University of Alabama president: Our Greek system remains segregated, we will not tolerate discrimination [video] | al.com

Alabama's President attempts to drag the Greek system into the 21st century. Members are ready, alums not so much.

University of Alabama president: Our Greek system remains segregated, we will not tolerate discrimination [video] | al.com:

University of Alabama
President Judy Bonner (The
University of Alabama) 

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama — University of Alabama President Judy Bonner took an unprecedented stance in a video sent out to the UA community this morning, stating outright that the college’s fraternities and sororities are segregated and discrimination will not be tolerated at UA.

Bonner prefaced her remarks with the story of the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, a time when the nation’s eyes were on the University five decades ago. 

“Today the eyes of the nation are once again on the University of Alabama,” Bonner said. “This time it is because our Greek system remains segregated, and chapter members admit that during the recruitment process that ended a few weeks ago, decisions were made based on race.”

At a closed doors meeting with chapter advisers Sunday, Bonner said she told the group UA will not tolerate discrimination of any kind. 

“The chapter members are ready to move forward. The University of Alabama will support them in every way possible,” Bonner said. “We will work extremely hard to remove any barriers that they perceive. If we are going to adequately prepare our students to compete in the global society, we simply must make systemic and profound changes.”



'via Blog this'

Montana Sig Eps Lead the Way In Diversity Project

Students see the ‘writing on the wall'
Andrew Dusek

For many students, words like “dyke,” “fag” and “kike” plastered in plain view alongside swastikas and other racial slurs may be shocking. But others say painting the words and literally tearing down symbols of prejudice help bring awareness to oppression.

This week, UM students and faculty have a chance to vent their frustrations and raise awareness for oppression by writing anything they want on a cinderblock wall located between the University Center and the Mansfield Library as part of the Writing on the Wall Project.

The event, which has been successful at other universities across the nation, runs from Tuesday through Thursday and paint is provided for people to write messages before the wall is torn down at 3:45 p.m. Thursday.

The project, which coincides with the Day of Dialogue, was proposed by the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity as a way of “being open and honest about offensive words and prejudices” and starting conversation about diversity.

Tory Gustafson, communications coordinator for the project, said that the wall is an “in-your-face project” that confronts racism in an interactive way. Gustafson said students can express how they’ve been oppressed by writing offensive words on the wall and expressing their beliefs, racist or not. “Either way it’s going to come down,” he said.

At first many students were confused by the eye-level wall covered in crudely painted profanity, but soon realized its purpose. Freshman Pari Kemmick said that she was initially confused and surprised by the messages. She said it was really cool once she understood the concept.

Kemmick’s friend, Libby Fletcher, said that she felt uncomfortable because she’s not even able to say some of the words. “We’re not exposed to stuff like this very often,” she said. “I don’t even know what some of these words mean.”

Sophomore Ashley Richards said that she supported the event, but would not participate. “I find it odd that at any point in time it would be OK to write racial slurs,” she said.

Not all students were shocked by the messages on the wall. Michael Becker, a senior majoring in drama and dance, said it’s a way to boldly bring awareness to what people say. “Sometimes what you say can be offensive, even if you don’t think it is,” he said, pointing to a comment that read “Stop being such a girl.”

“It’s great,” he said. “I love it.” Josh Peters-McBride, Program advisor for Student Involvement and Leadership Development, said that the wall is a “sweet idea.” “It’s just a visual representation of all the oppressed feelings, emotions and words everyone carries around daily,” he said. “It gives people an opportunity to see that oppression is very much apparent in our daily lives.

Derek Duncan, vice president of Communications for Sigma Phi Epsilon, was glad to hear the positive reaction from many students, but said that everyone is entitled to an opinion. It’s important to be open and honest about prejudices and have conversations about them, he said. “There are thoughts we have and things we shouldn’t say, but we need to acknowledge these things and talk about them to get rid of them,” he said.

