[6253] in APO-L
Re: A question about women and frats
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ian Douglas Agranat)
Thu May 13 06:36:39 1993
Date: Thu, 13 May 1993 06:35:57 EDT
Reply-To: Ian Douglas Agranat <ian@agranat.com>
From: Ian Douglas Agranat <ian@agranat.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L%PURCCVM.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
My fellow Brothers,
The following is a copy of a post (and my response) on usenet news to the
alt.feminism news group. I thought I would post to apo-l in case anybody out
there might want to add their two cents worth.... If someone wants to post
a followup on alt.feminism but doesn't have news access, feel free to email
a copy to me (with a note that tells me that this is what you want to do), and
I'll post it for you.
--Ian Agranat, Section 96 staff
===============================================================================
Path: agranat!ian
Date: 13 May 93 10:16:30 GMT
Message-ID: <ian.737288190@agranat>
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: A question about women and frats
Distribution: alt
References: <DSTEINBE.93May12164314@emmy.nmsu.edu>
dsteinbe@nmsu.edu (David Steinberg) writes:
>With all of this talk about opening fraternities to women, one
>question seems to have been avoided. Mainly, is there a pool of women
>who want to join fraterities and are being kept away? In other words,
>what if we decide to open fraterities to both sexes (I assume we would
>do the same for sororities) and no women wanted to join?
>This seems (IMHO) to be a very likely situation; I have never heard
>any woman express desire to join a fraternity. This is why I think
>that the no blacks allowed analogy fails here. African Americans
>wanted to be able to eat where they choose. Women don't seem to have
>a desire to join fraternities. So not only would we be forcing people
>to change who they accept into their organization, but we would do so
>without any real desire from the excluded class to join...
I know many women who have wanted to and did join co-ed Fraternities. I
am a member of Alpha Phi Omega, a national co-ed service fraternity (based
on the concept that volunteerism is a good thing). On my undergraduate
campus, there was also a co-ed social fraternity (I forget the letters, and
don't recall if it was national or local). I should point out that the campus
population was 80% male (being an engineering school). Yet, there was
generally more than 20% (closer to 30-40%) female membership in these co-ed
fraternities. I should also point out that, since APO started in 1925 as
male eagle-scout only and didn't open its doors to women (officially - but
some chapters had 'illegal' female membership before) until 1976. So, there's
quite a bit of male-oriented legacy in APO's tradiditions.
Female members call themselves Brothers, and the last line of our toast song
(still) reads 'Men of Alpha Phi Omega may we always be' which the female and
male Brothers sing together.
Of course, now that nearly 20 years has gone by since we went co-ed, there
is a strong movement to try to modernize our terminology and traditions to
reflect our more diverse membership (and I'm all for those changes).
Any APOers or other co-ed fraternity members want to add thoughts to this?
-------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------
Ian Douglas Agranat, President | 1993 Walk for Women's Lives, Co-chair
Agranat Systems, Inc. | Lexington NOW Women in the Media Task Force
ian@Agranat.COM | Waltham Battered Women Support Committee,
Consulting: | Steps to Shelter Committee 1988-1993
o Communications Technology | "Proud to be a Feminist"
o Embedded Real-Time Systems +-----------------------------------------------
o Unix internals | People Making a Difference, Board of Directors
o Device Drivers | Alpha Phi Omega, Section 96 staff
-------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------
