AT THE UNIVERSITY of Alabama, the administration explicitly embraces two conflicting goals: promoting diversity and Greek life. To attract out-of-state students, including top scholars, the college has been distancing itself from its racial past. In 1963, a few blocks from the university’s fraternity row, Governor George Wallace made the “stand in the schoolhouse door,” his infamous failed effort to keep black students out of the college. When I visited, African Americans made up 12 percent of undergraduates, less than half the percentage in the state, though similar to the US average. In 2016, President Stuart Bell called “an accepting and inclusive community that attracts and supports a diverse faculty, staff and student body” one of four pillars of a new strategic plan. At the same time, Alabama takes pride in holding “the coveted honor of being the largest fraternity and sorority community in the country.” More than 11,000 students, or 36 percent of undergraduates, belong to Greek organizations. The school endorses—and financially backs—a system that benefits rich, white students and largely excludes blacks. Over the last decade, in a kind of Greek arms race, fraternities and sororities have spent more than $200 million to build or expand thirty mansions, each one larger and grander than the last. The university has leased its own public land for as little as $1 a year. To finance the houses, the college sells bonds, which let Greek organizations borrow more cheaply because the public is assuming the financial risk of default. Chapter members and alumni, who pay off the debt, then own the mansions, which have cost as much as $13 million for a single building.
This public support of a racially divided Greek system has long infuriated campus critics, including the editors of the Crimson White, the student paper. In the 1990s, Pat Hermann, a white English professor, accused the school of subsidizing segregation. “I am very, very tired of apologists for apartheid,” he said. In 2011, amid renewed calls for integration, then president Robert E. Witt drew a rebuke from the Crimson White for words that seemed a defense of segregation: “It is appropriate that all our sororities and fraternities—traditionally African American, traditionally white and multicultural—determine their membership,” said Witt, who became chancellor of the University of Alabama system.
In 2013, public outcry finally sparked change. That year, undergraduate sorority members wanted to offer bids to two accomplished African American students, including the step-granddaughter of a University of Alabama trustee. Their alumni advisers blocked their admission. In previous years, black women tended to be eliminated in the early rounds of deliberations. That year, they progressed further, sparking intense debate, according to Yardena Wolf, then a member of the historically white Alpha Omicron Pi. “Girls were saying there would be so much media coverage, and boys won’t swap with us anymore,” Wolf told me. “I thought, ‘What the hell? This is 2013.’” Students from outside Alabama no longer took racial attitudes for granted. Wolf was Jewish and, though she was born in Tuscaloosa, grew up in Oregon. Pressure mounted. The Crimson White ran a story about the black women’s rejection. Wolf and other white sorority women marched in protest. Their efforts provoked a national media firestorm. Breaking with the past, Judy Bonner, the university’s first female president, insisted that the sororities integrate. By fall 2015, most of the historically white sororities included from one to three black members. It was hardly representative of the campus, considering some chapters had more than four hundred members, but it was progress.
Out of the media spotlight, however, fraternities remained stubbornly segregated. Kathleen Cramer, who retired in 2012 as senior associate vice president for student affairs after thirty-six years at the university, said sororities changed because undergraduate women pushed for diversity. “The same thing would have to come from the fraternities,” she told me. “It’s definitely been slower to happen.” In the fall of 2015, twenty-five of thirty-one historically white fraternities—including all the Old Row chapters—had no black members, according to internal university documents I obtained. Along with SAE, they included some of the largest chapters on campus, such as Delta Kappa Epsilon, Sigma Nu, Kappa Alpha, and Phi Gamma Delta, each of which had more than 120 members. “Even in the age of Obama, it may be easier for a black man to sit in the White House than in a University of Alabama fraternity house,” wrote Lawrence Ross in a 2015 book on race at American college campuses. In 2016, without fanfare, Phi Gamma Delta, an Old Row stalwart, became one of six additional fraternities initiating black members, doubling the number from the year before, a faculty senate report found. In an e-mail, Monica Greppin Watts, a university spokeswoman, pointed out that the school now requires non-discrimination clauses in student-group constitutions, as well as diversity training. She noted that, in 2016, three African-American women became presidents of traditionally white sororities.
Despite these changes, newcomers often viewed Alabama’s social life as straight out of the 1950s. “I was horrified when I came here,” said Amanda Bennett, an African American senior who grew up in Atlanta. “It’s completely segregated.” Longtime observers saw progress, though halting and slow. Norman Baldwin, a University of Alabama political science professor, blamed institutional roadblocks more than overt racism. Baldwin, who is white, had been fighting Greek segregation for fifteen years. In his classes, he surveyed racial attitudes and documented increasing tolerance. For example, in 2012, three-fourths of students said they would marry a person of another race, up from one-half in 1999. Baldwin, who co-chaired a faculty committee on diversity, said any reform must include a requirement that the Machine emerge from the shadows. In his view, the officers should be made public, so it can be held accountable for practices that limit opportunities for minorities. “We now have what I call institutional barriers,” Baldwin said. “We have institutional racism.”
