As an incoming freshman at MU, I have been excited to rush a sorority since the middle of my senior year. I have spent entire weekends looking into every sorority chapter at each college I was debating on attending. For a long time, I was set to attend an HBCU, Historically Black College, but instead I chose to attend MU, a PWI, predominantly white institution. The sororities I researched at HBCUs were Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta among other amazing National Pan-hellenic Council organizations.
A Caucasian friend of mine attends another PWI and is part of a sorority and has fallen in love with the sorority life she has been blessed with. Much like any other student interested in pursuing a path similar to another, I asked her about sororities, relying on her advice as someone “in the know.” My friend told me that, unfortunately, black sororities are not seen doing anything at her PWI school, completely absent from school-wide Greek Life events and unseen doing philanthropic labor.
Disappointed, I took her advice, and since she is the only one close to me who is involved in Greek Life, I naively took it as the only truth regarding NPHC organizations. Regardless, I continued researching sororities but instead turned to Panhellenic Association organizations. I took many notes regarding each sorority, jotting down their philanthropy, values and other details that interested me about them, ranking them according to my notes. I even looked at their Instagrams, Tumblrs and Facebooks to see if I could find at least one black female currently a part of their on-campus organization. For none of the PHA organization chapters at MU was this an easy thing to do; I scrolled through months of pictures and videos to search for one girl out of many.
While surfing through their social media, I found at least one black girl in Alpha Delta Pi, Delta Delta Delta, Kappa Alpha Theta, Phi Mu, Pi Beta Phi, Sigma Kappa and Sigma Sigma Sigma. Only seven out of 16 PHA sororities have black girls in any photo or video on any of their social media platforms. For instance, I had to scroll through Pi Beta Phi’s Instagram until I found a black girl in a photo posted several months ago on Halloween, but these sororities were better than those sororities without any black girls.
Although all of these sororities are extremely well-developed organizations with seemingly tight knit communities, amazing philanthropic character and dedication to academics, I was still unnerved by the lack of people who look like me in their chapters. As far as the NPHC organizations are concerned, there is an extreme lack of researchable information on them. The Alpha Kappa Alpha chapter is even marked inactive on GreekRank.com.
I hope to learn more about the NPHC organizations while on campus, but for now, I am completely devoid of information. Other than being in control of their social media platforms, PHA sororities at Mizzou are not entirely at fault with their lack of black members. With only 2,553 black students on campus, subtract the men and the women uninterested in joining an organization like theirs and there aren’t many black women available.
I look forward to stepping on campus and hopefully having my observations debunked. With formal recruitment in the fall and open bids accepted throughout the year, I have decided to push my rushing plans back from this summer to second semester in order to collect more information on both the NPHC and PHA organizations. But for now, I must touch on the image that is presented to the young black female students entering as freshmen with the hopes of one day rushing.
Is there a place for us?
