Ashlee Canty, a doctoral candidate and Zeta Phi Beta sister, was appointed by the fraternity as part of its plan to root out racist behavior among members and pledges.
Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the originally Southern fraternity with a long history of racism, said Thursday that it hired Ashlee Canty as its new Director of Diversity and Inclusion.
SAE said in a statement that it appointed the North Carolina native to oversee strategies that lead to "enhanced diversity" within the fraternity.
The appointment of a diversity director is part of SAE's four-point plan to combat numerous allegations of racism that emerged after members at its University of Oklahoma chapter were caught singing a racist chant in March.
SAE first announced its initiative to eliminate racial intolerance from its organization in March. Canty's appointment on Thursday came two days after BuzzFeed News published a review that showed the fraternity's long history of racially-charged incidents that went generally unchallenged by fraternity and university officials.
Canty's position as the diversity director is the first such role established by any major North American Greek organization, SAE said in its statement.
Her role will be to create educational programs "to increase an awareness and support for minority groups" as well as to develop initiatives "that promote inclusion" in SAE's 237 chapters and colonies across the nation.
She is also tasked with developing a system to monitor statistics of diversity in the fraternity — a challenge SAE seems to have taken seriously in response to growing concerns about the lack of diversity in its chapters.
According to its national organization, approximately 20% of its 15,000 members self-identified as a minority or non-Caucasian, based on data gathered since 2013. But neither the headquarters nor its individual chapters have provided data on the fraternity's racial makeup before this period.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1NDbilf
No comments:
Post a Comment