a heavy burden because even when they’re the minority among our groups, they’re still the majority.”

“That is why there is, sometimes, resistance to the presence of white people moving into Black spaces; due to the color of their skin, they can maneuver in our very personal worlds because they’re able to maneuver in every other facet of our lives,” she continues. “For some of us, it is the realization that even in the most sacred part of our hearts, they still have the power.”

Sabbs believes that the onus doesn’t just fall upon white individuals seeking to become a member of an organization; the organization must, too, be responsible.”

“When we let in non-Black members into our very personal and private organizations, we need to be steadfast in what we believe in and what our foundation is. Our primary focus is not about diversity and equality for all. Our primary focus is not integration. In fact, I’d say we’re focused on segregation— uplifting and empowering segregated communities who long had their power taken away. That’s who we’re here to serve, and if non-Black members aren’t here for that mission then

When Paige McCarthy (left) posted this picture to Instagram, social media went abuzz on whether the Divine 9 institutions are ready to embrace a “post-racial” America.

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their interest [in our organizations] should be questioned.”

For some, like a group of six Latino males at Johnson C. Smith, the desire to forge meaningful relationships and seek social acceptance and identity on campus means starting their own organizations. Earlier this year, they chartered a colony of Lambda Theta Phi Fraternity, Inc. in response to the growing community of Latino students on their campus. The national organization which is dedicated to “the advancement and fair treatment of Latinos in the United States,” community service and scholarship, also calls for “respect for all cultures,” and has members of a variety of races across the country. Members of the group could not be reached for this story, but they interviewed for a story for JCSU’s website earlier in the year.

“Because of the blooming Latino community, we felt we needed an organization that could connect us under a common bond of culture and pride in our Latino heritage,” Francisco Cerillo, a founding member of the new chapter, said at the time. “Although we are a new and relatively small Greek organization on this campus, we are dedicated to making positive change on the campus of JCSU and passionate about helping the surrounding Charlotte community. We hope to continue paving the way for future members to break down negative stereotypes about Latinos and minorities as a whole.”

“This is by no means an exclusionary organization,” continued Cerillo. “Anyone is welcome to join if they meet the GPA and program requirements for the interest group and maintain strength and resolve during the subsequent induction process. Within the North Carolina Sector of Lambda Theta Phi, we have members of Jamaican, Pakistani, French and mixed-race origin, just to name a few.”

And while the debate over whether the NPHC organizations have truly reached a place of post-racial status will likely rage on, it is certain that the organizations, like the institutions on which they are based, will not have homogenous populations.

Omar Cossio, Yerisson Cardenas, Francisco Cerrillo, Sergio Montesdeoca, Luis Bryan Dominguez, Juan Carlos Hernandez Campillo chartered the first HBCU chapter of Lambda Theta Phi, a Latin fraternity, at JCSU.

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June 2014

Different Daze

Greek Life, HBCU Culture Intrinsically Tied

By Autumn A. Arnett and Kyle S. Yeldell

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espite the fact that two of the first three Black Greek-lettered organizations (and three overall) were founded at predominantly White institutions, there is a direct link to HBCU culture and Greek life.

The parties, the paraphernalia, the plots and the strolling are all synonymous with going to undergrad at an HBCU. A lot of interest in Greek life was sparked due to movies like “School Daze” and “Stomp the Yard” and the TV show “A Different World,” which showed the full breadth of the HBCU experience, and portrayed Greek life as intrinsically connected. These projects left an indelible mark on many and even became the impetus for their interest in attending an HBCU and being Greek. “‘A Different World’ was a major influence (to my initial interest in pledging),” says Landon Dais, a Spring 2001 initiate

of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc.’s Chi Chapter at Morehouse College.

Brandon Shephard, who was made into Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity in 2006 at Clark Atlanta University, says that such portrayal of Greek life in the media definitely impacted his view of the culture as well.