Duncan said that the wall was inspired by an online student affairs project and added that schools like the University of Florida and Kansas State University have done similar projects.

Tina Brown, student coordinator for the Day of Dialogue, said the committee was excited when the idea for the wall was proposed. She added that she wasn’t concerned about the controversy because the Day of Dialogue is open to controversial issues. “We know they will come up,” she said. Brown urged all students to check out the wall and “write whatever their heart leads them to write.”

Adina Kaliyeva, a senior from Kazakhstan who sits on the Day of Dialogue Committee, said she was surprised to see the word “foreigner” written on the wall in Japanese because it could be considered a bad word to some people. She also said that the wall is a diversity issue and something personal and individual to each person.

Kaliyeva said that her connection with others comes from reaction to criticism. “People can react to all these issues,” she said. “It’s like, I don’t want to see this, but in the end, it’s created to be destroyed.”
andrew.dusek@umontana.edu

More on New York Court Ruling

Insider HigherEd.com
Septembef 17, 2007
A Clash of Rights

Public colleges’ anti-bias policies have been taking a beating in the courts in recent years. Various federal courts have said that the policies can’t be used to deny recognition to Christian student groups - even if those groups explicitly discriminate against those who are gay or who don’t share the faith of the organizations.

Many lawyers who advise colleges, even some who deplore these rulings, have urged colleges to recognize that the force of their anti-bias policies has been severely weakened. Students’ First Amendment rights of freedom of religion and expression will end up trumping strong anti-bias principles, or so the emerging conventional wisdom has gone.

But an unusual decision from a federal appeals court on Thursday is challenging that conventional wisdom. The decision upheld the right of a public college - the College of Staten Island, of the City University of New York - to deny recognition to a fraternity because it doesn’t let women become members. In ruling as it did, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the college’s anti-bias rules served an important state function - and a function that was more important than the limits faced by a fraternity not being recognized.

In a statement that some educators view as long overdue from the courts, the Second Circuit said that a public college “has a substantial interest in making sure that its resources are available to all its students.”

Further, and this is important because many college anti-bias policies go beyond federal requirements, the court said that it didn’t matter that federal law has exceptions for fraternities and sororities from gender bias claims. “The state’s interest in prohibiting sex discrimination is no less compelling because federal anti-discrimination statutes exempt fraternities,” the court said.

Some legal experts view last week’s ruling as a blip - a result perhaps of unusual circumstances in the case, or a trio of judges who happened to see the issue in a different way. An appeal is almost certain. But rulings by federal appeals courts become law in their regions and precedents that can be cited everywhere. And some lawyers, especially those trying to defend college anti-bias laws, say that the decision could be significant.

In the new ruling, “the court is saying there’s no question but that the government has a substantial interest in eradicating discrimination and it recognizes that non-discrimination policies that condition funding interfere [with students’ rights] only to a limited degree, and that’s exactly the issue in our case,” said Ethan P. Schulman, a lawyer for the University of California Hastings College of Law.

A federal judge ruled last year that Hastings was within its rights to deny recognition to the campus chapter of the Christian Legal Society, which barred from the group students who engage in “unrepentant homosexual conduct.” Based on other rulings, the Christian group has appealed, but Schulman said that the Second Circuit’s finding showed that colleges should not abandon tough anti-bias policies (as many have, when faced with similar legal challenges).

“Ultimately it may well be that the U.S. Supreme Court is going to have to decide these issues,” Schulman said. “But right now I think it’s a mistake for colleges and universities to assume that they should abandon strongly held policies of non-discrimination.”

Other lawyers had a range of predictions on what will happen as a result of the Second Circuit ruling. Some anticipate a quick reversal. Others see a new front in the culture wars, with anti-Greek educators seizing on the ruling to attack fraternities - and lawmakers rushing to protect the Greek system. Others say that non-Greek, single sex organizations on public campuses - think about a cappella singing groups - could find themselves under scrutiny. And others think that the fight over Christian groups that discriminate against those who don’t share their beliefs is about to get much more intense.

