Policies vary across the US but some sororities and fraternities have adopted inclusive rules – Ryan Bishop, Leigh Angel and Sean Finn tell their stories

In March of 2015, after being recruited for months, Ryan Bishop was thrilled to receive an invitation to join his university’s chapter of of Chi Phi, America’s oldest fraternity. But a week before his induction, Chi Phi’s national office notified the Ohio Wesleyan University chapter that Bishop wasn’t eligible.

Chi Phi’s official rules only allowed men, and Bishop was born a woman.

Bishop was raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. He always said his sex felt wrong, but never felt safe enough to transition in the conservative Balkan country. America offered a sort of gender asylum and so three years ago, on his first night at university, Bishop introduced himself as Ryan.

“It was life changing,” Bishop said. “It felt like the moment I arrived here I was seen as who I truly am, and could just act like myself.”



Bishop jumped into campus activism and devoted his studies to zoology. Former Chi Phi president Kyle Simon, 22, said he recruited Bishop to join the fraternity because he was so impressive.

“Ryan represented the best student leader that I had seen as a first year since coming to the university,” Simon said. “As an international student and transgender, we would get a really amazing person, with another diverse perspective. He was everything I wanted Chi Phi to become.”

When Chi Phi rejected Bishop, Simon was shocked and ashamed. “I had sold him on this idea that he could be a fraternity man, and it was a smack in the face,” Simon said.

In July, Chi Phi opened membership to transgender individuals that were “male as defined by valid legal documentation.” The decision was widely publicized and celebrated, but the fine print was ignored.

For Bishop, Chi Phi’s requirement for “valid legal documentation” meant that to join the fraternity, he would need to change his government issued identification and likely undergo costly and intensive sex reassignment surgery.

“Not being allowed into the fraternity was humiliating because they were saying, we see you the way you are on paper,” Bishop said. “No one deserves to be excluded or discriminated against based on their gender or based on genitals.”

Chi Phi did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but representatives from Ohio Wesleyan University said the school supports Bishop.

“The issue of transgender students participating in Greek life is important to Ohio Wesleyan on multiple levels,” said Cole Hatcher, media and community relations director for Ohio Wesleyan University. “We seek to be open, inclusive, and supportive of the LGBTIQ community. The university believes Ryan and all students have the right to participate fully in every aspect of campus life. Therefore, we support Ryan and his effort to participate in Greek life based on his self-identity and not his birth certificate.”

Bishop’s experience comes when many institutions defined by gender binaries – American schools, the US military, and even the International Olympic Committee – are adopting transgender-inclusive policies. This May, the US Department of Education informed American schools in a Dear Colleague letter that it is illegal to discriminate against students based on their gender identity.

But Title IX, the US law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs and activities, does not apply to fraternities and sororities. And because gender identity is not a protected class like race, religion, or sexual orientation, individual Greek organizations can decide whether to allow transgender members in, as well as whether membership will be based on gender identity or genitalia.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alpha Sigma Alpha Bid Day in 2016. Photograph: Courtesy of Leigh Angel

Greek houses have been central to American university life for more than 200 years. Infamous for raging parties, members tout familial bonds and swear lifelong loyalty. In the US, more than 200,000 students rush Greek houses every year, and some of those individuals identify as transgender.

Lawyers say excluding transgender students because of their gender identity could put fraternities at risk of discrimination complaints and threaten their staying power.

Currently the policies vary by organization, but several prominent Greek houses have adopted transgender inclusive policies in the last year. The sorority Gamma Rho Lambda is open to all gender identities, and recently opened a new chapter at the University of Texas. The fraternities Sigma Phi Epsilon, Delta Upsilon, Delta Tau Delta, and the sorority Delta Gamma, have also recently changed their bylaws to allow for anyone who “identifies as” male or female, and don’t require any paperwork.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Leigh Angel (center) with her sisters. Photograph: Courtesy of Leigh Angel

Leigh Angel, 19, a second-year transgender woman at Adrian College in Michigan, never thought she would be allowed to join a sorority. But then friends from Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority invited her to a party and three weeks later, Angel was asked to join.

