Black students invited to pledge Alabama sororities: After a tumultuous several days in which a highly publicized campus news article alleged widespread race discrimination in the University of Alabama pledging process, school president Judy Bonner on Friday night issued a video statement in which she said diversity is increasing in the school's Panhellenic world.
Seventy-two bids – offers to allow a person to pledge – have been offered by the mostly white sororities on the Tuscaloosa campus in the last week, Bonner said. Of those, 11 went to black women and three to women representing other minority groups, Bonner said. Four black women accepted and two women representing other minority groups accepted.
"This campus will be a place of inclusion and opportunity for all," Bonner said in the statement. "We will do the right thing, for the right reason, the right way."
The several-minute video was the second released this week by the president since The Crimson White, the campus news organization, published a piece detailing how the daughter of a state senator and granddaughter of a trustee – a young woman with high grades – was denied a chance to pledge 16 of the primarily white sororities on campus. The piece painted a picture of a staunchly segregated Panhellenic system on campus controlled, in some cases and in part, by alumni.