Misrepresentations in Media “Such movies regarding HBCUs … can give off a incorrect misconception of Greek life and Blacks in general,” Shephard says. “The culture is extremely hard to grasp from the outside looking in and many times misinterpreted. I think that they tend to show only one segment and don’t really tell the true story for the necessity of these organizations and why they came to be.”

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Shaneesa Ashford, a Fall 1991 initiate of Zeta Phi Beta soTelevision and Forest Whitaker announced he is making a rority at Florida A&M University, agrees. film about hazing in BGLOs. “I think that is an assumption being made, primarily based “It’s all negative press and is one-sided,” says Leigh Davenon media and entertainment [that Greek life and HBCU life port, a Spring 2004 initiate of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority are one in the same],” she says. “Unfortunately, what is being Inc.’s Mu Pi Chapter at Spelman College. “It’s usually sensaperceived as Greek ‘culture’ is now being displayed in other tionalized and it’s not like you can explain it because it goes areas of HBCU life.” against the grain of the organization. There’s only so much “What is perceived as Greek culture and HBCU culture in you can say to defend [your organization] without doing an general—hazing, partying, low scholarship, etc.” are broad exposé.” generalizations people apply to the entire culture, thanks to Whitaker’s film is looking to be said expose’, showcasing things they have encountered in the media, Ashford says. an aspect about Black Greek culture that is controversial yet “HBCUs and Greek-lettered organizations produce leaders private. and scholars. Both continue to fight the stigma [of underachievement.”

Family Ties Shephard says that more than similar movies about White Notions of attending an HBCU and pledging a fraternity or fraternities and sororities, these depictions of Black Greek life sorority for many come not from things they saw on screen, in the media sometimes reflect but were fostered by legacy a problematic image that some family members and other on the outside project onto influential adults in their lives.

Greek culture, HBCU culture Their perceptions of Greek and Black culture overall. life were born more out of the Ashford is not so sure the stories they heard from those problem is limited to Black individuals than the things organizations, however. they saw in the media. For “I’d be interested to see if Dais, both were factors. others think a predominantly “My brother pledged Sigma white Greek-lettered organiat Morehouse in 1993, and I zation at a PWI has the same loved how I was always treated effect. I would suspect it would by the chapter as a kid. I liked for some, based on [movies the brotherhood,” Dais said. like] Animal House, Legally “We don’t have many tradiBlonde, etc.,” she says. tions in my family so I wanted “Typically those who’ve I’ve For generations of Greeks, the Greek experience has been synonymous to start one, where the men in met seem to think we Greeks with the HBCU experience. In this picture, TJ Jackson (center) is our family go to Morehouse shown stepping with fellow Kappa Alpha Psi members at North Caroare arrogant and elitists,” he and pledge Sigma.” lina A&T University’s homecoming in the early ‘80s. says. “I think ultimately some While said mediums were of those thoughts come from a an influence for many, one of place of ignorance, and maybe a little jealousy, in some cases. the strongest draws to both Greek life and HBCUs is exposure I believe the spirit of these organizations [is] making good as a child. “Knowing that a lot of the men I grew up around men or women better, simply chiseling those in our comwere in fraternities [was a major influence as well],” said Dais. munities who already embody high ideals and promote the Many people enter college with their minds made up on common welfare of their respective communities.” pledging due to said connections. “I grew up in a Greek Beyond just fictional depictions, many amplify localized household, so for me, I never really wanted anything else incidents in individual chapters or organizations that are but to pledge Alpha Kappa Alpha,” said Dominique Charles, reported in the media and project them onto the overarching a Spring 2005 initiate of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc.’s culture. The positive impact of BGLOs on campus is often Alpha Chapter at Howard University. glossed over due to the perception of Black Greek life in pop “I thought the women my mom surrounded herself with culture, specifically television, film and social media. Media were the ‘creme de la crème’, and when my sister pledged Alreports of hazing and other fraternity and sorority-associated pha Chapter, I had that same sentiment about her line sisters activities lead many outside of the organization, and outside and prophytes,” said Charles, whose mother was also an AKA. of Greek culture overall, to have negative perceptions of the “By the time I got to college, I wanted it so bad.” organizations and the people they serve.

