All-white sororities at Ala. Univ. draw attention

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

All-white sororities at Ala. Univ. draw attention
By The Associated Press | September 13, 2013 | Updated: September 13, 2013 5:46pm

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — Several prominent leaders in Alabama weighed in Friday on allegations that all-white sororities passed over two prospective black members because of pressure from alumnae, and in one case, an adviser.

Paul Bryant Jr., the president pro tem of the board of trustees and the son of legendary football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, said the school does not support the segregation of any organization. Gov. Robert Bentley, an alumnus, reiterated that fraternal organizations should choose members based on their qualifications, not race.

The student newspaper, The Crimson-White, first reported the allegations this week. The story quoted at least one named sorority member and several other anonymous ones saying they wanted to invite the two black students to join, but were overridden.

One of the board's trustees, former Alabama Supreme Court Justice John England Jr., confirmed his stepgranddaughter was one of the black students passed over during recruitment in August.


Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/All-white-sororities-at-Ala-Univ-draw-attention-4813067.php?cmpid=hpts

[gopiscrap]

1. Alabama? Imagine that?

[Iris]

2. Oh, it gets better. Let me introduce you to "The Machine"

"The Machine, the former Alpha Rho chapter of Theta Nu Epsilon at the University of Alabama, is a coalition of traditionally white fraternities and sororities which formed a secret society with some degree of influence over campus and Alabama state politics."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine

http://www.welcometothemachine.info/media.php?ID=44

http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/08/the_machine_at_ua_is_real_and.html

[heaven05]

3. 2013

and dark skin still not wanted in a lily white environment such as this sorority. Shouldn't even be a factor anymore. AmeriKKKa is sick with racist ideology perpetuated by some of our 'leaders' in Washington, local political machines and future 'leaders' of ameriKKKa on these college campuses of "higher learning". Guarantees it will continue another generation. How very sad.

[antigone382]

29. There is a silver lining to this story, in my opinion.

Based on my reading of the article in the link, the reason this is getting attention is that the young student-members of the sorority spoke out about it. They wanted these two women of color in their sorority, but they were overruled by older alumnae. It would probably have been easier and more socially acceptable for them just to "respect their elders" and let it pass...you can bet there will be social consequences for them in the future. But here we are, in 2013, and a group of young, southern, white sorority women are fighting to bring racial diversity into their social world.

Now, whether greek life ought to exist is a different question; I went to a college that prohibited it, and I loved it...but transformation is slow and steady work, and I'll take what inspiration I can get.

[heaven05]

30. good points

about the sorority members wanting change. Whether it happens is another question.

[Sunlei]

36. wish those out spoken sorority members would dump the old and start another.

[warrant46]

4. Who cares about sororities anyway ?

Especially in the traditionally racist south

Nothing has really changed in the past 50 years



Published May 24, 2011 |

A member of Kappa Alpha and his date at the Old South Lawn party, a tradition for the fraternity at Ole Miss. The fraternity brothers dress in Confederate uniforms, and their dates dress in hoop skirts for this function.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Jeez, is that creepy, or what? Had no idea they're caught up in that crap.

So very ugly and stupid. Talk about looking like idiots....

Seeing that photo is like getting a blast of acrid smelling salts. Really wakes you right up, and it's not pleasant.

Who WOULD want to be a part of that, after all! You're dead right.

[warrant46]

7. They have Col Reb Too

https://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/colonel-reb-foundation-needs-allow-ole-miss-move

Colonel Reb — a caricature of a white antebellum Southern plantation owner that served as the school's mascot for 24 years — was technically banned by the school's administration in 2003. The school is currently without a mascot, and there is a movement among some to bring Colonel Reb back. Some of the people who want to bring it back are members of an alumni-founded organization called the Colonel Reb Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving the mascot. Supporters of Colonel Reb rely on their own version of history to support their argument that Colonel Reb is the only mascot that will ever be suitable for the university.

