19 minute read
Delta Upsilon Chapter: Tri Delta's Original Allies
by TriDelta
As Tri Delta has explored our past and, in particular, our history of welcoming sisters of color into the organization, some powerful stories have emerged. In March of 2020, we shared one of those stories, chronicling the journey of our first Black member, Diane Petersen, Ohio Wesleyan. Told from Diane’s gracious perspective, the story highlighted the friendship and sisterhood she enjoyed with her Delta Upsilon sisters. In this follow-up story—and at Diane’s urging—we'll be telling the story of the women who stood strong to ensure she became a Tri Delta.
by Amanda Milford, Texas/Arlington
This story may be difficult to read, but it must be told. And the harms it describes must be acknowledged in order for Tri Delta to truly lean in and LEADDD Always. Tri Delta’s diversity audit, completed last year by Culture Shift Team, recommended acknowledging and learning from past harms. Our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, access and belonging includes the guiding principle of being brave, bold and kind alike to all as we pursue this work with humility and open hearts. In this article, we acknowledge, with deep regret, the exclusionary behavior of our past and the hurt and harm it caused.
We also share a story of allyship and Tri Delta’s values in action as the women of our Delta Upsilon Chapter at Ohio Wesleyan stood bravely in the face of adversity and discrimination and boldly in the spirit of friendship and kindness.
In a series of interviews with members of Delta Upsilon during the period from 1964 to 1965, as well as their alumna advisor, Nancy Hancher, we’ve heard many words used to describe the chapter as they challenged a status quo rooted in racism and fear: Authentic. Independent. Confident. Determined. Real. Nearly 60 years later, we’d refer to them as Diane does ... brave, bold and kind.
This is their story.
Diane Petersen arrived at Ohio Wesleyan as a freshman in 1962. A small, Midwestern liberal arts university, Ohio Wesleyan’s was a close-knit campus community, but without much diversity, as the women of Delta Upsilon recall.
Karen Kale, Ohio Wesleyan, was Diane’s freshman roommate. She remembers receiving a letter from Diane after they’d received their roommate assignments, but before they’d arrived on campus. Karen remembers thinking, based solely on her name, that Diane must be a "blondhaired girl from New Jersey." But in the letter, Diane shared more about herself and her family and enclosed her photo. For Karen and her parents, it made no difference that Diane was a Black woman, but Karen acknowledges that may not have been true for a lot of people at that time.
As an only child, Karen loved having Diane as a roommate. The two shared a suite with two other women and Karen remembers how much fun they had, “There was a lot of laughing and carrying on.”
The Greek system was a significant part of the Ohio Wesleyan campus culture. However, while other aspects of the campus and campus life were integrated, Greek life remained segregated. Before inviting Diane to membership, Delta Upsilon had invited a Native Hawai’ian student. But, as Karen Hall Geizer, Ohio Wesleyan, recalls, “The national organization quickly put the kibosh on that one.”
When it came time for recruitment (or rush, as it was then known), Karen Kale and Diane’s other two freshman suitemates participated. Diane did not.
Although Diane didn’t join the Greek community as a freshman, she was still very involved on campus. She was active in the Angel Flight program and in student government. And she continued to build friendships across campus, including with women she would eventually call her Tri Delta sisters.
Remembering their time together at Ohio Wesleyan, Diane’s classmates and sisters remember having such respect and admiration for her.
Ellen Rowe, Ohio Wesleyan, lived in the same dormitory as Diane during her freshman year. She remembers being
Delta Upsilon’s Marilyn Patrick, Ohio Wesleyan, says, “Diane was always fun and she has a great laugh. She was a leader. But one that always listened and didn’t try to take over. Diane was respected and liked.”
Diane clearly made an impression on the Tri Deltas. At the beginning of her sophomore year, a couple of members invited her to a “cozy,” or an open house recruitment party, with a few other women they were interested in inviting to membership in Delta Upsilon.
That’s where Karen Geizer first met Diane, finding her to be “a bright, interesting, open individual.”
Marilyn was serving as chapter treasurer for Delta Upsilon and knew Diane from class. “We thought she’d make a great Tri Delta,” she says. “We decided we wanted to invite Diane to join.” Marilyn remembers discussing this with other members and acknowledging the likelihood that Delta Upsilon alumnae and perhaps even the national organization weren’t going to be happy with the chapter’s decision. At the same time, she remembers thinking, “They won’t want to face the (negative) publicity that will arise if they come after us.”