“It felt really really amazing to know that I had a home,” she said. “Every single member of the sorority was so open and accepting, and I didn’t imagine every single person in such a large group to be that way.”

Angel thinks the process of sorority rush can be intimidating and discourage transgender women from rushing. Unlike fraternity rush, which is usually a few nights of spending time with brothers at one house, the process is more intensive for women, who usually attend a series of parties at many different sororities. At the end of each party, the sorority sisters rank the participants by who they liked the most, and the participants are invited back to the next round of events accordingly.



“I think many of us feel that if we were to try to rush a sorority we would be rejected almost instantly, and I think that plays a big part of why we don’t see many [transgender women],” Angel said. “The beauty of what happened to me was that they came to me.”

Alpha Sigma Alpha did not respond to requests to clarify their position on transgender membership, and didn’t say if transgender women are welcome to join other chapters of the sorority.

Generally, gay friendly organizations are more welcoming to transgender members. Sean Finn, 20, a transgender man at the University of Iowa was welcomed into Delta Lambda Phi, which was founded in 1986 “for gay men by gay men”. By the time Finn joined, he had begun to transition medically through surgery and hormone therapy, although it wouldn’t have been necessary for membership.

Ben Ross, 21, president of Delta Lambda Phi at the University of Iowa, said there was never any question if Finn could join. “We have a defined set of values and we try to use those values as a benchmark for deciding whether or not someone is the right fit for our organization,” Ross said. “Checking with my national office, and what was written down in our national policy, it was clear to me after reading it that Sean was certainly welcome.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sean Finn with fraternity friends. Photograph: Courtesy of Sean Finn

Although Delta Lambda Phi is committed to accepting transgender men into the fraternity, inviting cis-gendered women, or women who identify with the sex assigned at birth, is still inconceivable. According to Ross, his chapter feels masculinity is deeply rooted in Delta Lambda Phi’s values, and female members would change the club’s basic nature.

“I struggle with the idea of a cis-gender female in this organization, and I don’t have a very good reason,” Ross said. “But the justification I can provide for now, is that a similar but not the same experience is open for female-identified individuals through sororities.”

Stevie Van Tran, a lawyer and consultant who works on the intersection of Title IX and transgender issues, said the debate over which genders can join which Greek houses could easily end up before the courts.

“This may be the issue that blows open the entire door,” Van Tran said.

According to the first amendment of the US constitution, private organizations have the right to define membership on their own terms. But on a university campus, it is very hard to for an organization like a fraternity to be considered completely private. Which means if Greek houses decide they don’t want to let in transgender members, and are willing to fight in court to keep these students out, there is a good chance they’d lose.

“A court is going to say: ‘You say you are a private organization dedicated to building character among men, but you party a lot and you have a lot of activities with the public, so how can you call a 500-member chapter a private organization?’ Then it comes crashing down,” Van Tran explained.

It is possible, in the future, all Greek houses will have to become co-ed. In 1990, the supreme court of New Jersey decided that Princeton’s elite fraternity-like eating clubs, Ivy Club and Tiger Inn, had so much contact with the public that they did not qualify as private organizations, and had to allow women to join. Now, all of Princeton’s eating clubs are coed.

Harvard is already pushing their fraternities, sororities and finals clubs to drop gender distinctions. In May of this year, Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, said that any student joining an unrecognized single-gender club couldn’t hold leadership positions in campus organizations, athletic teams, and wouldn’t receive recommendations from the school for scholarships or other academic opportunities.

For now, Ryan Bishop has given up on joining Chi Phi. He considered a lawsuit against the fraternity, but decided it would be expensive and complicated as an international student to pursue a case. Plus, he feels there has been enough social fall out.

“I definitely feel like I have lost friends,” he said. “Being a visible minority on campus the way that I am it is not at all easy, but I try to fall back on the people that support me.”



Bishop said he longer feels welcome at Chi Phi, but has found a place for himself on campus and will keep pushing for transgender rights.

“College is a place to grow and to learn,” Bishop said. “I think it is really important at a place like this to say, listen, ‘Here’s how things are, it is time to be educated about this,’ and show queer and trans people you are understood, you are accepted, you belong here, and we stand behind you.”