With so much potentially at stake, there is some irony about the origins of the case at a CUNY campus. CUNY colleges generally don’t house students, and Greek systems, to the extent they exist at all, are small and off campus. The lawsuit challenging CUNY’s anti-bias rules was filed by a new branch of Alpha Epsilon Pi, which was seeking recognition as an official student organization at the College of Staten Island. Such status would, among other things, allow the group to receive funds, publicize and hold events on campus, obtain a campus mailbox. The fraternity’s members said that their organization didn’t permit the inclusion of women, and that adding women would alter the nature of the group. Fraternity leaders testified that having women as members might lead to romance and “inevitable jealousies.” Even lesbians could be problematic, the fraternity said, because having a female member is “an issue itself.”

The fraternity sued CUNY, arguing that its rejection of the chapter on grounds of sex discrimination violated its right to “associative freedom” under the First Amendment. That argument carried the day at the district court level, which issued an injunction against enforcement of the anti-bias rule.

But the appeals court found that the fraternity was claiming associative rights (which offer some protection to groups with common beliefs and interests) while opening many of its events to non-members. In essence, the appeals court found that the fraternity members couldn’t claim to be selective about who they hang out with, while boasting about how open an organization they have created. Further, the court noted that the fraternity was free to meet off campus with its own money - and that the college had legitimate reason to enforce its anti-bias rules.
In just about every way, this take differed from the analysis applied by a federal appeals court last year in a case over the right of the Christian Legal Society to be recognized at Southern Illinois University. In that case, an appeals court found that the society’s right to religious freedom and free expression were violated by a university ban on support for groups that discriminated against gay people.

“CLS’s beliefs about sexual morality are among its defining values; forcing it to accept as members those who engage in or approve of homosexual conduct would cause the group as it currently identifies itself to cease to exist,” says that decision. “What interest does SIU have in forcing CLS to accept members whose activities violate its creed other than eradicating or neutralizing particular beliefs contained in that creed?”

Given that differing analysis - and the longstanding tradition of single-sex fraternities and sororities - what does the latest decision mean?

Timothy M. Burke, a lawyer who wrote a brief for the court on behalf of the North American Interfraternity Conference, called the decision “surprising and frankly disappointing.” He said he hoped that the fraternity in Staten Island would win on appeal, perhaps by stressing its Jewish roots to win some of the protection courts have granted to Christian fraternities. But Burke acknowledged that most fraternities and sororities couldn’t make a religious claim.
And that’s why he’s worried. “There has not been a huge clamor out there to change a system that’s been in place for well over 150 years,” he said. Further, the fact that fraternities and sororities were specifically exempted from federal gender bias laws shows that there is a broad consensus that their single-sex status shouldn’t be challenged, he said.

Attacking fraternities at public universities is especially unfair, Burke said, in light of the 1972 Supreme Court decision in Healy v. James that upheld the right of Students for a Democratic Society to be recognized as an official group at public campuses. “It’s a simple argument,” he said. “If the SDS has to be recognized, then organizations like Chi Omega and Sigma Pi ought to have that right.”

David French, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, said that the Staten Island decision was decided incorrectly and that he was “moderately concerned” about it. French’s group has been a major player in challenging the enforcement of public colleges’ anti-bias policies against religious groups. Because the groups he is representing make an argument beyond associative rights, going to religious expression, French said he didn’t see a legal threat.
But he said that “perverse incentives” were created by the court. That is because the judges faulted the fraternity for wanting protection while also conducting many activities with a broad group of students. “That reasoning struck me as problematic for groups that want to identify themselves somewhere in between” having an exclusive mission and complying with all anti-bias rules. “The Second Circuit took that middle ground away,” he said.

And for any group that is traditionally all male or all female, such as singing groups or athletic programs, that could invite scrutiny, French said.

Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said that he believed the appeals court erred by underestimating the impact of being denied official recognition as a student group. A more realistic assessment of those burdens, he said, might have led to a different conclusion.

Lukianoff predicted considerable fallout from the decision, even though he thinks it is faulty. “At its worst, it provides a blueprint for public colleges to refuse to recognize any fraternity or sorority, which I think a lot of universities would love the opportunity to do,” he said. “I think this opens the door to a lot of future controversy.”

And if there is such a move, he said, “there will be a predictable backlash” from lawmakers who will try to protect Greeks. In the near term, Lukianoff said that fraternities “are in a more precarious position.”

Schulman, the lawyer for Hastings, said he thinks part of the reason the Second Circuit’s ruling will matter is that other courts are starting to advance similar arguments. He cited a ruling last month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that upheld the right of a Washington State high school that rejected a religious group’s quest for recognition. The court - in a case being appealed -- ruled that the group was appropriately rejected under the school district’s anti-bias policies because of religious limits on who could vote or hold office.

Groups that want organizations at public universities to be able to discriminate against gay people or non-Christians have been trying to argue that the issue was settled by the Southern Illinois case or a few other cases, Schulman said. While he acknowledged that some court decisions have gone that way, he said that the two recent appeals courts rulings were equally significant. “I think the issues posed by these cases are still very much in play,” he said. “It’s too early for either side to declare or predict victory.”

Lawrence White, formerly general counsel at Georgetown University and a lawyer in the counsel’s office at the University of Virginia, and now a consultant to colleges on legal issues, agreed. White thinks that many public colleges avoid the kind of legal dispute that is going on at CUNY by creating a specific exemption for fraternities and sororities to anti-bias policies.
The real impact of the decision may be in giving public colleges and universities the ability to enforce anti-bias policies against religious groups that discriminate against gay students or others, he said.

“This decision breathes life into the notion that anti-discrimination standards are standards that we should all adhere too, and that universities can define those broadly,” he said. By declaring that anti-bias policies “serve an important institutional interest,” he said, “this decision does provide a lever.”

Sheldon E. Steinbach, a lawyer in the higher education practice at the Washington firm Dow Lohnes, said that whatever one thinks of the latest decision, it may complicate life for colleges and their lawyers.

“What American society in general expects from courts is uniformity and consistency,” but this “revolutionary” decision takes an unexpected approach on a ragne of issues, and one that is not consistent with other rulings, he said. “This winds up being a very interesting case.”
- Scot Jaschik

The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/17/rights.

Ole Miss DKE Chapter Suspended

BREAKING NEWS: DKE found guilty
Fraternity suspended for one year for multiple violations of UM policy
By Haley Crum

The Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity is officially suspended from the Ole Miss campus for one year for violations of harassment, assault, disorderly conduct, possession of alcohol and hosting an unauthorized party, according to University Judiciary Council Chair Bart Reising.

The decision was announced at a news conference held in the Dean of Students office at 12:30. The suspension is effective immediately and will end in fall 2008.

The DKE fraternity was under investigation for allegations made by freshman Jeremiah Taylor in regards to a party DKE held Aug. 22. Taylor said he was humiliated by comments about a "racial rush list" and was subject to racial taunting and slurs, including the "n-word". The night ended when Taylor was asked to leave the party and then pushed down the stairs of the DKE house, he said.

In addition to a one-year suspension period, the chapter is required to:
•participate in educational programs on racial sensitivity and alcohol/drug abuse under the direction of university officials
•pay a $1,000 fine to IFC for alcohol education programming or sponsor an alcohol/drug program for the university community

Each member is required to participate in 20 hours of community service, and the fraternity receives its first strike in the university's two-strike alcohol policy.

The decision allows chapter members to continue to live and take their meals in the fraternity residence, but they are prohibited from recruiting, meeting, holding social activities, participating in any Interfraternity Council or any other university event. That includes the Rush period, which begins Sept. 23.

