A sorority controversy has erupted at one of the nation’s best-known party schools after members accused an outside recruitment adviser of marginalizing women of color, triggering a heated confrontation inside the California chapter house.
Members of Alpha Phi at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said they were shocked when Black women and other women of color were allegedly excluded from recruitment events. They also noticed that prospective members from diverse backgrounds had seemingly vanished from the selection process, according to the Daily Nexus.
The allegations have sent shock waves through the coastal campus, fueling anger on social media and pitting sorority members against the leadership brought in to manage recruitment.
“All of us started to notice,” chapter president Alana Nielsen told the student newspaper. “It was not just one. It was not just a few. It was not just the women of color. It was all of us.”
The dispute emerged during fall recruitment in late September, when Alpha Phi International dispatched three representatives to supervise the chapter’s annual rush process.
One of the representatives was a volunteer recruitment adviser, a UCSB Alpha Phi alumna who had worked with the chapter during the previous two years.
About 1,200 prospective members initially took part in recruitment, the Santa Barbara News-Press reported.
Following the first round on Sept. 26, sorority members were reportedly instructed to leave the house while the outside advisers decided which candidates would move forward.
When the members returned, the group of candidates had reportedly been reduced to roughly 250. Almost immediately, sisters said they noticed a troubling change.
“There was a large and noticeably diverse group of women who were missing from the pool of potential new members that had returned,” Nielsen told the Daily Nexus.
The decision was particularly confusing because members had reportedly been told that about 90% of the prospective recruits mutually wanted to return to Alpha Phi.
At the same time, current members of color were allegedly being excluded from key recruitment activities.
Sky Achola, a Black sorority member and third-year political science student, arrived at the house on Sept. 27 expecting to meet prospective members. Instead, she discovered that she had not been placed on the schedule.
She soon learned that other members had experienced the same treatment.
“Pretty much all the women of color in my family system, except for my ‘little,’ who was white, were pulled from all the rounds,” Achola told the News-Press.
After members began questioning the arrangements, Achola said she was eventually assigned to one recruitment round.
“I actually personally was in a state of shock for about three days,” she told the outlet.
As concerns about possible discrimination mounted, tensions inside the sorority house intensified.
Nielsen said she sought a chapter-wide meeting to discuss what was happening. However, she was allegedly told by an outside representative that such a conversation was unnecessary and that the day should conclude on a “happy note.”
Rather than sending everyone home, Nielsen brought the members together in the chapter room, where the dispute turned into an emotional confrontation.
What followed was nothing short of a sorority revolt.
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“Girls [were] standing up screaming,” recruitment director Emerson Novosel told the Daily Nexus. “It [was] like a revolution happening right now. Like standing up, crying, screaming, and I had never felt so empowered.”
Members demanded answers as some broke down in tears, accusing the outside leadership of betraying the chapter’s values.
The volunteer adviser reportedly left the meeting after objecting to the confrontation.
Later that night, chapter recruitment directors met with the two remaining international representatives and learned that the volunteer had been responsible for deciding which prospective members advanced and which sisters participated in recruitment groups, according to chapter leaders.
The unidentified adviser was subsequently reported and removed from her position.
“It had [become] so disgustingly clear how it was just manipulation, just blatant manipulation to every part of the process with whatever her hidden agenda is,” Novosel told the Daily Nexus.
The controversy quickly exploded across Yik Yak, the anonymous social media platform popular among college students, where posts demanding accountability racked up hundreds and sometimes more than 1,000 upvotes, per the News-Press.
But the sisters insist they were victims of the alleged discrimination too.
“The women of color in the sorority were discriminated against too,” Achola told the News-Press.
Despite the uproar, Alpha Phi refused to abandon recruitment, with the national organization choosing instead to take control of the remaining process.
The chapter ultimately filled its recruitment quota, leaving uncertainty over whether women allegedly excluded earlier could still receive invitations through a separate informal bidding process.
On Oct. 1, members released a collective statement through an anonymous Instagram account, declaring they would fight for change from within.
“We have chosen to remain in the recruitment process because we believe that our members have the power to create meaningful change from within,” the statement read.
Alpha Phi International later sent representatives from its health, wellness and accountability department to meet with chapter members, including at an Oct. 5 meeting.
Nielsen said the chapter is collecting statements from members and pushing to overhaul recruitment procedures.
For Achola, the fallout has been especially painful.
“We were extremely hurt by this entire thing. We were discriminated against. We were tokenized. We were used,” she told the Daily Nexus.
And while the sorority’s reputation has taken a beating, Nielsen insisted the sisters are determined to make sure the scandal doesn’t happen again.
“That’s going to be a relationship that’s going to take a long time to repair,” she said of the chapter’s relationship with its national leadership.
The California Post reached out to Alpha Phi International and UCSB for comment.
