Anyone with any remote knowledge of Greek life, or pays even the tiniest attention to the news, may understand that with sororities and fraternities comes conflict. Time and time again, sorority and fraternity houses receive bad marks for drinking, drugs, partying and participating in shocking behavior.

While countless sororities undoubtedly stay out of the spotlight, a few have made recent headlines for their lack of diversity. One in particular, the University of Alabama’s Alpha Phi sorority, has been criticized for their recruitment video. In the video, members of the house are seen jumping and skipping around, blowing kisses to the camera and laughing with one another. Everyone in the video is white.

In fact, the university’s newspaper, The Crimson White, published a report last year that said only one black student had ever pledged to a Panhellenic sorority in 50 years since the school was integrated. That year was 2003.

“A member from Tri Delta, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Crimson White the story of a black student with ‘excellent scores,’ an influential family, and ‘awesome résumé’ who was removed from the process because of her race,” said Business Insider, who covered the story this fall. This sheer racism exhibited by this university is not their only downfall; the video also glorified women and their bodies. Writer from Al.com noted that the video was “all so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives: College Edition.”

Only one percent of the women who joined Alabama’s Greek system this year are black. Greek life at the University of Alabama is the nation’s largest, with 8,600 members. One out of every four student in the college is a member of a sorority or fraternity. Yet, the system is 99 percent white.

“We were told we do not take black girls, because it would be bad for our chapter—our reputation and our status,” junior Yardena Wolf, 20, member of Alpha Omicron Pi, told ‘Marie Claire.’

“Historically, white Greek letter organizations were formed on the basis of exclusion,” Matthew Hughey, associate professor in the department of sociology and adjunct in the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, told ‘Marie Claire.’ “They mirrored the demographics of their institutions. Not only did they mirror them, they amplified them, so only the cream of the crop, the elite of the elite got in.”

It’s impossible to know how many minorities are in the Greek system nationwide. These numbers if they have ever been tallied, would’ve been done by the National Panhellenic Conferece (for sororities) or the North-American Interfraternity Conference (for fraternities). But evidently, there’s no incentives for these conferences to release this data, especially since it makes the Greek system look bad.

The University of Alabama has attempted to change some rules that would encourage diversity within Greek life. The administration released a video restating the school’s antidiscrimination stance. They also opened a process they coined “open bidding” which was intended to allow more minorities into the system. However, sororities instead opted for inviting people they already knew: their friends, cowokers, extended family members, etc. At the end of the process, the system had extended 72 new bids- but only 11 were African-American.

Obviously, Alabama’s racism, especially in Greek life, won’t change overnight. But hopefully, the excessive media attention will inspire other sororites and fraternities to become more diverse, and branch out from their traditions.