People Still Question Me

“I never wanted to be part of an organization fixed towards one type of people.”

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Transcript for People Still Question Me

I went to a Catholic schools my whole life. I’ve never been to a public school. The high school I went to was mostly white people, and in my classes which were honors classes and college prep classes I was one of two black people.

Valpo is very similar. There aren’t very many minorities in my classes or that I see often. It is mostly white people not that, that is a problem with me I think mainly because I was used to it. Valpo overall is just a small town, and it took me a while to get used to it coming from the city. So, you really have to make the most of it by getting involved on campus.

I joined a sorority second semester of freshman year. I went through the formal recruitment process which is the main recruiting process that most freshmen go through if you’re interested in Greek life, and basically you get to visit all of the sororities for a week and as the week goes on you start to narrow it down, and at the end of the week you’ll receive a bid from the sorority that either liked you the most or you liked the most.

I was excited. I enjoyed the recruitment process. It’s a really long week just because there’s a lot going on, but in all the sororities I visited I felt comfortable. I felt very welcomed even though it might have been a little awkward just being the one black girl going through recruitment everybody still made me feel very comfortable. I didn’t feel like, I never felt discouraged that because I was black that I wouldn’t be able to be in a sorority.

One thing I’d like to say about diversity on campus is mainly that there are very few minorities, and it doesn’t make it better when the minorities split off into different groups like black people with black people, Asian people with Asian people. Before I chose to go through recruitment, I knew I would either get slack from my peers or my family of why I wasn’t joining an all-black sorority, or I always thought people would question me and of course they did. And to this day people still question me.

So yeah, that did cross my mind if I was making the right choice, but with Valpo not having very many black students as it is, they can’t like have all-black sororities and fraternities because there’s not enough people to do that. So, my choices were kind of limited, but I just like being a part of a diverse organization. I don’t know, I don’t wanna, I didn’t ever want to be part of an organization that was just fixed towards, fixed towards one type of people.