Ole Miss's long history with Confederate symbols is complex and related to the university's role as the protector of Southern "values," including racism and white supremacy.

The Colonel Reb Foundation's founder is quoted in the New York Times article as saying "little girls in Mississippi [think Colonel Reb is] their grandfather." However, almost 40 percent of Mississippi's population is African-American. Anyone who has seen the mascot knows that none of Mississippi's African-American population thinks they are related to Colonel Reb.

The Ole Miss football team was previously known as "The Flood." In the 1930's, the school voted on changing the name to the Rebels. A close second was the "Ole Massas." (This was in line with the school's nickname, Ole Miss, which is the slave term for the wife of a plantation owner.) In the 1940s, after President Truman passed civil rights legislation, it might as well have been 1861 for black people in Oxford, Mississippi. Confederate flags began appearing at football games, and the school's band began playing "Dixie" during the games. The singing of "Dixie" — which students ended with the chant "The South shall rise again…The South shall rise again" — continued until 2009.

[Judi Lynn]

10. This is even uglier! Good grief. "Colonel Reb."

Learning it has taken me this long to find out "Ole Miss" was also the term given the wife of the plantation owner by the kidnapped, enslaved people who worked there, is unbearable. Learning the "students" attempted to change the football team's name to the "Ole Massas" could make someone vomit on the spot. Hideous people.

Thank you for what is truly new information for some of us. It is astonishingly awful. I don't know what has kept good people from going absolutely insane around people like this. It sounds like hell to me.

[warrant46]

17. Well, these people don't just "Fade Away" when they graduate

Many of them become "Movers and Shakers" in the NEW GOP. They tone down their rhetoric and don't wear the uniforms anymore but their hearts and minds are still poisoned by this want to return to the "Good Old Days"

They were at the heart of Tricky Dick Nixon's "Southern Strategy".

These people loath Barack Obama, Unions, Gays and Progressives, They find bed fellows in the Kochs and other like minded rich and selfish "Job Creators"

[Sgent]

18. Col Reb

retired over 10 years ago, and the current mascot is a Black Bear given the history of bears in the state (Teddy Roosevelt, Faulkner, etc.). The flag was done away with almost 20 years ago. Both of these were generally well supported by the alumni with a few loud exceptions.

As for the nickname Ole Miss -- that's the colloquial term for the Mississippi River, and the state itself. The relationship to Ole Massas is absolutely pure speculation with no historical evidence -- it was first brought up as a possible origin in the 1990's. There is evidence dating to at least 1880 regarding the nickname for the river, as the term was used in that capacity by Mark Twain among others.

I actually would be in favor of changing the name back to the Flood, because the term Rebel has too much history.

Finally, and I disagree with this, the band never stopped playing Dixie -- they stop playing "An American Trilogy" which was an amalgamation of "Dixie", "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (the Union Army's fight song) and "All My Trials", a Bahamian lullaby. It wasn't well known until the 70's when Elivis started singing it. The student's perverted the song with "the south will rise again" about the time Col Reb was retired -- it was never part of our cheer when I was a student.

Finally, Ole Miss has had at least two black student body presidents, fraternities and sororities self integrated (w/o pressure from the administration) about 20 years ago, and is one of the more progressive old south schools regarding minorities.

We had and still have our faults, but its not quite what you made it out to be. We have a long history of racial issues through the 70's, but the schools fundamentally a different place today than even when I attended in the late 90's.

[warrant46]

19. Oh they like the Black Bear ?

I was waiting eagerly for someone to debate on this subject The Ole Colonel never "Retired" he was sent packing but then a sizeable group wanted him to be "Re-Animated"



"Colonel Reb Foundation" puts up billboard
CBS Sports Posted on: February 7, 2011 12:30 pm



The Col Reb Group is still trying to get the "good ole" Colonel Back



You can still buy these very popular Bumper stickers which proclaim 4000 student members



By visiting the Foundation's site, you can also download a Colonel Reb "Truth Kit " (PDF) and that the Colonel is (presumably) less racially insensitive for being a whitewashed version of an early-20th century African-American Oxford resident. (Yes, less.)

