The Trouble with Greeks

Barbara Brown, 16, has been a pretty big wheel at Alabama's Shades Valley High School--honor student, homecoming queen, vice president of the student body and member of a sorority. A senior this year, Barbara came to the conclusion that sororities and fraternities were doing Shades Valley no good. Most of her schoolmates live in the well-to-do suburbs of Birmingham, but nonetheless the student body seemed split by snobbery. Barbara and some of her friends complained to Principal Frank A. Peake.

With the principal's blessing, Barbara launched an earnest campaign through high-income Shades Valley. In the parent-teacher associations of four elementary schools, she found receptive audiences. After listening to her testimony, parents of children who will soon enter Shades Valley High voted 512 to 96 to abolish the Greek-letter groups.

Last week the county school board met to hear partisans of each side. Cried one father: "The fundamental issue is whether the children should be denied the right to belong to organizations." Said another: to ban fraternities and sororities would be unconstitutional. "Sir," snapped an angry mother, "the Supreme Court disagrees with you."

One board member reported that he had done a little detective work on his own and discovered at least one Valley father who had not owned a big enough house; only by building a larger home was he able to make his daughter eligible for her sorority. Admitted a disillusioned sorority sister: "I've seen one girl blackballed because her feet were too big. Another was kept out because the bathtub in her parents' home still had legs on it."

Meanwhile, the Valley's Panhellenic Council soothingly proposed some Greek-letter reforms, e.g., earlier closing hours for dances, maintenance of a C average by rushees, a mothers' group of advisers for each organization. Those who are not invited to join a Greek-letter society, the council suggested, should be helped to form clubs of their own. Principal Peake stayed on the fence, declared his school spirit is "fine," and that the whole situation had been exaggerated.

Barbara Brown, who is already getting cool looks from some of her former friends because of her outspoken campaign, is still sure that the situation is far from exaggerated. Last week the county school board was still studying the whole matter. Said County Superintendent I. F. Simmons: "If these organizations come, into the schools to the extent that other children are humiliated, I see that we have almost unlimited jurisdiction to see that the organizations are removed."

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