A Sorority That Is Breaking New Ground

With all the news about frats misbehaving here is a sorority that welcomes diversity…

UT’s first LGBT-inclusive sorority aims to tackle queer social issues
The Daily Texan
Published on March 10, 2015
By Zainab Calcuttawala

UT students established a campus colony of the national sorority Gamma Rho Lambda this semester — the first queer-focused and transsexual-inclusive women’s Greek society at the University, according to the organization’s leadership.

The sorority aims to combat issues regarding the status of queer women in mainstream society and within the LGBT community, Lauren Ferguson, president of the colony and art history and English senior, said. As part of the three-semester colonization process, the organization’s leaders recruited nine members this semester for the Alpha class and will start taking pledges in the fall.
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“There are a lot of really awesome women’s or LGBT organizations [on campus], but they are either really specifically for, say, LGBT women of color or they are non-trans-inclusive,” Ferguson said. “One of the tenants of [Gamma Rho Lambda] is that no one is excluded, and the only requirement is that you identify as a woman. A lot of the feminism movement and the LGBT community does not want to include trans-women into the queer spectrum because there is a lot of transphobia within [those communities] as well.”

But everything is not rosy…

Fisher-Gariby said the colony anonymously received hate mail during the early period of its formation, even though the University community has mostly welcomed the sorority.

University of Texas has had a history of discrimination, Sigma Alpha Epsilon is being investigated for the same racist conduct as happened at University of Oklahoma, so it should be interesting to see how the campus accepts a LBT sorority.