Mikayla Harris never thought of herself as a typical sorority girl. Like many women who become involved with sororities at Yale, she was attracted to the University in part because Greek organizations donât dominate the social life. But sometime around the end of her first semester, after attending first classes, going to first keggers, and making first friends, she began to wonder if something was missing. Like hundreds of other women at Yale seeking community, female friendship, and extracurricular and professional opportunities, Harris decided to rush. Unlike most women in sororities, Harris is Black.
In the winter of 2014, Harris, now a senior, was initiated into Pi Beta Phi (Pi Phi). In her pledge class, she was one of eight women of color, part of a group that comprised about sixteen percent of the classâan unusually high figure for the sorority, Harris said. (In the Yale undergraduate population, about thirty percent identify as students of color.) If Harrisâs class deviated from the Pi Phi norm, she says it was thanks to one woman: Olivia, an older Pi Phi member at the time and member of Yaleâs Afro-American Cultural House. âShe really wanted to make Pi Phi as diverse as possible,â Harris said of Olivia. âI was like, if people who look like me are in this, then Ill join it.â
Olivia described her work to make Pi Phi more inclusive, with a tinge of irony, as being like âthe ambassador for Pi Phiâ to the Af-Am House. (Olivia asked to be identified by a pseudonym to avoid the backlash she said accompanies âthe airing of uncomfortable truths within Yaleâs Greek community.â) Harris also said she sometimes felt there was a âfrustratingâ burden on her to single-handedly diversify the group. âItâs a lot of pressure on the women of color to get other women of color to join,â she explained.
Harris resignedâthe official term for cutting tiesâfrom Pi Phi in the winter of 2016 in part because of time constraints, but also because she found it harder, as she puts it, to âpush it out of my mind that I was one of the only Black people in a roomâ after the campus-wide conversations about race last fall.
Shortly after she made her decision, the ritual of rush unfolded much as it does every year, but Yaleâs campus had changed. Throughout the fall, students witnessed charged conversations and protests about racial justice, and testimony from students of color described experiences that contradicted the admissions brochure narrative of a community that is not only diverse but also fully inclusive. Student organizations at Yale put out Facebook statements of their failures, desires to change, and support for women of color.
Sororities, often seen as bastions of race and class privilege, were no exception. All four of the sororitiesâPi Beta Phi, Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, and newcomer Alpha Phiâheld chapter-wide conversations, and Yaleâs Panhellenic Council, comprised of representatives from all the sororities, held an open forum just before recruitment that sought to establish new diversification initiatives regarding race and income.
Attendees broke into small groups where they discussed big questions: How could they make sororities more accessible? What role should they play as a group of women in discussions about racial justice? How should they be better allies to women of color?
Lauren Weston, a member of Pi Phi who graduated in 2016 and who is also Black, echoed Harrisâs sentiment that she hadnât initially anticipated the sorority to be especially racially inclusive. âI never came to Yale expecting my sorority to be this all-encompassing entity that would support me as a marginalized person,â she told me. âI didnât expect it to go out of its way to include people of color, because most places donât do that.â
Increasingly, however, students at Yale and across the country are asking for exactly that. In the Yale College Council Greek Life Task Force Report, released this past May, students of color in focus groups âexplained that due to the homogeneity of much of Greek life, they are often not only at a disadvantage during recruitment, but are also vulnerable to feelings of discomfort and exclusion.â The report called on Greek organizations to have honest conversations about the degree to which their membership reflects campus at large.
At Yale, exclusivity, reputation, and hierarchy pervade aspects of student life from seminars to senior societies, and sororities are no exception. Pi Phi and Theta members sometimes speak frankly about the general campus perception that they particularly attract privileged women; Theta member and junior Sophie Freeman described Thetaâs campus reputation as ârich bitches.â Pi Phi and Theta offer their members entrĂŠe to a particular sliver of the Yale social scene, one that blooms around High Street frats and at glitzy formals that yield a slew of similar Facebook profile photos.
I spoke to past and present members of Pi Phi and Theta about their ability to provide communities, safe spaces, and platforms for Yale women. At a university where students continue to engage in heated and often painful debates about institutional inclusivity, the question is: Which women?
â
Every winter, Yale freshman and sophomore women gather to primp in residential college bathrooms, sharing straightening irons and eyelash curlers, rummaging through roommatesâ closets for the perfect top, and finally pouring out of dorms into the barely-plowed streets. Many walk in high-heeled boots, huddling close together for warmth in the second-semester cold. They hope to join a tradition that stretches back more than a century.
