[20353] in APO-L
Re: A Phi Q, separate organization?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas W. Strong Jr.)
Wed Mar 24 15:39:37 1999
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 15:29:00 -0500
Reply-To: "Thomas W. Strong Jr." <strong@DEMENTIA.ORG>
From: "Thomas W. Strong Jr." <strong@DEMENTIA.ORG>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
In-Reply-To: <000b01be7623$4abebe20$6c765a8c@peppermint>
On Wed, 24 Mar 1999, James Thomas wrote:
> >Howard which somehow managed to recharter in 1986 all-male, but was forced
> >to go co-ed later when the group had gone down to nothing and was being
> >revitalized. (By the '76 agreement they should have been co-ed at
> >rechartering)
>
> 1) Isn't the intent of the co-ed rule to allow women to join Alpha Phi Omega
> and not
> to enforce a quota rule?
That matches my recollection of the documents I've read.
> 2) Isn't enforcing a quota rule on a petitioning group the same as
> discrimination?
In this case, how could it be? If there was a clause that stated that
"for every male member you must have a female member", then I could see
that assertion being accurate since it wold place an artificial limit on
the overrepresented gender, but the requirement that there be some
members of each gender, with no limit on either (just because another
male member wants to join, you don't have to go out and recruit another
female member, and there's no upper limit on the IG/PG/Chapter size, so
nobody is being displaced) doesn't seem the same to me.
Yes, it can be difficult to convince a grop of friends (perhaps even of
sufficient size to charter) that they need to go out and recruit some
members of the opposite sex, but once they do so, none of them have to
leave to make room for the new members.
> 3) If a group at a historically black institution petitions to join APO and
> is all male due to interest and not due to selective rushing methods do we
> have the right to turn them down, after all they can be a co-ed chapter and
> can do co-ed rushing during their scheduled rushing events?
By the rules we have chosen for ourselves as an organization, we have a
requirement that groups be representative of the school. If it's an
all-male school, they can be all-male; if it's an all-female school, they
can be all-female, and so on. If the group is single-sex at a co-ed
school, what indication is there that they will ever be otherwise if they
can't recruit even a single member of the opposite sex in the year and a
half or so that it takes to charter. Is the lack of representation
because they truly have tried to recruit both sexes but just haven't had
any interest, or is something else going on? How can you tell from a
board meting that's being held hundreds of miles away? Also, do you
really want to introduce a subjective standard like that into the process?
Right now, if the group's makeup matches that of the school, then it's
apparent that they are recruiting openly. If not, it's presumed that they
aren't. How long do you think it would be between the introduction of
subjective criteria and the first time that someone gets a decision that
they didn't like that was based upon it? Once that happens, the arguments
and claims of discrimination get louder, because now it's that specific
chapter that's being discriminated against when anyone can see that they
have extenuating circumstances, etc.
Given a choice between the two possible situations, I would much prefer
to have objective criteria. If you can supply some way to objectively
judge the recruiting effort other than looking at who has been recruited,
I might change my mnd.
> 4) If a school has academic rules "written or unwritten" such as you suggest
> shouldn't the advisors of the chapter and the Section Chair make these rules
> known to the national office so that special dispensation or another
> arrangment be made available to all interested parties? After all doesn't
> the office of the Section Chair and the Regional Director allow them to
> discuss with campus officials a way to implement a Co-ed APO on campus?
Neither a SC nor a RD can waive rules upon request, but if the situation
is as you describe, there's no need to. We have an explicit clause in
our bylaws that our rules are subordinate to the institution holding the
charter. If we say that chapters can't have houses, and the school says
APO will live in this house here, then the chapter lives in that house.
If the school wants a chapter on their Inter-fraternity Council, then the
chapter is on it.
There is a bit of a grey area here though - if we don't already have the
chapter there, it could be interesting to see whether a charter would be
granted to a school that said the chapter had to be all-male. (anyone
know of any examples where a charter was or wasn't given in that situation?)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas W. Strong Jr. strong@dementia.org
----------------- http://www.dementia.org/~strong -----------------