Most of all, in Baldwin’s view, fraternities must change their recruiting. As a first step, he recommended shifting to the approach long favored by Alabama’s traditionally white sororities. It was known as formal recruitment and was conducted as follows. In August, sororities all held a week of scheduled events before making their bids. This increases the chance that a newcomer would consider joining. It also made it obvious when all the black women received no bids, or offers of membership. By contrast, the historically white fraternities used “informal” recruitment. By and large, they selected members and extended bids in the spring and summer before classes even began. This practice disadvantaged outsiders, especially black students. In addition, white and minority fraternities held separate recruitment drives, which encouraged racial sorting. Baldwin proposed instituting a unified recruitment program. In that way, black students would be more likely to consider historically white Greek groups, and vice versa. The university has adopted many recommendations from Baldwin and other members of its faculty senate: the school outlawed “social boycotts” of campus organizations that accept black students; ordered the tracking of the racial and ethnic composition of fraternities and sororities; required new house construction to include plans to promote diversity; and ordered Greek organizations to “neutralize the effects of legacy preference” on minority recruits.
I WITNESSED THE conflict between the school’s racial history and its desire for progress when I visited the University of Alabama’s Ferguson Student Center. After a recent $45 million renovation, it had all the amenities of a twenty-first-century hub of campus life: a food court with Wendy’s and Subway, a theater, and a space for “sustainable service and volunteerism.” The gleaming campus hub acknowledges, in a small way, the school’s racial history. Visitors encounter a portrait of a bespectacled Birmingham school teacher named Autherine Lucy. In the 1950s, Lucy fought a three-year court battle to become the first African American to enroll at the University of Alabama. Because of mob violence, she lasted only three days as a graduate student. The school expelled her “for her own safety.” Only in 1988 did the university’s board overturn her expulsion, and she finally received her master’s degree four years later. Lucy’s story re
presents the sluggishness of change at Alabama.
Most students here know about Lucy, but few could tell you much about the center’s namesake, Hill Ferguson. At the dawn of the twentieth century, he was a Big Man on Campus, a fraternity brother at Sigma Nu, a Phi Beta Kappa, and quarterback of the football team. Ferguson was a Birmingham insurance executive who served for forty years on the Board of Trustees before stepping down in 1959. He has been described as “Alabama’s most loyal alumnus.” He was also a die-hard segregationist. As a trustee, he fought against Lucy’s enrollment, going so far as to hire a private investigator to dig up dirt on her and another black student. In the words of the Southern historian E. Culpepper Clark, Ferguson “never gave up his quest to ‘keep ’Bama White.’” The university makes no mention of a head-spinning irony: Lucy’s portrait hung in a student center that honored a fraternity man who fought to keep her off the campus.
On the Ferguson Center’s second floor, I met Elliot Spillers, president of the Student Government Association. He left his office and headed for lunch at the food court. In his plaid shirt and khakis, Spillers had the easygoing charm of a natural politician. He also inherited a sense of discipline and government service from his family. He was a US Air Force brat who had lived in Turkey and Germany and all over the United States before settling in Alabama. Both his parents were officers: his father, a lieutenant colonel and congressional liaison to the Pentagon; his mother, a nurse who had advanced to major. When we spoke, his younger brother, a high school junior, was considering playing football at the US Naval Academy. Spillers envisioned his next step as a Fulbright scholarship abroad, law school, and work in the State Department. He would seem a natural choice as student body president, but he wasn’t, because he was black. In 2015, Spillers became the first African American student-government president in almost forty years. “What drew me was the opportunity to make a difference,” Spillers told me. “I wanted a challenge.”
That challenge required Spillers to confront the most powerful force in Alabama student life, the Greek establishment’s Machine. Not coincidentally, his achievement represented twin firsts. He was the first African American to become president in four decades, as well as the first candidate to win without Machine backing since the mid-1980s. Even his triumph highlighted the barriers posed by Greek life.
In 1976, when a black student named Cleo Thomas matched his achievement and won the presidency, men in white sheets burned crosses. Spillers was aware of this history and figured his candidacy would be a struggle. He didn’t belong to a fraternity but knew he had to court the Greek community. He had support from Alpha Tau Omega, a New Row fraternity with four black members in the fall of 2015. The fraternity hung an Elliot Spillers banner across the front of its house. One night, it was mysteriously removed, an act of vandalism many on campus attributed to the Machine, which has long been known for electioneering and dirty tricks. Even though the Machine opposed him, Spillers had plenty of friends in Greek life. He was part of a historic power couple. His girlfriend, Halle Lindsay, was one of the African American women who integrated Alpha Gamma Delta, an Old Row sorority. He attended fraternity and sorority parties and referred to members as “my Greek friends.”
I pointed out that the Student Government Association and the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life face each other across a hall, as if they were two branches of a bicameral government. “The location is no accident,” Spillers said. “Alabama isn’t subtle. Student government is Greek life, and Greek life is student government.”