As Jessica Bennett noted in last springâs piece in The New York Times, âWhen a Feminist Pledges a Sorority,â sororities began in the nineteenth century with the mission of helping young women navigate hostile co-ed institutions. Some early sorority members were active in the suffragette movement, and the groups served as organizing spaces for women seeking social, academic, and professional support. Kappa Alpha Theta came to Yale in 1986, less than twenty years after Yale College accepted women in 1969. Kappa and Pi Phi followed in 1987 and 1989, respectively. When Theta was founded, it was the only sorority on Yaleâs campus, in some ways following in the footsteps of the early twentieth century groups by serving as an alternative to all-male fraternities and secret societies.
But while sororities are meant to offer refuge to female students, they donât always become more inclusive as student bodies become more diverse. As Bennett points out, many sororities responded to an influx of first Jewish students, and then students of color, by tightening their recruitment process, safeguarding their privilege and, often, their whiteness. Their histories share something with the American feminist movement: wealthy, educated white women struggled for equality with white men, holding onto what power they had while excluding large numbers of low-income women and women of color.
Skyler Inman, director of the Yale College Councilâs Greek Life Task Force and president of Alpha Phi, said that sororities and fraternities have been at the âvanguard of tradition in a very negative way in a lot of places.â
Today, Yaleâs sororities are reckoning with that history. Some sorority sisters, like their early founders, want their organizations to be homes for political activism and platforms from which they can effect change. Unlike the first sorority members, many hope their organizations can one day provide a supportive community for all women.
The recruitment process, where each memberâs relationship with her sorority begins, is an example of how unquestioned traditions can create barriers to access. But relatively small changes in these traditions could have a big impact on the composition of the group. In most sororities, the executive board turns over right before the rush process, so deliberating over a new class is any new presidentâs first opportunity to make major decisions. Itâs the entry point for diversification. As several women made clear to me, itâs where you would start if you wanted to change things.
The culture of recruitment is such that some people may feel they must arrive ready to talk about their prep schools or summer homes, according to Nat Wyatt, a Theta, and Diana, a member of the Theta executive board. (Diana requested to be identified by a pseudonym after corresponding with the groupâs international organization about this piece.) Some of this atmosphere comes from old reputation, but some comes from modern practice.
Before the actual rush process starts, Pi Phis and Thetas have traditionally had the opportunity to alert their sisters to friends and family who may be rushing. Facebook profiles were projected on a screen in the Pi Phi or Theta house, during a sort of unofficial pre-recruitment presentation. It is a tradition that allows women to give people they already knowâoften people similar to themâa small advantage.
Weston described the practice as âfifteen minutes of Greenwich, Connecticut girls.â
At the Panhellenic meeting in November, practices like the pre-recruitment slideshow faced criticism. Many of the most concrete suggestions for change concerned rush. One proposal was that sororities be more transparent about finances during the recruitment process. In the past, the Panhellenic Council has mandated that sororities not specify their exact dues during recruitment. Instead, the Council gives a pre-recruitment presentation to women rushing, which depicts a range of dues. A Panhellenic Council member said the dues typically range from $300 to $500 per semester; she declined to provide information about each sororityâs specific dues.
âThey donât want us going up to girls and saying, âWell, Kappa isâŚcheaper than Theta.â They donât want us influencing girls in that way,â Carly Huard, a Kappa member, told me. She recounted an instance last winter in which a woman rushing found out another sororityâs more expensive dues and decided to withdraw from recruitment. Huard told me the woman had assumed all the sororities had equally expensive dues and that she couldnât afford to be in any of them.
âMaybe the concern is that people will start segregating themselves by income,â Huard told me, âbut what happens is people who think they canât afford it just drop out anyway.â
The Panhellenic Council disagreed. They decided theyâd continue to run that first meeting themselves, but stressed that âeach sorority had an obligation to explain their financial situation at some point during recruitment,â Diana explained. For some, it presented an opportunity for a turning pointâthe chance to speak candidly to potential members about the financial burdens of sorority life. For others, the lack of a clear directive from the Council opened the door to continued obfuscation about dues. âTo what extent it was explained was sort of up to the group,â Diana said.
The Councilâs decision put the burden of change in the hands of individual sororities rather than addressing it at a systemic level.
â
When JĂŠssica LeĂŁo rushed Theta, it was for one main reason: âI had heard Theta was number one, and thatâs why I joined it basically,â LeĂŁo, who became president of Theta in 2015, told me nonchalantly, flipping a lock of her dark brown hair over her shoulder. She was walking with difficulty, on crutches after a recent accident, but wore a tight crop-top and shorts to our interview.