Soon after Diane accepted her bid in April 1964, Delta Upsilon Collegiate Chapter President Martha “Marty” Brandt, Ohio Wesleyan, notified Executive Office of their newest member, “an attractive, lady-like, well-thought-of girl, involved in many activities on campus.” In this correspondence, Marty summarized the informal rush process, highlighted Diane’s outstanding reference, and noted the chapter’s strong support for Diane and the alumna advisor’s strong support of the chapter. She also noted that because Diane was a Black woman, there was an uneasiness among chapter members about possible repercussions from the national organization.
Nancy Hancher, Ohio Wesleyan, remembers receiving the call in 1964 asking her to serve as Delta Upsilon’s alumna advisor. Having graduated from OWU in 1957, she had recently moved back to the area and had just had her third child. Nancy didn’t recall Delta Upsilon ever having an advisory presence when she had been a member a decade earlier, so she asked why the chapter needed an advisor. “They said, ‘Well, the chapter needs some help. They’re in trouble.’ I said, ‘Ok, why, what have they done?’ and they said, ‘They pledged a Black girl.’”
Nancy agreed to serve as alumna advisor—but she also understood that her role was to advise and support the chapter. And she took that responsibility very seriously, doing everything she could to help the women of Delta Upsilon.
Up to that point, Delta Upsilon Chapter had never been on the radar of Tri Delta’s Executive Office. But that year, Nancy remembers having at least four national officers visit the chapter.
Other members of the chapter remember their visits, too.
Karen Geizer recalls the chapter being told not to wear any Tri Delta insignia when the national officers came to campus so that they couldn’t be picked on. “I remember going by the bookstore, and one of the national officers stopped a girl that was walking in front of me and wanted to know if she was a Tri Delta. And she said, ‘no.’ And they said, ‘Do you see anyone around here who is?’ It was a small enough campus that most of knew each other and what sororities we were in. Fortunately, no one pointed me out.”
Marilyn recalls one volunteer trying to talk the chapter out of initiating Diane: “She said, ‘How will the girls in Alabama feel? What will happen when they aren’t allowed to have dances at local country clubs because Tri Delta allows Black members?’” It was at this time, while Diane was a pledge (now known as new member), that Tri Delta’s national leadership took action. Tri Delta’s archives contains letters, memos and notes from phone calls during that time illustrating a focused effort to convince the women of Delta Upsilon to change their minds about Diane.
Even worse, correspondence among key national leaders indicates a desire to put pressure on the chapter through communications, visits and probations with long lists of requirements and deadlines. One especially hurtful memo from April 1964 shares a desire to “harass them all we can … and play for time—and hope!” (The same memo also shares the hope that Diane would get married over the summer and decide not return to school in the fall.)
Nancy remembers the chapter being put on every kind of probation imaginable in 1964-1965, including social, scholarship and financial. “Nobody had advised them for years,” says Nancy. “They had become lax in some areas, and so they were all willing to do whatever was required, and there was a long list of things to complete for each probation. They just buckled down and did it.”
Nancy helped where she could. Meanwhile, chapter officers spent hours combing through old files in the attic to satisfy the reporting requirements from Executive Office.
“We had to find reports and scrapbooks ... so we were up in the attic hunting for these things,” Karen Geizer recalls. “Going through files and files and files to find back infor
mation that had to be submitted. We spent a lot of time answering these mindless requirements of things we had been remiss in doing all these years that no one ever told us about. Some of them, if I recall correctly, were even reports that were there from the early ’60s and late ’50s—what were we supposed to know about that? It was a nightmare.”
In addition, Tri Delta’s Executive Office imposed other strict requirements on the chapter. As Marilyn recalls, “They became very picky that everybody had to have their telephone bills paid right on time. … They also became particular about how we wore our pins.”
But the obstacles Executive Office put in place made the women that much more determined to overcome them. They did everything asked of them because they wanted to call Diane their sister—and they saw no reason why she shouldn’t be.
“The attitude of each officer, and the entire chapter, was one of willingness to do anything they were asked to do in order to allow Diane to be initiated,” remembers Nancy.
Nancy was also willing to stand up for what she believed was right. Records from archives show that she was asked to vote no on Diane or find another alumna to be at the meeting. Nancy responded by saying if she was going to be forced to vote no, she would resign her alumna advisor position.
Nothing was going to deter Delta Upsilon ...
Constant visits, requests and requirements from the national organization weren’t the only obstacles faced by the chapter. They also faced outright racism and vitriol from Tri Delta alumnae.