Kara Gadsden pledged Delta Sigma Theta at Old Dominion In the last month alone, an online petition circulated to University in Spring 2005, but says growing up, all she wanted cancel Mona Scott-Young’s new TV show “Sorority Sisters”— was to attend an HBCU and grow into a woman like those she which was said to be promoting negative Greek stereotypes, a had encountered as an adolescent. film entitled “Frat Brothers” debuted on Black Entertainment “My first introductions to Greek life came in the form of www.hbcudigest.com

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influential educators and Debutante organizers who were very well spoken, successful, intelligent, classy, uplifting, beautiful, and a host of other things,” she says. “I most definitely desired to attend an HBCU because of what these women represented. I envisioned a campus filled with Black women and men who were very similar to the women who influenced my decision to even consider college in the first place.”

Jonathan Blocker, a 2006 graduate of Morehouse College, says growing up, he held members of Greek organizations in high esteem, thanks to his mother.

“My mother is Greek and helped charter a chapter at her PWI in the ‘70s,” Blocker says. “The stories she told me about the organization and its interactions on her campus made me think highly of such organizations and their ability to empower minority students.”

Unfortunately, when Blocker arrived on campus, he found a different story than the one his mother told.

“The reality did not mesh with my childhood perceptions,” he says.

Blocker acknowledges that the people have to make the letters, and not the other way around, but says that the behavior of those Greeks he encountered on campus led him to “believe these organizations [do not] confer a benefit to the collegiate, ethnic, and national communities in which they operate,” which, he says, is “ part of the reason [he] forwent pursuing initiation after Morehouse.”

Intrinsically Tied For many people, whether they pledged or not, their experience with Greek life on their respective HBCU campuses was inseparable from their overall collegiate experiences.

Derrick McMahon, a 2010 graduate of Florida A&M University, did not decide to pledge while on campus, but says that his decision to attend the institution was influenced by an encounter with Greek life.

“I attended an HBCU College Fair my 11th grade year of

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high school,” says McMahon. “One of the things that stood out to me the most at the college fair was the step show performed by the local AKA chapter and the stroll performed by the Alpha. I looked forward to that aspect of college life when I applied to Florida A&M University.”

“I can honestly say that my college experience was enriched

by Greek life on campus,” he adds. “Many of the welcome week events, and campus events throughout the year, are hosted by the Greeks are play an important role in the college experience. I do not think the FAMU experience would be as dynamic as it is without Greek life on campus: the role they often play as student leaders, the cultural and social events they host, etc.”

“There were such a huge breadth of Deltas [on campus] and they all had a different effect on me. There was a group of them who gathered [around] 8:00 a.m. before classes around our ‘eternal flame’ to pray every morning. That was awe-inspiring to me,” says Lauren Grant, a Spring 2005 initiate of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.’s Beta Alpha Chapter at Florida A&M University.

“Others led some of our ‘peer lead’ classes in the school of business and were just women you wanted to be around and learn from. Not to mention I always saw them having events and helping folks out around campus.”

The “amazing” Delta women on her campus moved Grant to want to join their ranks.

But Grant acknowledges that situations such as the one Blocker described, in which the reality is so entirely different from the perception that one can be turned off from Greek life, are not uncommon.

“Sometimes women come to campuses with their minds made up and the chapters on their campus change their minds,” says Grant. “I know a few people who are in different organizations than their mothers. I’m sure they came to campus thinking ‘Oh, I want to be [in the same sorority as] my mom’ and the chapter just turned them off.”

Movies like “School Daze” and “Stomp the Yard” and TV shows like “A Different World” have impacted many people’s perceptions of not only Black fraternities and sororities, but HBCU culture and Black culture overall.

Many media portrayals of Black Greek life have focused heavily on traditions, such as hazing or other initiation rituals, step shows and collegiate parties, but have failed to depict the broader commitment to service and scholarship that many of the organizations boast.