As for what the Foundation will actually accomplish, other than publicly continuing to rub the university's face in its racist past despite its desperate attempts to leave that past behind? Nothing. But as we're all learning, that's not going to stop this particular faction of Ole Miss fans anytime soon.

[Sgent]

20. Col Reb Foundation....

This is an organization that *might* have had 500 protestors at the height of its popularity, and now is essentially a few dozen. Given, they have money, but they are small and getting smaller.

60,000 will be a the football game next week, over 18,000 current students, and probably a quarter million living alumni. A few racist bastards shouldn't cause you to demean the whole lot.

Compare the integration and racial history of Ole Miss with any southern school, and I think you'll find it well ahead of the curve. This wasn't always the case, but the school is in a better place now than most old south schools, with a large, diverse, and engaged student body which is a different group of people than your portraying.

According to US News, the school is more diverse in faculty, staff, and students than LSU, Oregon State, Nebraska, Indiana, Purdue, and almost all SEC schools and about half of the big ten.

[warrant46]

21. A reasoned reply

Thank you for honest debate

It is refreshing considering the bad feelings and F Bombs we see on other threads.

Maybe some day this will happen again

First African American Senator

Senator Hiram Revels

On February 25, 1870, visitors in the Senate galleries burst into applause as Mississippi senator-elect Hiram Revels of Mississippi entered the chamber to take his oath of office. Those present knew that they were witnessing an event of great historical significance. Revels was about to become the first African American to serve in the Senate.

Born 42 years earlier to free black parents in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Revels became an educator and minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. During the Civil War, he helped form regiments of African American soldiers and established schools for freed slaves. After the war, Revels moved to Mississippi, where he won election to the state senate. In recognition of his hard work and leadership skills, his legislative colleagues elected him to one of Mississippi's vacant U.S. Senate seats as that state prepared to rejoin the Union.

Revels' credentials arrived in the Senate on February 23, 1870, and were immediately blocked by a few members who had no desire to see a black man serve in Congress. Masking their racist views, they argued that Revels had not been a U.S. citizen for the nine years required of all senators. In their distorted interpretation, black Americans had only become citizens with the passage of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, just four years earlier. Revels' supporters dismissed that statement, pointing out that he had been a voter many years earlier in Ohio and was therefore certainly a citizen.

Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner brought the debate to an end with a stirring speech. "The time has passed for argument. Nothing more need be said. For a long time it has been clear that colored persons must be senators." Then, by an overwhelming margin, the Senate voted 48 to 8 to seat Revels. When Hiram Revels' brief term ended on March 3, 1871, he returned to Mississippi, where he later became president of Alcorn College.

[JVS]

37. There were a lot of people who wanted to replace Colonel Reb with Admiral Ackbar instead of the bear

[warrant46]

40. Saw this !!

He's better than the Bear (Just my opinion)

[Kolesar]

6. Blue? I thought they wore grey uniforms.

oh well

[warrant46]

8. Here's a better photo

The Blue Grey was a Mess Dress Formal Uniform

More photos

http://pics6.this-pic.com/key/old%20south%20kappa%20alpha

[Butterbean]

12. Kappa Alpha, or KA, is colloquially known as "KKKA" in campus greek circles.

At least that's how it was when I was in a sorority a hundred years ago.

[warrant46]

16. Very Progessive and up to date

</sarcasm>

[Supersedeas]

43. better?

[warrant46]

45. Only to show the colour

Not "BETTER" for what it depicts

[LAdemCali]

14. white shoes n sneakers?!

Photo proof of time travelers! look at the shoes...

[warrant46]

15. Saw that

These turds are the latest examples of "rustic confederate fashion"

[24601]

22. Actually. I believe it's a member of Kappa Alpha Theta and HER date. My Greek may be a

little rusty and my undergrad didn't have any houses - everyone was in Lambda Gamma Lambda.