The judicial council made the decision after hearing testimonies from nearly 20 witnesses and deliberating over the course of two days, the statement said.

The details of the hearing and the testimonies of the witnesses are kept confidential and are protected under the Family Educational Rights of Privacy Act, Jeffrey Alford, Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations said.

"This has been a difficult episode for everone involved," Reising said in a prepared statement. "We believe the resolution demonstrates the university's commitment to the values expressed in the University of Mississippi creed."

Former Duke Players Cleared of All Charges - New York Times

This is not exactly a fraternity story, but is fairly close. At least in the kind of responses it raised when it was first reported.

The Duke lacrosse team players who were accused of rape, 'sexual offenses', and kidnapping have been cleared of all charges. The state attorney general concluded there was no evidence to proceed with a case.

An independent investigation “showed clearly that there is insufficient evidence to proceed,” Roy A. Cooper, the state attorney general, said at a televised news conference. “ We believe these individuals are innocent.”

He said the accounts of the events given by the woman who made the accusations were so inconsistent that they were not credible. “She contradicts herself,” Mr. Cooper said.

The decision brings to an end a 13-month ordeal for the young men, two of whom were dismissed from Duke because of the charges.

David F. Evans, 24, of Annapolis, Md.; Reade W. Seligmann, 21, of Essex Falls, N.J., and Collin Finnerty, 20, of Garden City, N.Y., were initially charged with rape, sexual offense and kidnapping. One of two women hired to strip at the lacrosse team’s spring break party in March 2006 accused them of raping and assaulting her in a bathroom of an off-campus house.

The rape charges were dropped in December, after the woman changed a key detail in the case, saying she could not be sure what had penetrated her when she said she was gang-raped. The woman changed her story after DNA tests showed no traces of DNA from any of the three defendants or any other Duke lacrosse player on her body or clothes, while traces of other male DNA were present.

The case touched nerves of race, sex and privilege, both nationally and in Durham, because the accuser was a poor, black local woman and the students were relatively affluent, white out-of-staters. It also tapped into a debate about the off-the-field behavior of college athletes and the proper role of big-money sports on America’s university campuses.

There is lots more in the linked New York Times article, including a local prosecutor who was trying to win an election off the case, Political correctness gone completely off the rails, "poor black girl" vs. "rich white boys", bungled investigations, a "victim" who could not seem to tell the same story twice in a row, and a complete lack of forensic evidence. This tale has "TV Movie" written all over it.

As former Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan might say, "where do they go to get their reputations back?"

Too bad Don Imus has been gagged. I bet he would have some interesting comments.

Former Duke Players Cleared of All Charges - New York Times

DZ 'marketing effort' is "Ditzy"

The PR fiasco that came of the attempt by Delta Zeta to 'upgrade' their chapter at DePauw has me wondering. Didn't anyone at their headquarters ever takes a basic marketing course?

First problem - :By all accounts, the sorority chapter was a small but diverse group who were noted more for brains and personality than a "Barbie doll" look. The initial attempt to reorganize the chapter got off to a bad start when all but 12 women were asked to leave because of a "lack of commitment." Oddly, all the girls who were "committed to improving the chapter" turned out to be thin and white. All the brown and dumpy ones were "not committed". What would it take to show commitment - lose weight and bleach their skin? Maybe Delta Zeta should recruit Michael Jackson as a makeover consultant.

Second Problem - :After the initial shock wore off some of the newly minted "alumnae" went public with their comments and concerns and the story quickly found legs on the internet and in the mainstream media. DZ HQ responded with a defensive statement that sounded like Alberto Gonzales trying to justify firing the 9 US attorneys. The DZ National President tried to make out like they were the victims in all this mess. Puh-leeze! It sounds sort of like the boy who killed his parents, then pleaded for mercy because he was an orphan.

Third Problem - :Then, After DePauw got fed up and kicked them off campus anyway, DZ has filed a lawsuit! Thereby guaranteeing that there will be updates as the suit progresses for months or years to come. They should have just laid low, accepted the 'injustice' as a price for their incompetence. and gone on about the business of image repair.