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The true influence of Greek life on HBCU campuses is the infusion of Greek-like aspects to other organizations. At many HBCUs, people are initiated into many non-BGLOs through a “process.” Between dormitories, bands and even departmental organizations, students at HBCUs are inundated with rites of passage, which also have an effect on the interest into BGLOs. Many of these organizations come with hand signs, paraphernalia and sometimes strolls, all of which are normally associated with BGLOs. At Howard University, the influence of Greek life is evident daily and encompasses many other aspects of student life. “The business fraternity [Alpha Kappa Psi] is the largest organization on campus,” says Wilson Bland, the Associate Director of Student Activities at Howard. “There [are] organizations for everything here: Gentleman of Drew [an organization of students who live in Charles Drew Hall], service organizations. Not just [BGLOs].”

Due to this, most students at HBCUs are extremely active on campus. “I’d say most of [the BGLO members at Howard] are in something else as well,” said Bland, a Spring 1994 initiate of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.’s Alpha Chapter at Howard. “I’m in Phi Mu Alpha, Kappa Kappa Psi and Omega Psi Phi.” The activity on campus breeds a sense of competition in all aspects, as students and organizations strive to “run the yard.” Be it step shows, grade point average and/or something as objective as who has the most attractive members or the best parties, BGLOs and other HBCU organizations look to “run the yard” each and every year.

The sense of pride developed from this level of competition and activity breeds a culture that is often times invigorating but can also be overhyped. That level of hype creates a cycle of consistent interest in showcasing this undergraduate culture, hence why movies like “Drumline” and “Stomp The Yard” are created, which furthers the appeal to both Greek life and/or HBCU culture to a different generation.

While some people are interested as children or while they are in college, there is no escaping the influence and impact of Greek life to HBCU campuses.

Images and videos (like this hazing video posted to YouTube) present a new challenge for members of BGLOs hoping to control their organizations’ public images. Negative depictions of hazing and other activities contribute to negative perceptions of Greek culture—and the broader HBCU culture.

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Social Media Presents a New Perception Problem for Divine Nine Organizations With the advent of social media, members of Black Greek Organizations face another hurdle in the battle of controlling the message disseminated about their organizations and mitigating negative portrayals of Black Greek life.

Instagram pages such as @greekshenanigans3 and its counterpart @greekshenaniganstkap have poked fun of several aspects of Greek Life. Greek Shenanigans’ comments section is filled with trash talk, snide comments, and pseudo history lessons about topics like inter-organizational socializing and the use of canes by organizations. @greekshenaniganstkap, also known as TKAP (To Katch A Perp), is an account that exposes people who purport to be members of BGLOs but are not. With the heightened attention to the social side of Greek life, it appears that perpetrators have increased in recent years (or are just exposed more due to social media).

Soon after the Atlanta Greek Picnic in June, a video emerged on YouTube showing hundreds of Greeks chanting from various floors of the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, the picnic’s host hotel, at 5:00am in the morning. The video caused the official Atlanta Greek Picnic Twitter account to make some stern comments, as well as a formal apology to the hotel.

“Thank you to greeks who have single handedly destroyed the reputation of the best greek weekend to look like a pack of animals convention,” tweeted @Tiwaworks, the president/ CEO of the Atlanta Greek Weekend and a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. “We hope many of you will read these tweets and let it sink in that your actions have done more than create a ‘TURN UP’ IG video for you!”

On YouTube and WorldStarHipHop, there have been fights between (and within) organizations, members speaking vulgarly and other lewd behavior with members in paraphernalia. It seems as if everything is fair game to discuss or show on social media, even references to hazing.

Throughout all of these factors to some of the issues of Greek life, it seems that the solutions to much of these problems are care and consideration: enough care to not post images, videos or posts that could negatively affect your organization on social media and care not to behave in an unruly manner while wearing paraphernalia.

