This from the Washington Post:
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- It's 11 a.m. Saturday, and whiskey is flowing at the big houses on fraternity row at the University of Alabama. Guys in ties and baseball caps are laughing and dancing with sorority girls in bright dresses as a band blares away just around the corner.
Smack in the middle of that row is the Lambda Sigma Phi house, but things are a lot quieter inside. Parents are helping put out the lunch spread before a Crimson Tide football game and a few members lounge in the den watching TV.
A Bible passage decorates the door to the main room. "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord," it begins.
Lambda Sigma Phi is part of a wave of Christian fraternities and sororities that has gained a foothold on U.S. college campuses, sometimes despite the wishes of school administrators. Members get pumped up about prayer, Bible study and service projects, passions they say campus officials should and often do embrace as fresh amid a Greek culture typically seen as centered on hazing, keg parties and little else.
...At the University of Florida, Beta Upsilon Chi filed a federal discrimination suit last year after administrators refused to officially recognize the fraternity because it required members to be Christians. The school considered the requirement discriminatory, and the fraternity claimed it was wrongly deprived of meeting space and the ability to recruit on campus.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the school to recognize the group as a fraternity while the lawsuit winds its way through the legal system, and Beta Upsilon Chi has asked the court to make that recognition permanent...
1 comment:
I believe that in order to become part of any affiliation you need to believe in their values. As a Christian I believe that it is a wonderful thing that there are more Christian sororities and fraternities being established. I do understand that they have the right to have requirements. However, what happens to the students that want to follow Christ but haven’t fully committed to the full title of being Christian? As a Christian organization I feel they need to be more open minded and not so discriminatory about their members. It is my belief that this organization should be recognized by the school as a group, but at the same time Beta Upsilon Chi needs to be more approachable and open.
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