Back to marketing. I have just finished taking a graduate level marketing course. Coincidentally, the professor is a graduate of DePauw and his wife is a DZ alumna. Somehow, the class started discussing the situation. (OK - I confess. I started it.) He told us that in his view the national organization has done everything wrong, starting with the reorganization process. He told us his wife is extremely upset and has vowed no more involvement. I believe it. If a similar fiasco had happened with my home Sig Ep chapter I would be similarly upset.

If the DZ leadership has any hope of getting past this they would do well to consider bringing in some professionals at image repair. It would probably start by 'regretfully' accepting the resignations of anyone who had responsibility for those decisions. Next I would think they should bend over backwards to demonstrate how 'diverse' and 'accepting' they can be. They could hire the same ad firm that does the "Campaign for Real Beauty"commercials for Dove.

Christian Fraternity Secures Its Place

CLASH OF IDEALS • FREEDOM TRUMPS MU'S NONBIAS POLICY
By Tim Townsend
Columbia, Mo. --

On a recent Sunday night, the brothers of Beta Upsilon Chi at the University of Missouri were sizing up a new pledge class.

Andrew Guthrie, president of Beta Upsilon Chi (pronounced "bucks" by the brothers), or ΒΥΧ, stood in the sanctuary of the university's A.P. Green Chapel, facing his fraternity brothers and a handful of young men. It was the end of rush week, when students shop for a fraternity or sorority.

"God, thank you for tonight," prayed Guthrie. "Thank you for getting us through another couple weeks of school. We pray for the next pledge class, that you will guide them here.

"There are fraternities for athletes, for Latinos, for agriculture students. But the 14 brothers of ΒΥΧ are not so picky. Pledges can come from any background "If they show us they have a relationship with Jesus Christ, that's really the only requirement we have," said ΒΥΧ brother Miles Steele.

But it was that single requirement that prompted university officials to demand that ΒΥΧ, which stands for Brothers Under Christ, adhere to the school's nondiscrimination policy in December. Two weeks later, the university backed down, allowing that the fraternity brothers' constitutional rights of free association, as laid out in the First Amendment, trumped the university's nondiscrimination policy.

The case exemplifies the difficult road some religious fraternities and sororities travel on public university campuses where there are church-state issues involving funding and facilities-access. It pits two fundamental constitutional principles - the right to free exercise of religion and the prohibition against the state establishing religion - against each other.

Should a student group that grants membership only to a particular stream of one religion be able to claim it is being discriminated against because it discriminates?

The first Christian fraternities, which sprang up in the 1920 and 1930s from West Virginia to Nebraska to California, were largely Methodist. But the growing presence of evangelical Christians on secular college campuses in the 1980s led, naturally, to a growth in evangelical fraternities.

The first ΒΥΧ chapter was founded at the University of Texas in Austin in 1985 "by a handful of Christian men who desired an alternative to the present fraternal lifestyle," according to its website. ΒΥΧ is the largest Christian fraternity in the U.S. with 18 chapters, 11 of which are in Texas.

In the summer of 2005, after his freshman year at Mizzou, Andrew Guthrie was a counselor at a Christian camp in his home state of Texas. Some of the other counselors were ΒΥΧ brothers at Texas schools, and when Guthrie returned to Columbia in the fall, he contacted the fraternity's national office to see what it would take to start a ΒΥΧ chapter at the university.

To start a new chapter, Guthrie and a few Christian friends went through four phases of an assessment process designed by the national office to ensure the students were ΒΥΧ quality. The assessment included answering a number of "character questions" on videotape, said Guthrie. "They'd have us talk about our faith, who you are, what you believe."

After a visit to the campus by officers of the national office, the Mizzou chapter was approved by the national board in April as the newest ΒΥΧ chapter. The fraternity then applied to the university's Organization Resource Group, which manages the school's 480 student groups, to request status as an official student organization.