LeĂŁo, who graduated in May, may have joined Theta because of its elite reputation, but she quickly realized there was much she didn’t share with many of the other members.
âIâm from Brazil, Iâm from Latin America, my parents donât speak English, Iâm a QuestBridge Scholar here,â LeĂŁo told me, explaining that she had personal reasons for wanting Theta to be a more inclusive organization. In 2014, she ran for president to effect those changes herself. âI was, I guess, particularly good at assimilating into white spaces and rich spaces,â she said.
As president of the sorority in 2015, she tackled recruitment as the first challenge.
âI feel like when I went through recruitment, people were like, âOh my god, I love your shirt, I love your earrings,â and we were like, âDonât make this about materialism,ââ she said. She wanted the group to instead focus on the interests of those pledging. âWhat we were looking for was people who were really engaged and passionate about something and leaders in their own right, and not pretty girls, basically.â She says the class she recruited as president was âincredibly diverse.â According to Thetaâs executive board, thirty-five percent of the new members initiated in January 2016 are women of color, compared to roughly twenty percent of the class initiated in 2014.
Theta members I spoke to insist that LeĂŁoâs efforts have redefined their sorority. Diana points to her presence as a Latina sorority president as a huge shift in and of itself.
What started with LeĂŁoâs discussions last year has grown into a revamping of some of Thetaâs traditions. The sorority now has a speaker series that includes lectures on the prison-industrial complex. Last year, they held a fundraising drive for the Flint Water Fund that caused Yaleâs NAACP representative Brea Baker, who graduated in 2015, to say she was surprised Theta had participated in such an initiative.
Most significant, however, seems to be Thetaâs new financial aid plan. Like most sororities, Thetaâs national chapter offered competitive scholarships for academic costs, such as books and tuition, but no assistance for paying dues. This yearâs executive board wanted to change that.
Diana told me she thought about asking alums, current members, and membersâ parents for funds to support scholarships, though doing so without permission from the international organization would be against its policies. According to Liz Rinck of Thetaâs international staff, restrictions from the Internal Revenue Service prohibit raising money for individual members.
Despite the restrictions, Diana said, the chapter began fundraising in November. âI wasnât hiding it from [internationals],â she told me, âI just didnât consult them.â
Freeman has a different take: âI donât think our financial aid program is legal technically,â she told me. âWe didnât want to ask [internationals] because we were pretty sure theyâd say no. So theyâre not super supportive of that, which seems racist to me, and classist.â
Diana eventually broke the news to the international Theta organization, who explained that if they deposited the money for safe-keeping with an alumni organization instead of retaining the rights to dispense it themselves, they wouldnât be breaking the anti-fundraising rules. Diana continued fundraising over winter break, eventually raising five thousand dollars from alumni and parents. Their financial aid program is currently supporting twenty percent of the 2016 pledge class.
Celeste Dushime, a current Theta and member of last yearâs pledge class, is one of the new members using Thetaâs financial aid plan. Dushime is from Rwanda and identifies as queer. In âoldâ Theta, she would be an anomaly. âNewâ Theta insists she exemplifies a growing wave of change.
When I asked Dushime if she thought the sororities had been transparent about dues during recruitment, she told me Theta was the most straightforward, which led to her choice to join. She reiterated that dues and financial aid were âthe first thing that they talked aboutâ at the first recruitment event.
Wyatt is in Dushimeâs Theta pledge class, and as far as they know they are the only non-binary person in all of Yale Greek life. They mentioned Thetaâs financial aid program as a reason why they joined. âI thought this could be fun, this could be interesting, but I was like, manâŚI donât know if I can put my name with an institution that essentially is fundamentally elitist and does not give people the opportunity who are from lower socio-economic backgrounds to actually be a part of this group,â Wyatt said.
The scholarship program has made a difference for Theta, at least in the eyes of a few new members. But it required the chapter to sidestep traditional rules in a way that is perhaps difficult for others to replicate.
â
In Pi Phi, the âGreenwich girlâ slideshow is now goneâa change intended to make the recruitment process a more level playing field. In Theta, it continues, though one member emphasized that in recent years members have been asked to introduce only close friends, and that the sorority hasnât decided whether it will continue the slideshow tradition this year. But while Theta and Pi Phi both contend with highly restrictive national organizations, the rule regarding fundraising that Theta seems to have circumvented appears especially strict for Pi Phi, which has not established a scholarship program.