Karen Kale, who was the pledge trainer at the time (now known as the director of first year experience), remembers getting calls from alumnae very late at night. “They were angry. They wanted to know what our chapter was thinking when we pledged a Black woman. They said it was causing problems for them as they were trying to raise money to build new houses, and that it was flying in the face of what they wanted and needed to do on their campuses.”
In addition, chapter members were receiving hateful calls and even death threats. “We were in college to do what college kids do—study, be sorority sisters, enjoy life, enjoy campus. A great deal of the time we didn’t get to do that,” recalls Karen Geizer.
As collegiate chapter president, Marty took the brunt of the attacks from the national organization, shielding other members—and Diane—from the worst of what was happening. Ellen remembers Marty as “absolutely the person we needed. She was so calm.”
Her calm and thoughtful demeanor is evident in the correspondence from that time in which she encourages national leaders to further consider the situation at Delta Upsilon, while consistently defending the character of the chapter’s members.
One day, Karen Geizer and Karen Kale remember walking to campus and passing the Tri Delta house— an old home with large front windows and shutters. That’s when they noticed the white shutters had been painted brown.
Other chapter sisters were quickly alerted and met up to wash and repaint the shutters so that Diane wouldn’t see them. “I don’t think it was anybody from the house,” says Karen Kale. “I don’t know who it would have been. It was an ugly episode.”
Over time it became clear that nothing was going to deter Delta Upsilon from initiating Diane. It helped that the chapter received unwavering support from Nancy, a number of local alumnae and the university itself—including the university president.
There was a rule at Ohio Wesleyan that there could be no local sororities or fraternities on
campus. But as Delta Upsilon continued to struggle with Tri Delta’s Executive Office and national leaders, Ohio Wesleyan President Elden Smith extended the chapter the opportunity to “go local.” Karen Geizer remembers a conversation with President Smith: “The president called us in and told us they would make an exception for Delta Upsilon. So, we could battle on and not worry. We would be able to remain a sorority, local in nature. ... They even said they’d find a place for us to have meetings.”
In response to the Delta Upsilon situation, President Smith would go on to write to the national offices of all fraternities and sororities on Ohio Wesleyan’s campus, requiring them to amend their bylaws to include a nondiscrimination clause by a certain date or be removed from campus.
Current University President Rock Jones shared, “The challenges that the Tri Deltas faced brought the university together, and our president at the time, Elden Smith, showed firm and moral leadership.”
Members of the faculty at Ohio Wesleyan were also fully supportive of the chapter, writing in a letter to Delta Upsilon members that their “act of pledging Diane Petersen will be a small but important contribution to the new America that is emerging, and we are proud to have your chapter on the campus of Ohio Wesleyan.”
Karen Geizer remembers supportive Tri Delta alumnae, as well. “There was a woman who was a Tri Delta alumna who worked at the union (what we called the Mub). Because she worked in such a central part of student life, she knew who Diane was, and she really liked her.”
In addition, Ellen’s mother was a member of the Tri Delta moms’ club in Dayton, Ohio, where one of the national officers lived at the time. Ellen remembers one of the moms found out the national officer was planning a surprise visit to Ohio Wesleyan and was able to let the chapter know she was coming. “Our moms were horrified by what we were going through and were fully supportive of the chapter,” says Ellen.
In the spring of 1965, when Delta Upsilon officially voted to initiate Diane into membership in Tri Delta, national officers showed up at the chapter again in another attempt to intimidate and persuade chapter members to vote against her.
Karen Kale remembers it like it was yesterday: “These two women came up to me and stopped me during a break. ... They were in tears and said, ‘You know you’re going to pay in hell for this.’”
Karen doesn’t remember if she actually responded to the women, but remembers thinking, “And you’ll be there collecting dues.”
Ellen also remembers the vote. “The chapter president said no discussion. The tension in that room was unbelievable.”
The chapter took two votes—both were unanimously in favor of initiating Diane.
“People were crying and hugging. It was totally amazing,” says Ellen.
In addition to the unanimous vote, the chapter also met every single requirement Executive Office had set—by the required deadlines—to be able to initiate Diane. As Nancy explains, “It was all completed within a year of Diane’s pledging. She had to be initiated within a year, and we were very aware of that date. … If I remember correctly, she was initiated within days of the one-year time limit.”
“The national organization tried to force a crack, thinking that some girls would say ‘this isn’t worth it,’" says Marilyn. “But that didn’t happen. There was no crack. We wanted to have the sister we wanted, and we didn’t think race was a good enough reason to not have someone—especially Diane— as a Tri Delta.”