That status allows student groups to apply for funding generated by student activity fees that all students pay. In the 2006-07 academic year, that money totaled $323,000.

The Organization Resource Group does not fund "social" fraternities and sororities. But according to Janna Basler, director of Greek life at Mizzou, ΒΥΧ is not a member of the Interfraternity Council, the governing body of all member fraternities, and therefore is eligible for university funding.

All this is important because church-state watchdog groups say that if a public university funds a religious group, it could be violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment, part of which says that government cannot endorse religion. But the same sentence says Americans are free to exercise their beliefs. A university's challenge is to find the appropriate balance.

All student groups in the University of Missouri system are required to include the language of the university's nondiscrimination policy in its bylaws. According to that policy, the university does not discriminate "relative to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability or status as a Vietnam-era veteran.

"In December the university discovered ΒΥΧ had not included the nondiscrimination language in its bylaws, according to Christian Basi, a university spokesman. School officials sent Guthrie a letter asking the fraternity to add the nondiscrimination language.

In return, the university received a letter from the Christian Legal Society asking the school to re-examine its nondiscrimination policy and exempt ΒΥΧ from the policy's ban on religious discrimination, said Basi.

An attorney for the Christian Legal Society did not return calls for comment.
University attorneys reviewed the school's policy and materials submitted by ΒΥΧ's lawyers and decided it "would not require ΒΥΧ to adopt the nondiscrimination policy with respect to religion as a condition for maintaining recognition as a student organization," said Basi.

The reason? "Because our own policy states that it should not be interpreted to violate the legal rights of religious organizations."

Neil M. Richards, a professor of constitutional law at Washington University Law School, called Christian fraternities at state universities "a complicated issue."
"This is the right to associate with like-minded people versus rights of equal access," he said. "But universities, for better or for worse, allow fraternities and sororities to discriminate."

Similar Christian fraternity issues have recently challenged officials at other state schools, such as the University of North Carolina and the University of Georgia.

Historically African-American or Jewish or Latino fraternities and sororities have not faced the same challenges as the new breed of evangelical Christian because they don't restrict membership. Ruby Alvarado Hernandez, chairwoman of the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations, said many of the 23 fraternities and sororities that are members of her organization have, due to their open membership, expanded beyond their historic Hispanic origins, and have become centers of multicultural campus life.

"Private organizations are granted considerable free rein on how they identify themselves and how they establish membership criteria," said Betty A. DeBerg, a professor of religion at the University of Northern Iowa and co-author of "Religion on Campus." "In the last decade, the Supreme Court has leaned more and more on the free exercise clause. It is very careful to make sure no one's religious expression is infringed upon."

Back at A.P. Green Chapel, ΒΥΧ brother Jason Moslander is talking to his current and prospective brothers about attitude and suffering. Five young men would be pinned as new pledges by the end of the night, and five more would join them later, making the current pledge class nearly the size of the active membership. In the fall, when this pledge class becomes official, Mizzou's ΒΥΧ chapter will total 24 active members just a year into its existence.

Moslander uses the New Testament as a starting point and adapts its ancient message to the life of a 19-year-old evangelical Christian.

He shares with his brothers a story from the book of Acts. The chapel is quiet as they listen to Moslander read.

In the story, the Christian missionary Paul and his companion Silas were in the Roman colony of Phillippi where Paul healed a slave girl who had made her owners wealthy telling fortunes by way of an evil spirit. The slave girl's owners, now deprived of a source of income, dragged Paul and Silas into the marketplace before the city's magistrates.

"These men are disturbing our city," the girl's owners told the officials. "They are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe."

Paul and Silas were stripped and flogged by the crowd then carried off to "the innermost cell" of Phillippi's prison, where their feet were fastened in the stocks. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.

"As a fraternity we're going to have struggles," Moslander tells his brothers, "especially since this is the beginning."