Some members argue that, even as campus at large has paid more attention to concerns of inclusivity and racial diversity, Pi Phi has remained predominantly white. Due to international organization rules about speaking with the press, the current executive board of Pi Phi and members contacted individually either declined to comment for this piece or did not respond to requests. A spokeswoman for the international organization also declined to comment.
Weston told me she was frustrated by how few women of color were in the sorority during her time at Yale. Out of forty-four members in her pledge class, Weston counted four black women, one of whom withdrew before graduating. Chapter President Miranda McKay declined to provide statistics about the number of their members who are women of color, but Weston, among several other women interviewed, perceived a decline in Pi Phiâs diversity during her time at Yale. âItâs been noticeable to the point that Iâve talked to other people about it,â Weston said.
Harris and Weston told me that the underrepresentation of women of color in Pi Phi isnât the only problem. They say the culture of Greek life, and of fraternities in particular, is hostile to women of color. Weston stopped attending mixers with fraternities. âI did feel marginalized. Just in terms of feeling beautiful,â she told me. âWhat people are looking for, what is seen as hot in SAE [Sigma Alpha Epsilon] and Sig Ep. And obviously it sucks to wonder what the guys are going to want, but you want to be talked to, and when your friend next to you is chatting and youâre just standing there, you notice these things. Itâs one of those unspoken truths with women of color.â
Olivia, the self-described âambassador for Pi Phiâ to the Af-Am House, deactivated from the sorority after a brother from SAEâwhich disassociated from its national organization in May and is now called Leoâaddressed her using a racial slur at Spring Fling. She told me she didnât feel comfortable turning to her Pi Phi sisters for support.
âI knew nothing would come of it and there wouldnât be a response from my sisters,â Olivia explained. âThey would have found a way to excuse it.â (Leo President Grant Mueller said he was unaware of the incident Olivia described and âwould definitely not condone that in any sort of fashion.â)
Olivia said it wasnât until she heard about the protests this fall that she realized her problem with Pi Phi had been with the frats they associated with. Like Weston, she said that âracialized dating preferencesâ often caused her to be left out of conversations at mixers. Sometimes the brothers made her feel invisible. âI always felt kind of flabbergasted at the fact that every time they would meet me, it was like âoh who are you again?â You know very well who I am.â
Last fall, at a Pi Phiâspecific discussion about race, members of color voiced that they felt the sorority should not mix with SAE again. It was a serious proposalâPi Phi had long been unofficially âpairedâ with SAE for many campus mixers and events. Jenny Allen, an Asian-American former member who resigned from Pi Phi in 2015, recounted a similar discussion in the spring of 2015. After SAE was accused of violating Yaleâs code of sexual misconduct, Allen went to the Pi Phi executive board to propose that they cancel an upcoming mixer, an incident Harris and Olivia also remember. The Executive Board agreed to cancel, but it didnât cut ties between the two groups.
When tensions bubbled up again last fall, the outcome was less reassuring. Women of color insisted that Pi Phi stop mixing with SAE, but Harris told me she wasnât sure what conclusion the Pi Phi board had eventually come to. She said she was dissatisfied with what she perceived as an initial lack of action.
Leo President Mueller says that Pi Phi ultimately decided to stop mixing with SAE last fall, and they gave SAE tips on how they could improve. Mueller says the organization is trying to listen. âThey wanted to see more overt efforts to make our house as safe as possible,â he said. He explained that Leo is âreally taking it over the top nowâ with female bartenders and increased sober monitors, but he did not mention any changes outside of party environments.
â
At the end of each of my interviews, I asked my subject to recommend other sorority members I should speak with. Thetas, in particular, were excited to recommend friends. At the beginning of the interview process I was surprised by the names they easily rattled off: women of color, women from low-income backgrounds, women who are passionate about social justice.
At first, it seemed like there was an almost overwhelming number of sorority women from what I considered ânon-traditionalâ backgrounds. However, as I continued my interviews, the names began to repeat: Celeste Dushime, Sophie Freeman, Jessica LeĂŁo, Nat Wyatt, Diana. It soon became clear that this group of Theta changemakers might be smaller and more insular than I had initially thought.
On several occasions, I mentioned in conversation with subjects that I had spoken to a queer woman of color in Theta. Almost everyone I spoke to guessed it was Dushime. I asked Dushime if she ever worries that Theta is tokenizing her. She laughed.
