As I read the article "The Origin and Evolution of college Fraternities and Sororities", I found that it really interested me. Here are a couple things that I found I wanted to reflect on.
The first interesting thing to me, which I found kind of cool, was that before there were sororities, women were joining all-male fraternities. Even though it was debated an not always welcomed, I appreciated the fact that Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the Kentucky Military Institute, Beta Theta Pi, Phi Delta Theta, and Pi Kappa Alpha all accepted women as full members of their fraternities. It showed some gender equality did exist around 1860 :). Eventually creating women's fraternities was a social change for a move towards more inclusiveness towards women.
Another point I wanted to touch on was that as a part of Greek life here at OSU, I love to promote greek unity, cross-council collaboration, and good inter-fraternity relations. Most greek systems I have interacted with promote the same things. So, when I started reading about how and why a lot of greek lettered organizations started, I was surprised to see that some started because they didn't feel included in the college socially, or didn't feel welcomed by an already established fraternity or sorority on campus.
For example, the first black fraternity and sororities were founded because they "found a support system to help them socialize and survive at an institution dominated by white students." Other ethnic organizations formed for a similar reasons were a Chinese fraternity, Rho Psi , a Latin American fraternity, Phi Iota Alpha in 1931. This social change of including racial diversity is something that hits home, due to the fact that I'm a part of a Latino organization. My fraternity as well, gave me a support system which included people who were were culturally similar to me.
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