DePauw sorority feels the sting of eviction

After the national chapter of Delta Zeta evicted several DePauw University members for not being thin, dumb, or white enough, justice has been served:

DePauw University severed ties yesterday with a national sorority that evicted two-thirds of the university’s chapter members last year in what the sorority called an effort to improve its image for recruitment, but which the evicted women described as a purge of the unattractive or the uncool.

“We at DePauw do not like the way our students were treated,” DePauw’s president, Robert G. Bottoms, said in a letter to the Delta Zeta sorority. “We at DePauw believe that the values of our university and those of the national Delta Zeta sorority are incompatible.”

The sorority evicted 23 members of its DePauw chapter in December, and half a dozen other women later quit in protest. The action greatly diminished the chapter’s diversity. The women the sorority allowed to stay were all slender and conventionally pretty. Those evicted included some overweight women, and several minority members were evicted or left the sorority on their own. [Full story]

I’m so happy about this! It’s about time someone took the responsibility and said, “Not here.” Good for the DePauw women who quit in protest after the eviction of their sisters, and to the DePauw University administration for recognizing that Delta Zeta was no longer representative of the kinds of organizations they wanted on campus. If only other schools would follow DePauw’s lead!

Delta Zeta, of course, is now backpeddling. Well, if you can even call it that (they aren’t doing a very good job).

Officers at Delta Zeta’s national headquarters in Oxford, Ohio, did not respond to telephone messages yesterday. A statement posted on the sorority’s Web site said: “Delta Zeta national leadership is extremely disappointed that after 98 years, university officials have unilaterally closed the chapter. Sorority officials only considered each woman’s commitment to Delta Zeta’s recruitment plans when it decided which members to evict from the DePauw residence in November. No other factor was considered.”

In a previous message posted on its Web site this month, the sorority said: “Delta Zeta National apologizes to any of our women at DePauw who felt personally hurt by our actions. It was never our intention to disparage or hurt any of our members during this chapter reorganization process.”

That apology, however, did not bring reconciliation at DePauw.

“It’s like a thief who’s sorry that he got caught, rather than for what he did,” said Rachel Pappas, a junior who left the sorority before the evictions and organized a campus protest about it last month.

In addition to the apology, the sorority posted statements critical of the women forced out of the DePauw chapter and of faculty members who supported them.

They sound real sorry, huh?

Link Roundup: 12 March 2007

Just news today. Too tired to read blogs right now, and I need to fold laundry before I can go to bed.

Modern-Day 3 R’s: Rules, Rules, Rules — “A culture of control has Washington area campuses in an ever-tightening grip, many students say, extending beyond the long-standing restrictions on provocative clothing, cellphone use and class-time bathroom visits. Akin to the omnipresent “helicopter parents,” these students say, are helicopter administrators who home in on their smallest moves, no matter how guileless or mundane.” [I find this really interesting, though I'm not very sure why. I think that schools need a little more discipline, but some of the rules given as examples, such as no listening to headphones at lunch, are completely pointless.]

Obama’s classmates saw a smile, but no racial turmoil — “Certainly Obama’s classmates had little sense of what he says was going on beneath the surface. ‘His reflections about the race issue surprised all of us,’ said Kellie Furushima, who knew him well. ‘He gave no indication of feeling uncomfortable in school, and I never witnessed or heard anyone being unkind to him.’” [And as we all know, if you can't see something, it doesn't exist. Am I right?]

At the End of Life, a Racial Divide — “After lives in which they often struggle to get medical care, African Americans and other minorities are more likely than whites to want, and get, more aggressive care as death nears and are less likely to use hospice and palliative-care services to ease their suffering, according to a large body of research and leading experts.” [Hmm. This comes on the heels of a largely misdirecting claim that people of color receive better health care, so I'm skeptical.]

Terrorists Proving Harder to Profile — “With new plots surfacing every month, police across Europe are arresting significant numbers of women, teenagers, white-skinned suspects and people baptized as Christians — groups that in the past were considered among the least likely to embrace Islamic radicalism.” [Wait, so racial profiling doesn't work now? What will airport security and the LAPD do?]

Pictures say a 1,000 words against statutory rape — “The department spent two years developing the comic book to combat statutory rape — the crime of an adult having sex with a minor — among Hispanic girls. Authorities believe Latinas are at higher risk of becoming victims because of their limited understanding of American laws and cultural mores condoning May-December relationships.” [While I'm all for preventing rape and all, isn't putting it into comic book form a little... insensitive? And why are they targetting Latinas? Almost all of the little seventh graders in my school district that were having sex with their high school senior/college freshman boyfriends were white. Well, that I knew of.]