Black students invited to pledge Alabama sororities

Melanie Eversley | USA TODAY

After a tumultuous several days in which a highly publicized campus news article alleged widespread race discrimination in the University of Alabama pledging process, school president Judy Bonner on Friday night issued a video statement in which she said diversity is increasing in the school's Panhellenic world.

Seventy-two bids – offers to allow a person to pledge – have been offered by the mostly white sororities on the Tuscaloosa campus in the last week, Bonner said. Of those, 11 went to black women and three to women representing other minority groups, Bonner said. Four black women accepted and two women representing other minority groups accepted.

"This campus will be a place of inclusion and opportunity for all," Bonner said in the statement. "We will do the right thing, for the right reason, the right way."

The several-minute video was the second released this week by the president since The Crimson White, the campus news organization, published a piece detailing how the daughter of a state senator and granddaughter of a trustee – a young woman with high grades – was denied a chance to pledge 16 of the primarily white sororities on campus. The piece painted a picture of a staunchly segregated Panhellenic system on campus controlled, in some cases and in part, by alumni.

The piece has drawn attention to the campus desegregated in 1963 by two black students who managed to make their way past a physical blockade created by segregationist Gov. George Wallace. Since The Crimson White piece appeared, students on campus have marched to profess their commitment to diversity and a Facebook page called UA Stands has cropped up in which students, alumni and others interested in the situation on campus share information.

In the video statement released earlier this week, Bonner said the Greek organizations on campus would engage in open continuous bidding, which means a bid can be extended to anyone at any time.

"While we will not tell any group who they must pledge, the University of Alabama will not tolerate discrimination of any kind," she said.