The Delta Upsilon impact was felt not only in Tri Delta but across Ohio Wesleyan. President Jones emphasized, “We are an intellectually and socially richer university community because of the leadership of people like Diane Petersen, her classmates, Elden Smith and so many more students, faculty and staff who have come after them with the courage to do what is right and just.”
Diane has gone on to have a successful career as a head and neck surgeon and has been heavily involved in philanthropy through the Sandpipers organization, in which she served as president. She also continues to be actively involved in Tri Delta, today serving on Tri Delta’s Foundation Board of Trustees.
Earlier this year, Diane endowed a scholarship with Tri Delta’s Foundation called the “Brave, Bold and Kind Scholarship Honoring 1960s Delta Upsilon Members at Ohio Wesleyan,” in honor of the women who fought for her to join our sisterhood. This scholarship celebrates her Delta Upsilon Chapter sisters while also providing financial support for future generations of Tri Deltas.
Each of Diane’s chapter sisters have such pride when they speak about her accomplishments over the years and all the ways in which she continues to enrich and enhance Tri Delta.
Ellen says, “One thing that I think about so often … this one national officer came and was just wringing her hands, saying, ‘You’re trying to give this girl something she will never have. She will never be accepted by any other Tri Deltas anywhere. She’ll never be accepted by national.’ Every time I hear about Diane’s involvement in Tri Delta as an alumna, I’m just so thrilled!”
Visit give.tridelta.org/braveboldandkindscholarship to make a donation to the Brave, Bold and Kind Scholarship Honoring 1960s Delta Upsilon Members at Ohio Wesleyan. If you are a Tri Delta continuing your studies in 2023-2024 as an undergraduate or graduate student, we invite you to apply for this and many other scholarships from Tri Delta’s Foundation at tridelta.org/foundation/ scholarships.
Hear Diane share the story of her Delta Upsilon sisters. Scan this code:
LEADDD ALWAYS
Moving Forward
Tri Delta’s Executive Board feels it’s important for Tri Delta to reflect on lessons learned from our past and the growth that we have experienced. After learning more about how Tri Delta leaders systematically tried to exclude Diane from membership, Tri Delta has taken direct and diligent steps to ensure that our actions match our values and that our LEADDD Always commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, access and belonging (DEIAB) is embedded into every aspect of the member experience.
As part of that commitment, we want to be intentional about recognition within our organization. To that end, we are announcing a new collegiate award—the Diane Petersen LEADDD Always Award. This new award will recognize a collegiate chapter’s commitment to DEIAB and honor a collegiate chapter that embodies the same brave, bold and kind spirit demonstrated by the women of Delta Upsilon Chapter in the 1960s. It also celebrates Diane and recognizes the impact of her membership and service in Tri Delta, as well as her generous support of Tri Delta's Foundation.
Our LEADDD Always work is ongoing, and we hope you will join us by participating in an event, checking out our resources or sharing our work in your Tri Delta community. Here is how you can participate this fall:
•Join us on Nov. 22 for a replay of Risha Grant’s powerful keynote,
Diversity Done Differently, from this summer’s LEADDD San Diego conference.
•Listen to our recent Let’s Talk Tri Delta podcast with actress, singer and writer Zakiya Young, Pittsburgh. She can be seen in the new HBO Max series “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin.”
Zakiya Young, Pittsburgh • Join your sisters in making the LEADDD Always Commitment and then use our LEADDD Always action guides for collegiate and alumnae members to demonstrate your commitment. Visit the LEADDD Always page on tridelta.org for more information.
•Update your demographic information in your My Tri Delta profile. Go to tridelta.org and click on My Tri Delta on the top right.
•Stay tuned for updates from our LEADDD Always Collegiate Advisory Work Group—12 chapters seeking to grow, share and enhance their DEIAB efforts and share best practices.
Resources
You can access relevant and timely resources on our LEADDD Always Resources page on tridelta.org. Here is a sampling of what you'll find there: Articles
“For Our White Friends Desiring to Be Allies” by Courtney Ariel
Videos
“Racism Has a Cost for Everyone” TED Talk
Books
“White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism” by Robin DiAngelo
Podcasts
“Intersectionality Matters!” hosted by Kimberlé W. Crenshaw
Websites
National Civil Rights Museum: Located in Memphis, Tennessee, many of our collegiate members have the opportunity to visit the museum during Tri Delta’s St. Jude Celebration. Tri Delta partnered with the museum in 2021 and helps promote the high-level educational opportunities they provide in-person and virtually.
Infographics
Collegiate Chapter Recruitment Resource: Designed to help create inclusion and welcoming during recruitment