âI always wonder if my achievements that Iâve accomplished here are because I deserve to be admitted, or if I got admitted because Iâm a Rwandan female student applying,â she said. Wyatt had similar qualms about the recruitment process. âYeah, I look very different from everyone else in Theta, I really do,â they said. âBut, that being said, I went to Exeter, Iâm from New York City, Iâm affluent, Iâm white. Iâm gender non-conforming, but to them I look like a combination of Ruby Rose and Justin Bieber.â Theta isnât yet at a point where Wyatt feels comfortable encouraging trans or non-binary friends of color to join.
Increasingly, women seeking single-gender spaces at Yale have options beyond sororities. The Yale Black Womenâs Coalition, founded in 2006, seeks to provide a network for Black women at Yale. Dara Huggins, YBWC President until this spring, described the groupâs mission as âto cultivate a space where Black women on campus could discuss various topics related to that community, have social events, and act as a network for professional and academic reasons.â Huggins says that membership in the YBWC has increased in the past year, specifically during the events of the fall.
The YBWC doesnât require their members to pay dues, or choose between their group and sorority life. They have several members who are also a part of sororities. Huggins was quick to explain that the YBWC is not a sorority in any way, and âisnât akin to the Divine Nine,â the national historically Black sororities and fraternities. âHowever, I donât think itâs coincidental that we donât have that and we happen to only have this,â Huggins said of the absence of Black Greek life.
Yaleâs multicultural sorority, Omega Phi Beta, has grown slowly since its Yale chapter was founded in March 2014 after five Yale students petitioned for its establishment. Olivia mentioned the income diversity in multicultural and historically Black and Latino sororities, adding, âI think thatâs something that more predominantly white sororities can learn from.â
Unfortunately, there doesnât seem to be much communication between the Panhellenic sororities and Omega Phi Beta, or even the YBWC. âThere is a very minimal relationship, and that relationship is mostly fueled by the fact that some of our members are part of the Panhellenic groups,â Huggins explained. âBut there hasnât been any kind of active reach-out that I can recall from sororities.â Some members told me Theta and Pi Phi donât communicate much with each other, either.
Many people I spoke with were quick to explain that the diversity problems sororities are facing are not unique to those groups at Yale. Dushime said Yale âequips you earlyâ to feel marginalized by class or income. Wyatt expressed that they think we âlive in a society that has these issues,â and that âGreek life is a microcosm.â Westonâs early claim that she didnât expect her sorority to go out of the way to support her as a marginalized person reflects a general sentiment that the problems of Theta and Pi Phi are the problems of Yale, and perhaps society more broadly.
Olivia was originally pessimistic about the institutional potential of Yale sororitiesâuntil the end of our call, when she asked me what Iâd learned throughout my research process. I mentioned Thetaâs new initiatives, and she laughed in surprise. âTheta?â she nearly yelled, incredulously. She began describing the âold Thetaâ sheâd witnessed at Yale: the huge group of mostly white wealthy women who were exclusive in their friendships.
Almost every Theta member I talked to wanted to show me a picture of the new rush class. Like new parents, they proudly scrolled through their Facebook accounts and iPhone camera rolls. The diversity shows, they say.
It was not my first time seeing numerous photos of sorority women. Like most Yalies with a Facebook, Iâd been privy to the several-hundred-photo filled albums Yale sororities upload after mixers.
âWeâre notorious for our love of photos,â Olivia had said to me. She had also said that she felt the photos from sorority mixers often used lighting effects to make the women look more tan, thus washing out the sisters of color. According to Olivia, amid the glamorous flashing lights, she and the âhandfulâ of Black members had been erased. After our call, I revisited old photos of Theta and Pi Phi mixers from Facebook. I could see what she was talking about.
In the photos I was shown on Theta iPhones, this was not the case. The glossy veneer was gone, replaced by an occasional awkward Instagram filter. While the women werenât all white, the racial diversity did not strike me as exceptional. Then again, I wasnât shown a before and after picture.
It struck me that all the photos still depicted a select group. Even with slight improvements from Theta, Pi Phi, or other sororities at Yale and elsewhere, organizations such as Greek groups still operate on a foundation of exclusivity. While that tradition was born as a response to a more stark set of boundariesâone that blocked women from mostly male, already elite institutionsâit now runs into problems of opening itself up to groups even more historically excluded. Thereâs no question that sororities are changing. The question is how much spaces like these can push against boundaries they had a hand in creating.
As I looked at more photos, a before and after did begin to form in my head. Before were the near-professional photos from events like the ones Olivia attended, and after were the more casual iPhone snaps which were shown to me as tokens of success. The Theta members who brandished them seemed to be almost urging me to notice the women of color. From background to foreground, I wondered how much had changed.