Sororities v. Fraternities
My research indicated that there was a difference between how sororities and fraternities recruit and treat Muslim Americans. Some of the women that I interviewed were involved in Greek Life and did not see any sort of discrimination or prejudice in how they were recruited, or how the sisters treated them. As far as the sisters were concerned, whether or not a girl was Muslim, whether or not they were American, or anything else they could have identified themselves as was not an object. The only thing that really seemed to vaguely matter was value alignment. However, with the fraternities, some of the women expressed that they had had negative experiences. One subject expressed that she had a harder time getting in to frat parties because she was Muslim. Another expressed that she felt that she felt like the fraternity men had a standard for what women should look like/be that did not include her identity. While the men interviewed did not really see the same stigma as from the women, they did admit that fraternities were more apt to choose men that were very similar to them--in all aspects. However, these findings could be isolated to this campus by the nature of the Greek System here. In general, there are much more women involved in Greek Life than men, and therefore capture a larger, more diverse portion of the campus' population. In addition, the fraternities hold many more events that can be taken as exclusionary--i.e. their parties often have capacity maximums that they must adhere to, and refusal to admit anyone of any minority could be taken as coming from a discriminatory place even when it is not. Also, some of the negative comments that women reported males saying to them, were said when the fraternity members were intoxicated. This supports the statement that much of prejudice is unconscious, and many people do not even realize that they have it.