Announcement
Membership Requirements: Advocacy Letter
We, the undersigned members of the National Multicultural Greek Council, urge you to consider waiving the minimum member requirements for our council members. As an umbrella council whose mission is to promote multiculturalism by advocating for justice and equity, cultivating interfraternal relationships and empowering its member organizations we have experienced decades of campus-based policies and practices that have systematically isolated, marginalized, and disproportionately continue to have harmful impacts on our member organizations.
Your support in advocating with your institution to waive the minimum member requirements for our organizations would help underscore how important adaptability is in the sustainability of our local member chapters, would help alleviate decades of inequitable policies that our member organizations have endured as well as other culturally-based sorority and fraternity communities.
Additionally, we call upon sorority and fraternity advisors to further support our member organizations by taking action with the following in mind:
Impact of Policy on member requirements:
Our organizations are historically smaller, our recruitment and intake is unique, and we do not have the resources, means, and access to support large chapter requirements.
Institutions of higher learning are facing a decline in national Admission rates. These rates have dropped nationally by 4% with the expectation of lowered admission rates to follow leaving our organizations with fewer potential individuals to recruit.
The requirements are inequitable and disproportionate when applied to all organizations indiscriminately and without taking into consideration the historical precedent and the systems within which we exist. As multicultural organizations, unlike other identity-based organizations, we cast a wider net in recruitment of individuals and often find ourselves (ambrosia’s point)
Against the backdrop of increased need for student-led spaces centering sense of belonging our organizations are a critical lifeline to many students with
We request that the following recommendations be adopted:
Waive minimum member requirements for NMGC organizations and CBFO at large.
We request that your institution waive membership requirements at least through 2022, or as long as the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic and until your institution and the city it exists within are deemed to be a safe environment and returning to normal operations and capacity.
In order to alleviate the stress and anxiety to your students of the threat of their chapters going dormant, we request that you remove all standards of chapters, except from fulfilling chapter requirements.
If a chapter has no members left allow for a 1-2 year period for chapters to come back to council active status.
At a time when it is impossible to deny the way this pandemic is exacerbating systemic factors affecting different segments of the population, and when our nation and institutions find themselves again at a moment of reckoning in terms, of racial, ethnic, and cultural tensions, MGLO’s have a responsibility to continue creating and supporting spaces to develop leaders and community members that work in tandem with their environment and your institutions to bring about real, tangible understanding, progress, and change when it comes to diversity and inclusion. We, as a council urge your institution to adopt these recommendations to support the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of our communities.
Signed,
National Executive Board of the National Multicultural Greek Council and the leadership of all its member organizations
Delta Xi Phi Multicultural Sorority, Inc.
Delta Xi Nu Multicultural Sorority, Inc.
Gamma Eta Sorority, Inc.
Lambda Sigma Gamma Sorority, Inc.
Lambda Tau Omega Sorority, Inc.
Mu Sigma Upsilon Sorority, Inc.
Omega Phi Chi Multicultural Sorority, Inc.
Phi Sigma Chi Multicultural Fraternity, Inc.
Psi Sigma Phi Multicultural Fraternity, Inc.
Theta Nu Xi Multicultural Sorority, Inc.