The heightened level of care would alleviate the unwanted scrutiny and prevent non-members (or even members) from developing false perceptions about the full breadth of Greek life. While the social side of pledging in undergrad leaves lasting memories of college, the focus should be a more mature perspective of membership that is careful about the perception it leaves in society, especially on social media.

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Committed to Service Members of BGLOs Remain Dedicated to their Original Missions

By Vann R. Newkirk II

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June 2014

raternities and sororities have long served as hubs of in- United States and provides resources for quality prenatal care, tellectual discourse, civic engagement, community serher sorority’s service programs fill a modern-day need. vice, personal growth for men and women of color since “[Stork’s Nest] is a community-based prenatal health proAlpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. was founded on the campus motion for low healthy women,” said Patterson of her proof Cornell University in 1906. Since then, the ranks of Black gram. “It promotes healthy behavior up to pregnancy. We do Greek Letter Organizations have expanded to form the Divine that. They are referred trough their OBGYN or their physiNine, officially the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC). cian. They may have heard about the program or connect us The member organizations of the NPHC along with a condirectly. They may contact the nest within their area and we stellation of auxiliary and support organizations, societies and register and they make points just for signing up. It’s a family clubs, have formed one of the major rails of self-supporting centered program.” service in communities of color since their inception.

For Patterson these service programs remain key to her Today, Greek life on the more than 100 Historically Black organization’s national purpose. “When we do things they are Colleges and Universities meaningful. Our social acacross the country protions focused on the March vides many young men of Dimes initiatives like and women an opportunity encouraging moms to not to take on the mantle of give birth early. Those are leadership on their camthe [things] we do.” puses and become part of Service missions of the a legacy that includes the Divine Nine organizations likes of Dr. Martin Lustill deeply impact the lives ther King, Jr. (Alpha Phi of students like Joe Hazel, Alpha), John Lewis (Phi a junior at Morehouse Beta Sigma), Dr. Benjamin College in Atlanta and a Elijah Mays (Omega Psi member of the Pi Chapter Phi) and Dorothy Height of Kappa Alpha Psi Fra(Delta Sigma Theta). Esternity, Inc. For Hazel, his pecially on campuses, this introduction into Greek mantle of leadership comes Members of Pi Alpha and Chi Chapter of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Incorporat- life this past spring has with social opportunities ed at a march for Troy Davis. Photo courtesy of Desmond Dickerson widened his network and and capital. allowed him to take a comAn example of exceptional work on the undergraduate level munity service project and his friends started to new heights. is the Psi Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. at MoreService is both an opportunity and an obligation to be kept in house College creating an endowed scholarship of $100,000 to the balance of social benefits. their institution in 2011. From a graduate perspective, Alpha “I’m not just a member of an organization. I am also a Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. spearheaded the Martin Luther King campus leader,’ said Hazel, 20. “We always have to give back Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 2011, making Dr. King the to others just as others before us have done. We really have to first African-American memorial on the National Mall. balance our obligations and sacrifice sleep. On campus, it’s all In public health, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. has done eyes on us, so we have to do what’s expected of us.” exceptional work with HIV/AIDS with the A34Life CamDo Better, a community service organization founded by paign. Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. has worked with public Hazel, his line brother Anthony Davis, and Aaron Hopkins, a health abroad, building a health clinic at Afua Kobi Apem member of the Alpha Rho chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha FraterSenior School for girls in Ghana. Delta Sigma Theta Sorority nity, Inc. while all three were high school students in MaryInc. built the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Elementaland; connects the men of Morehouse to the people of the ry School, The Cynthia M.A. Butler-McIntyre Campus in West End, the historic Black neighborhood that has surroundChérette, Haiti in 2013. ed and nourished the HBCU since 1885 and was vital in the But just how have the service missions of Black Greek Letter Civil Rights Movement.

