Hundreds of students at the University of Washington held a rally on campus last weekend to protest the Greek system, accusing members of fraternities and sororities of being exclusive, racist, misogynistic and violent.
The Facebook page called the event, “Check Your Privilege Block Party,” and has been flooded with posts and comments from students who feel marginalized by the Greek community, as well as pushback from fraternity and sorority members.
The event description calls on the “rebels and rejects of society” to “take over and claim space on Greek row,” and accuses fraternity members of physical and verbal abuse towards other students.
“They have said black lives don’t matter, they have raped us and then called us sluts and liars,” the description reads.
The students are citing a recent incident involving members of UW’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity who allegedly made racist comments at a Black Lives Matter protest on campus.
The leaders of the UW Interfraternity Council (IFC) and UW Panhellenic released a statement, detailing how they plan to improve the system. The two say they will establish cultural or diversity chairs for each organization, promote non-discriminatory recruitment practices, and hold regular meetings with the leaders of other organizations, such as the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) which represents the nine historically African American sororities and fraternities.
“It would be ignorant to say that fraternities and sororities haven’t been historically white, or exclusive in their nature,” IFC president Nate Stockman told the Seattle Metropolitan. “I think the Greek community has come a long way from where it was decades ago, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still room to improve.”