Spillers gave plenty of credit to the sorority women who stood up to alumni who wanted to continue excluding African Americans. He also praised then president Bonner, who risked the wrath of donors by forcing integration. “She was so brave,” Spillers said. “I respect her completely.” Spillers said the current administration needed to focus more on Old Row fraternities. “It’s one of those conversations everyone wants to have but no one wants to have,” Spillers said. That afternoon, Spillers was headed to a conference where he was pushing for what he hoped would be a signature achievement of his tenure: a full-time administrator to promote diversity. Spillers would like to see houses for minority fraternities. More broadly, he said, the university should promote social life for independent students. “Where is our money to have a party?” he asked. It will require a wholesale rethinking of campus life. “I’m afraid when I leave, it’s going to go back to the way it was,” he said. “I’m looking for a more sustainable solution.”
Five months after our conversation, the crosscurrents of change and resistance swept the campus. Lillian Roth, a sophomore political science major, won the presidency as Spiller’s successor. The founder of her own jewelry business and a former intern for Martha Roby, a Republican Alabama congresswoman, she joined only a handful of other female Student Government Association presidents in the University of Alabama’s history. In other ways, she still symbolized the old order. She was white and a sorority sister at Chi Omega, part of the Machine, which had swept back into power. Like the two former student-government presidents from SAE, she was a graduate of Montgomery Academy. Roth was also a debutante and the daughter of an Alabama Chi Omega. Her father, Toby, had been president of the Theta Chi fraternity at Alabama and later worked as the chief of staff for Bob Riley, the Republican Alabama governor. After her victory, Roth declined to answer a student newspaper reporter’s question about the Machine.
FAR FROM PUBLIC view, Old Row fraternities had been taking the first steps toward integration. The year before my visit, Jackson Britton, president of Kappa Alpha Order’s chapter, privately pushed to admit a black member. He had been discussing integration with Yardena Wolf, one of the students who had fought to open up sororities. The two belonged to a prestigious campus institute that focused on ethical leadership. Although Britton was politically conservative and Wolf was liberal, they had become friends. Britton’s father, who was in Kappa Alpha Order, was a first-generation college student and a descendant of Southern sharecroppers. Britton sympathized with those who found themselves living on the margins. He asked KA members if they would consider circumventing the pledge process entirely and extending a bid to a black student. “No one was opposed,” Britton told me. “Members were enthusiastic about the idea.” Britton then suggested an African American junior who was friends with almost everyone in his pledge class. The student, whose name he declined to share, had top grades and a record of community service. “Everyone agreed we needed to give him a bid,” Britton said. In a decision that was never made public, KA made the offer. Five minutes later, the junior called back. He declined. He told Britton he couldn’t afford the cost of more than $7,000 a year in dues. Wolf, who ended up quitting her sorority, said she was disappointed in her friend. “It was frustrating,” she said. “I thought he would do more than he did.”
To Britton, the episode illustrated why the entire recruitment system had to change. He described the informal fraternity rush as “governed by a set of unspoken rules” that assured a white membership. The chapter receives about two hundred recommendation letters from alumni, typically legacies, for a pledge class of forty. The fraternity throws three informal rush parties on campus for graduating high school seniors and two more in the summer. Those who live nearby, legacies, and wealthier students are far more likely to attend. The result is predictable. KA skews heavily in-state, drawing many of its members from the small towns that have always been its lifeblood. “If you were to ask people who KA attracts, they would say, small-town Alabama guys, the good old boys,” he said. Later, as speaker of the student Senate, Britton co-authored a resolution supporting a “formal” rush open to all students.
Britton said KA had also been toning down its Southern pride. Established in 1865 at what is now Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, the Kappa Alpha Order calls Confederate general Robert E. Lee its “spiritual founder.” KA is known for its signature “Old South” parties where men dress in Confederate uniforms and wo
men in hoop skirts. In 2009, Kappa Alpha had apologized after it paused its “Old South” parade in front of a historically black sorority. A year later, the national organization said members should no longer wear Confederate uniforms because they were “trappings and symbols” that could be “misinterpreted or considered objectionable to the general public.” In Alabama, members started wearing gray clothing and caps, so it wasn’t clear how much had really changed. Britton said the fraternity then eliminated gray clothing, as well as the “Old South” name for its end-of-the-year party. I asked Britton how many black students would want to join KA as long as it continues to honor Robert E. Lee. Britton replied that KA’s reverence for Lee could be divorced from his support for slavery. KA members say they try to live by Lee’s definition of a True Gentleman, which is much like SAE’s. “The manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentlemen,” Lee wrote in papers found after his death in 1870. “The Southern values we embrace are really Lee’s definition of a true gentleman,” Britton said.
At the SAE house, I asked Goodwyn, the chapter president and fourth-generation SAE, why his house had no black members. He considered it a matter of self-selection. Goodwyn said one African American friend picked Alpha Phi Alpha, the historically black organization to which Martin Luther King belonged. “No one is keeping anyone out,” Goodwyn said. “People are going to go where they want to go.” Still, in his view, the social scene was starting to open up. After my visit, SAE had scheduled a joint philanthropy event to fight pediatric cancer. For the first time, rather than having separate events, this one included white, black, and other minority Greek-letter organizations.
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