Organizations changed over the past century and how are So far Do Better has implemented a number of programs in they relevant in the lives of members today? the West End neighborhood, including a community cleanFor some actively working on national sorority or fraternity up and distribution of bag lunches to residents. The activities service aims, the service missions present themselves as daily have attracted members of a host of Greek fraternities and realities. For Joanne McDougal Patterson, a member of Zeta sororities, with each community event perhaps mirroring iniPhi Beta Sorority, Incorporated and co-Director of its National tiatives run by Greek organizations in the Atlanta University Stork’s Nest program, an initiative that coordinates programs Center since their entrance into student life in the 1920s. for expectant mothers in low-income communities across the “We took this service initiative to Morehouse in 2013 Left: At Prairie View University, members of Kappa Alpha Psi recently led a voter registration campaign to envourage student voting.

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during our freshman year,” said Hazel. “When we organized our first service event, our line brothers supported it. They already knew what kind of work we did so they expected to see more of it when we crossed. They fully participated because they’re leaders in their own right.”

As Atlanta’s West End is a microcosm of Black America, so are the the on-campus service lives of other Black Greek students at HBCUs across the country reflective of service as a priority for Black Greek Organizations nationally. At Howard University, men of the Alpha Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Incorporated implement service into their daily campus lives. For members like chapter president Kyle Grant, a senior sports management and economics major at Howard, the reality of service often runs counter to some popular images of the fraternity.

“We’re just trying to do something that hasn’t been done in the past” stated Grant. “We wanted to do something new.

There are a lot of us in the area this summer and we wanted to interact in the community. Service comes first in our organization. Our prophytes don’t care much about anything else.

They want to make sure that we’re doing work in the community and not partying all the time.”

For many young Black men and women, the service missions of Black Greek Letter Organizations were important in shaping their lives and catching their eyes as well. According to Grant, “one of the reasons why I wanted to be a Que was because I saw the Ques over there do service in Detroit. One year they gave away turkeys during Thanksgiving and they did things around holidays. They did a manhood and youth program that my father and I attended when I was in middle school.”

These efforts were reciprocated by younger members, as

Grant and the brothers of Alpha Chapter of Omega Psi Phi have pursued initiatives that promote community and family-centered improvements. Grant outlined that his chapter initiatives included food drives, Father’s Day programs for homeless fathers, political debates, cancer awareness campaigns and a $2,000 scholarship for a prospective student.

The importance of service to members of Greek organizations often extends beyond national programs and undergraduate chapter lives. For many members who have long since graduated, service has woven itself into professional careers and family life outside of direct chapter and sorority or fraternity activities. For Marcus Edwards, a Shreveport, Louisiana attorney and member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., the guiding principles of service inform his everyday life and are more vital in the community now than ever.

“Service is a foundational aspect of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Incorporated and to my knowledge has been a cornerstone of each of the other Black Greek fraternities and sororities,” Edwards said. “We were founded in a time when service by those who could give back was vital to the Black community. I don’t think we’ve left that era of need” “The missions haven’t changed over time, but any smart organization has to change the approach,” Edwards asserted.

“We have issues that didn’t exist 100 years ago but also have avenues and solutions that didn’t either. I like things like social media that give us the opportunity to be more efficient. At the end of the day, service is no less of a priority in our organizational and personal lives than it was, and if done properly, social events and service events work together to truly make sustainable impacts in the future.”

Members of Baltimore’s Pi Omega Chapter of Omega Psi Phi volunteer at Sarah’s Hope, a 24 hour emergency shelter which provides services for women and children of Baltimore. They read to the families and provide gifts for the children living there in an effort to spread Christmas cheer.

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HBCU Digest

June 2014

Lessons in Leadership BGLOs Have Produced Pioneers in Nearly Every Imaginable Field

By Dr. Crystal A. deGregory

I

t is virtually impossible to think about the culture of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) without thinking about the place of Black Greek Lettered Organizations (BGLOs) on many, it not most, of their campuses.

