Two-dozen national sororities will soon vote on a policy change that would open the door for more gender-nonbinary students to join — a sign of evolving attitudes around campus groups that have traditionally been restricted to women.
The 26 sororities that are part of the National Panhellenic Conference will vote on April 10, during its annual membership meeting, on whether to amend a policy on who can participate in formal recruitment, the matching process for sororities and students who are interested in joining. Individual sororities determine their own membership rules, but they are guided by NPC policies.
Currently, the organization specifies that any woman can participate in recruitment, with woman defined as “an individual who consistently lives and self-identifies as a woman.” That language covers transgender women, but not nonbinary students.
The proposed change states that individual sororities can determine their “definition of woman” — permitting sororities to make nonbinary students formally eligible for membership if they choose.
Dani Weatherford, chief executive of the NPC, said the group’s board proposed the change “to help break down barriers in the recruitment process, provide more guidance to campus-based professionals about who’s eligible to participate in recruitment, create an opportunity for our community to be more inclusive, and open that recruitment pool to more women who haven’t always felt welcome in our community.”
In recent years, gender-exclusive Greek-life organizations have been immersed in conversations about what their future should look like, as colleges seek to break down gender barriers and make campuses more welcoming.
The Delta Phi Epsilon sorority drew national attention to the issue of nonbinary membership in 2017, when it changed its criteria to allow chapters to welcome both transgender women and nonbinary students. (Transgender men who continue to identify as men are not allowed to join.)
For Delta Phi Epsilon, transitioning away from a women-exclusive membership didn’t mean giving up its women-centered mission. The policy just meant evolving with the times, staying relevant in the 21st century, and welcoming more students who really wanted to join the sorority.
The sorority began discussing the change in late 2016, when undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sent a letter to the sorority’s leaders imploring them to allow chapters to accept nonbinary students. That semester, a nonbinary MIT student was barred from participating in sorority recruitment.
Delta Phi Epsilon is historically a Jewish sorority, founded because other groups excluded Jewish students from membership, and inclusion is deeply important to the organization, said Nicole DeFeo, its international executive director. DeFeo said she and other leaders were already considering how they could make the organization more welcoming. The MIT students’ demand fit that bill.
Kelly Chen, a senior at MIT and member of the Delta Phi Epsilon chapter there, participated in formal recruitment in the fall of 2017, when the nonbinary policy took effect. Chen, who uses they/them pronouns, didn’t intend to join Greek life. “I thought that sororities were communities for women, and that if I wasn’t a woman, what could I possibly get out of it that would be worth being misgendered?” Chen said.
But the fact that Delta Phi Epsilon explicitly welcomed nonbinary students caught Chen’s attention. Other sororities said Chen would be able to join, but they couldn’t formally acknowledge Chen’s nonbinary identity.
“I kind of just took the plunge, knowing I could still step out of it if I wanted to,” Chen said. Four years later, Chen is a proud Delta Phi Epsilon member.
So is Dan Perez-Sornia, a 2020 graduate of Humboldt State University, in California. Perez-Sornia, who uses they/them pronouns, said the sorority immediately made them feel at home.
When Perez-Sornia decided to attend a recruitment event, a friend who was already a member asked to share Perez-Sornia’s given name and pronouns with the sorority in advance, so they could identify Perez-Sornia correctly. As a result, Perez-Sornia said, “in my entire time at the sorority, I’ve never had to come out to anybody.”
Delta Phi Epsilon already had nonbinary members before 2017, DeFeo added. They just hadn’t been able to say so on paper. “We’re cognizant of embracing the evolving definition of what it means to be a member of the Panhellenic community,” she said.
Delta Phi Epsilon leaders have gotten lots of questions from the National Panhellenic Conference and other sororities, DeFeo said. A major concern was whether admitting nonbinary members would threaten an exemption under Title IX, the gender-equity law, that permits sororities to limit membership to women. Legal experts have confirmed it wouldn’t be an issue, DeFeo said.
Since adopting the nonbinary policy, the sorority has been doing lots of education, said Roxanne Donovan, its international president. Some alumni on the chapters’ boards weren’t as familiar with the nonbinary identity as students were.
So the sorority brought in experts to talk about how Delta Phi Epsilon could welcome nonbinary students while continuing to be a women-focused group. “It was clear to us that there was no downside,” Donovan said. “It was 100 percent the right thing to do. We just had to understand it.”
The sorority also revised its governing documents and bylaws to adopt gender-neutral language, DeFeo said: “We removed the words ‘female’ wherever they showed up, and replaced them with ‘women and nonbinary.’”
The word “sisterhood,” however, retains a presence. Perez-Sornia believes that sisterhood isn’t a limiting term. Sisterhood conveys how sorority members support one another when they need it most. “Even though the term ‘sister’ might not sometimes apply to me,” Perez-Sornia said, “I hold that label with honor and really close to my heart.”
The sororities’ forthcoming vote coincides with a decade-long reckoning over Greek life’s long-running problems and its role on modern campuses.
Hazing and sexual misconduct within fraternities have prompted some colleges to try to make Greek life co-ed, with mixed success. In 2017 Harvard University leaders spearheaded a policy that was largely designed to combat problems in men-only fraternities and final clubs by forcing them to add women to their ranks.
But the approach ended up forcing the sororities to shut down, while most of the men-only groups, bolstered by support from alumni, continued to operate. Several sororities sued Harvard over the policy, and the university rescinded it last year.
More recently, the Abolish Greek Life movement gained steam on more than a dozen campuses last summer after the death of George Floyd prompted national conversations about racial injustice. Many students have disaffiliated from their organizations, saying they no longer see participation in Greek life as compatible with a commitment to fighting systemic racism and oppression. Most of the students speaking out are former sorority members.
Chen, the MIT senior, said their Delta Phi Epsilon chapter talked at length about the Abolish Greek Life movement. While Chen agrees with many of the ideas behind the movement, they said they’re committed to reforming the Greek life system, because sororities can offer so much value to students.
Delta Phi Epsilon’s leaders hope other sororities will listen to the students who are telling them that accepting nonbinary members is the path forward. It’s possible, they said, for sororities to do that while remaining focused on women. “We define ‘woman’ as committed to the advancement of womanhood,” Donovan said.
“We are committed to women’s spaces,” DeFeo added. Welcoming nonbinary students, she said, “enriches the women’s space.”
