By Carly Novell, EIC News
Over the summer and fall, The Abolish Greek Life Movement originated at universities like Vanderbilt, Northwestern and Duke which led to members of the Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic disaffiliating and chapters disbanding. Students decided to spearhead the movement at GW by creating an Instagram page called @abolish_greeklife_gw for members of the community to share their experiences with Greek systems.
“Systemic racism is the primary issue with predominantly white Greek life,” said an administrator for the page. “Its origins are super inherently racist, very exclusionary and classist. It isn’t very accessible to people who don’t have a lot of money.”
The first fraternity was founded at College of William and Mary in 1776, long before women and people of color were allowed to participate in higher education. While Greek-letter organizations date back to 1858 at GW, the school itself didn’t desegregate until 1954, almost a full century later. In 2019, the Hatchet found several instances of blackface and Ku Klux Klan hoods among members of Greek life in Cherry Tree Yearbooks from as recently as 1977. Although these events occurred decades ago, they illustrate racism within aspects of Greek life that if left unchecked, can permeate into present systems.
In the past three years, two racist incidents occurred on sorority members’ Snapchat pages from both Alpha Phi and Phi Sigma Sigma, which is now disbanded. In February 2018, after a racist Snapchat was exposed from an Alpha Phi sister’s page, the Student Association approved a resolution to remove the chapter from campus and promote more diversity and inclusion efforts but it was never signed into law. Following this incident, GW implemented a bias incident reporting system and adopted mandatory diversity and inclusion virtual training for incoming students. Less than a year later, the Phi Sigma Sigma President resigned after her racist Snapchats writing, “I wonder if they sell slaves here” at a plantation gift shop were made public.
“Panhellenic’s GW Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Board, which consists of at least one representative from each chapter, functions to make structural changes across our Panhellenic community as a whole, as well as within individual chapters. DIL Board creates and presents educational programming for chapters while creating space to discuss changes to Panhel’s structure. From council-wide recruitment workshops to New Member trainings, social media outreach and community engagement, DIL Board strives to help our community grow, while encouraging members to educate themselves and create tangible change in their own chapters. Additionally, chapters advocate for more diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts by making concrete changes in GW council and chapter bylaws, but also by pushing our national organizations to create change at a higher level, across the nation.” Panhellenic Association President Laurel Braaten told The Local.
The foundations of the Abolish Greek Life movement draw similarities to police abolition regarding the idea that reform is impossible when there are systemic barriers at hand. In the case of fraternities and sororities, these barriers include racial inequity, dues and fines for missed events or breaking bylines and perpetuate sexual violence. According to the @gwsurvivors Instagram page, of their 178 submissions, Greek Letter organizations were mentioned 53 times with 2 particular fraternities implicated 7 times.
“I tried reform first, so I know so many great women in Greek life, who really genuinely want it to change for the better and I know there are still women like that out there,” the page administrator said. “It’s much bigger than GW. These national organizations are incredibly old and powerful institutions with a lot of money behind them, they do not want to change.”
The Instagram page and its administrators specifically emphasized negligent behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic leading to a rise in infection rates on campus. In September 2020, Delta Tau Delta closed its house to visitors when multiple brothers tested positive for the virus after they attended a party off-campus. According to GroupMe messages obtained by the Hatchet, a member of the fraternity wrote “Loose lips sink ships,” in reference to the outbreak.
According to the GW COVID-19 Testing Dashboard, there were 29 total positive cases during the month of September. At the end of September, there was a spike in daily positivity rates at 1.46% compared to 0.33% earlier in the month.
“Especially in the time of Covid, I started to see this as a more pressing issue because Greek life on campus is a huge contributor to COVID-19 violations and affecting the surrounding D.C. community which I’m just not okay with at all,” the page administrator said. “The people who they are harming are predominantly Black, and they have no regard for the surrounding community. It’s just super disrespectful.”
The Instagram page publicly criticized this behavior in multiple posts, compiling images from other Instagram accounts flaunting their irresponsibility in doing their part to prevent the spread of COVID-19. One comment on a post of a party read, “Covid safe baby” as a sarcastic joke.
“Every image that we posted with the face blurred out was already on a public Instagram account. Even those images were already public, we weren’t in the business of revealing people’s identities but we still wanted to hold them accountable,” the administrator said. “Everybody knows what they are doing when they are gathering in large groups, but to openly mock the fact that you’re ignoring Covid restrictions, it’s so blatant. How could we not draw attention to that?”
Other concerns among administrators of the page include unfair benefits like access to chapter-wide test banks and cheaper housing. In Greek townhouses and Strong Hall, a single bedroom costs $6,505 each semester compared with the upperclassmen single bedroom housing price of $8,200 per semester.
“Fraternity and sorority housing is offered at a comparable cost to other residence halls on campus, though it is only available for chapter members much like a District Hall affinity,” Braaten wrote.
The Abolish Greek Life GW Instagram page has received at least 60 testimonials surrounding the topics of racism, anti-semitism, sexual violence, homophobia, alcoholism, ableism, classism and COVID-19 violations. One of the page’s administrators told The Local that since starting the page, their beliefs have only been reaffirmed. The administrator described an outpouring of support through direct messages as well.
“The testimonials on the Abolish Greek Life page are valid experiences, and we acknowledge that any action that happens within our organization does not eliminate the harm done in the past. The AGL page itself has prompted increased transparency within chapters and amongst members about past incidents as well as provide an opportunity to reiterate that the behaviors outlined in those posts are unacceptable and will not be tolerated in Panhel,” Braaten wrote. “This is not done to allow chapters to excuse past behavior or belittle the harm done, but rather to use past wrongdoings as a lesson for accountability.”
The page’s administrators encourage current members of IFC and Panhellenic at GW to disaffiliate from their chapters and sign a petition calling for the dissolution of these organizations. The petition has received 151 signatures and the page itself has 545 followers.
“Reform is incredibly difficult and I think it’s much more accessible for an individual to decide not to partake in the system anymore. That’s kind of like what personal abolition is, to remove yourself from the system after realizing that you’re partaking in something that’s harmful,” the page administrator said. “But the greater goal on the GW campus is to get enough people to be behind abolishing that they remove themselves, so that the system can no longer exist. Hopefully, if enough people will decide to remove themselves, it will kind of draw attention to this movement with administration.”
Due to safety concerns, the moderators of the page have decided to remain anonymous, but former members of Greek life are represented within their group. The administrators of the page plan on continuing to post testimonials as well as more educational resources in the future. For more information on equity efforts in Greek life, The Local previously reported on Diversity and Inclusion in Sororities