Dubbed the “Divine Nine,” after the nine-member National Pan-Hellenic Council, Incorporated (NPHC), which is composed of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority (AKA), Inc., Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. (AΦA), Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. (ΔΣΘ), Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc. (ΙΦΘ), Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. (KAΨ), Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. (ΩΨΦ), Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. (ΦBΣ), Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. (ΣΓΡ), and Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. (ZΦB), BGLOs are among the nation’s oldest and most distinguished black service organization. Amid their ranks, are many of the nation’s most powerful historic and contemporary African American leaders, thinkers, professionals, politicians, and entrepreneurs. For more than a century, these figures helped to secure the place of BGLOs among Black America’s most powerful social, cultural and political institutions.

Unsurprisingly, BGLOs share similar histories as well as similar missions with the nation’s 105 HBCUs. HBCUs, from their foundings before the Civil War, in its shadow Reconstruction, through to the modern Civil Rights Movement served as the principal higher education centers for generations of African Americans and as the alma maters generations of BGLO members. Scores of HBCU administrators, faculty, staff, students and alumni, many of them BGLO members, helped to make the modern Civil Rights Movement possible, forcing the desegregation the American nation and of its centers of higher education. Ironically, it is this success

that now threatens the existence HBCUs, which are constantly assailed with questions of relevance and challenges to their existence. The same is true for BGLOs, whose fate and future, like HBCUs, hangs in the balance.

For several BGLOs, their ties to HBCUs stretch back to their founding. Six of the nine NPHC member organizations—AKA, ΩΨΦ, ΔΣΘ, ΦBΣ and ZΦB (at Howard University) and ΙΦΘ (at Morgan State University)—were founded on HBCU campuses. Because their founders were HBCU students, faculty and/or alumni, the organizational, mission, vision, and culture was undoubtedly shaped by their black college environs. Through the founding of subsequent chapters on HBCU campuses across the South, the Divine Nine’s membership grew in numbers, so did their influence.

By the mid-twentieth century, more than a decade before Iota Phi Theta was founded, the ranks of BLGO and HBCU products included Howard University alumna Zora Neale Hurston, a folklorist, anthropologist and author who was among the earliest initiates of ZΦB at her alma mater.

A honorary member of ΔΣΘ, Mary McLeod Bethune, an alumna of the now-defunct Barber-Scotia College, founded Bethune-Cookman University and the National Council of Negro Women. Initiated into Delta while she was a student at Howard, sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett’s career, best-known works depict black women as strong, maternal figures, spanned seventy years. Hailed as the mother of the modern Civil Rights Movement, honorary AKA Rosa Parks had attended Alabama State University, before her mother’s illness forced her to withdraw.

Busy training pilots for the all-black Pursuit Squadron

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(Opposite) Left: Alabma State University President Dr. Gwendolyn E. Boyd celebrates the centennial of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, of which she is a past national president. Right: Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (middle row, second from right) sits with fellow Alpha Phi Alpha pledges on the campus of Lincoln Univeristy in the late 1930s.

during World War II, Tuskegee University alumnus Daniel “Chappie” James, Jr., who became the first African-American to reach the rank of four star general in the United States military in 1975, was a member of KAΨ, as was historian and social scientist Horace Mann Bond, who had served as president of his alma mater Lincoln University of Pennsylvania and Fort Valley State University during the 1940s. A pioneering African-American biologist and alumnus of South Carolina State University, Ernest Everett Just guided three Howard students’ efforts to found ΩΨΦ. Other notable Omega men included poet laureate and Lincoln University of Pennsylvania alumnus Langston Hughes, poet Sterling Brown, as well as James Nabrit, Jr., champion of many cases for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund during the 1940s and future Howard president.

Concurrently, author of the “Negro National Anthem,” lawyer, diplomat, and diplomat James Weldon Johnson was an alumnus of Clark Atlanta University and member of ΦBΣ, as was renown scientist and Tuskegee professor George Washington Carver and Lincoln University of Pennsylvania alumnus Kwame Nkrumah, who led the Gold Coast to independence as the new nation of Ghana. AΦA calls pioneering historian, sociologist, Pan-Africanist, and Fisk University alumnus W.E.B. Du Bois, the first African American to be awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard University its own as well as Lincoln University of Pennsylvania alumnus Thurgood Marshall, who became the nation’s first black Supreme Court Justice in 1967.