[Doctor_J]

31. Yes - known affectionately as the Cathouse

[tabasco]

27. How many of those frat boys will ever serve in the real military?

My guess - none.

[warrant46]

28. The few that did probably got fragged

From Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging

The use of fragging served to warn junior officers to avoid angering their enlisted men through recklessness, cowardice, or lack of leadership. George Cantero, who served as a medic in Vietnam during the early 1970s, later explained that incompetent officers who gave dangerous orders and refused to listen to reason or threats were fragged because that was the only way for the men to gain a new and presumably safer commanding officer. Underground GI newspapers sometimes listed bounties offered by units for the fragging of unpopular commanding officers.

[Orsino]

35. At my alma mater, the initiated Robert E. Lee IV....

...and since my day, V.

[marshall]

44. Actually those are Union uniforms

Confederate uniforms were grey. Though there was some variation on a practical level, because goods were sometimes hard to come by, the fact that the tradition is being bucked by young people is perhaps connected to their desire to break with the past in other ways. Or at least one can hope.

[DallasNE]

9. What I Can't Understand Is Why Black Athletes

Are not in solidarity with the student body on such issues. And I notice that it is not main stream media that is covering this story and that needs to change as well.

Then did you see where Ted Cruz said we need 100 Senators like the openly racist Sen. Jesse Helms. We're going backwards at a pretty fast pace, especially in the old Confederate South.

[Stuckinthebush]

11. The alumni seem to be the issue here

Not the students. Many sororities on campus have powerful alumni make decisions about who is in and out. Many members wanted to pledge non white members but they were overruled by creepy old women who continue to push their racist agendas.

[LAdemCali]

13. Whitey White whites

Somethings dont change. Alabama is one of them.

[Supersedeas]

32. Is there any other type?

[broiles]

23. Can somebody explain the name of the newspaper The Crimson-White.

[tammywammy]

24. Here

The CW began production in 1894 as "The Crimson-White" and derived its name from the team colors of UA athletics teams, crimson and white. The hyphen in the newspaper's name first disappeared from the masthead in the early 1960s and was gone for good by 1974. The paper originally was a weekly publication but added editions through the years until reaching its present four-days-a-week printing schedule by the 1980s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crimson_White

[golfguru]

25. USA...the only country in the world

to have fought a bloody civil war to liberate slaves!
Imagine that!! But some southern folks still are living
in pipe dreams of white supremacy.

White supremacy is a joke since Asian students score higher scholastically in universities than whites. And
Immigrants from India as a group have higher income
per capita than white Americans.

[Mellow Drama]

26. I'm sickened by all the pictures in this thread

There is no reason that we should celebrate any aspect of the confederacy. None!

And the sororities should be integrated, even if they do it by force. Here in California, there is no need for such measures, but my own sorority has less whites than non-whites.

[Redford]

33. Sororities get to choose their membership

Based on their own criteria which is secret. A sorority forced to take a member because of the color of her skin would probably not be very welcoming to the newcomer.

Lots of girls, black and white, get cut from recruitment every year. There are also several black sororities and fraternities that have zero interest in pledging white members.

What is upsetting to me about the Alabama incident is the fact that the members wanted to extend a bid to the black girl but their alumnae got in the way.

My daughters sorority, at a college in Texas, has whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Indians. She loves the diversity.

[GalaxyHunter]

34. what are the names of these "several black sororities and fraternities"

that have zero interest in pledging white members?

[Redford]

38. They are known collectively as the "Divine 9"

But you have google, I'm sure. Just look up Alpha Kappa Alpha at Alabama and tell me how many white girls you see.

[GalaxyHunter]

42. not one white girl.

[Beacool]

41. Here you go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_Greek_and_fraternal_organizations

[The Stranger]

39. I guess that I'm surpirsed so many people on here do not realize what goes on on college campuses.

I mean, where have you people been?