Throughout the era of the modern Civil Rights Movement, the BGLO-HBCU connection remained strong. No where is this clearer that in a photo of the Lorraine Motel, taken just one-day before the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on its balcony. The now-iconic photo features Dr. King and three of his most-trusted aides, Hosea Williams, alumnus of the now-defunct Morris Brown College and member of ΦBΣ, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., alumnus of North Carolina A&T State University and member of ΩΨΦ, Dr. King, Jr., Morehouse College alumnus and member of AΦA, and the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, alumnus of Alabama State and Clark Atlanta universities, and member of KAΨ. It’s an image, many would argue, that represents a golden era in black college history and in the life of BGLOs—an era, they say, that isn’t coming back.

This much is probably true, but it doesn’t mean that HBCUs or BGLOs have lost their utility. Many of the most successful HBCU presidents during the last quarter-century have been BGLO members. They include the legendary Florida A&M and Tennessee State universities President Emeritus Frederick S. Humphries, a chemist and alumnus of Florida A&M, who was inducted into AΦA’s Beta Nu chapter. As president of Tennessee State University (TSU) from 1974 to 1985, Humphries led the successful merger of the University of Tennessee at Nashville (a Traditional White Institution) and TSU in

the landmark case of Geier v. Tennessee. During his almost 17-year presidential tenure at Florida A&M, Humphries oversaw the institution’s improved academic reputation and its selection as the first TIME Magazine/Princeton Review “College of the Year” in 1997.

Hailed as the “Sister President,” anthropologist Johnnetta Betsch Cole entered Fisk at just 15 years old, where she was exposed to important black intellectual discourse through contact with figures such as poet and Fisk librarian Arna Bontemps, a member of ΩΨΦ. Following the death of her father, Cole transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio to be closer to her older sister. Since Oberlin didn’t have one, at her mother’s behest, Cole ventured off-campus to join a black sorority.

“There was no need to ask my mother which sorority I should join,” later recalled Cole in her book Conversations: Straight Talk with America’s Sister President. “It was clear it would be hers: Delta Sigma Theta.” As the first black woman president of Spelman College, Cole secured a $20 million gift from Bill and Camille Cosby to the college, which remains the largest single gift from individuals to any HBCU to date. Similarly, the college completed a capital campaign which raised $113.8 million during her tenure, the largest sum ever raised by a HBCU. Her decade-long headship was followed by serving as the president of Bennett College for Women from 2002 to 2007, during which time she oversaw a $50 million capital campaign and the the founding of the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute.

Among the ranks of current BLGO-member HBCU presidents are Xavier University of Louisiana President Norman C. Francis, who is believed to be the longest-serving university president in the country and is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha. His fraternity brother Walter M. Kimbrough, former president of Philander Smith College and current president of Dillard University is an expert in BGLO culture and gifts new initiates bearing the number two, which he chides is “the most important number for any line,” with their respective BGLO sweater. Other BGLO-member HBCU presidents include Paul Quinn College President Michael Sorrell, a member of KAΨ, Tennessee State University President Glenda Baskin Glover, a member of AKA, Florida A&M President Elmira Mangum, a member of ZΦB, and Alabama State University President Gwendolyn E. Boyd, a member of ΔΣΘ, for which she served as 22nd national president.

Despite the availability of many positive role models, the current generation of HBCU-student, BGLO members must make the choice to emulate them and become the very best of HBCU and BGLO is to survive and thrive for another century. Beyond the persistence of hazing, which is by far the most damning reality threatening the future BGLOs at HBCUs and beyond, HBCU-student, BGLO members must take active responsibility for being their respective institution’s story. Just as the ties that bind their pasts are real, so too is the interdependence of our futures.

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