Members of UC Santa Barbara’s Alpha Phi sorority are speaking out after a flurry of anonymous posts on an app widely used by UCSB students accused the chapter of discrimination against women of color during its fall recruitment process.
Members of the Gamma Beta chapter say an outside representative from Alpha Phi International made key recruitment decisions without their knowledge, resulting in prospective members of color being dropped from the recruitment pool and Black and other women of color already in the sorority receiving fewer opportunities to participate in recruitment this year.
The allegations have gone viral across UCSB through Yik Yak, an anonymous, location-based social media app popular on college campuses, where posts with hundreds, and in some cases more than a thousand, upvotes have called for Alpha Phi to be held accountable.
But chapter President Alana Nielson told the News-Press that members themselves started to question the recruitment process after noticing who was — and who wasn’t — returning for subsequent rounds, eventually leading the chapter to confront outside leadership and push for answers.
Members say something was wrong
Nielson said Alpha Phi International sent three outside representatives to assist the chapter with recruitment this year. Two served in leadership consultant positions, while the third was a volunteer.
Recruitment started off with roughly 1,200 potential new members, Nielson said. Chapter members spoke with prospective members and recorded their impressions, including whether they believed each woman would be a good fit for Alpha Phi.
Members were informed that those assessments would be used to determine who returned for subsequent rounds.
But after the first round, chapter members — including Nielson and the executive board — were sent home while Alpha Phi International representatives handled the selections. When members returned for the next round, the pool had been cut extensively to just 250 members.
“There was clearly a large and noticeably diverse group of women who were missing,” she said, and that “all of our members felt that those women did not reflect the women we had actually reported on and wanted to see return.”
At the same time, another pattern was becoming apparent among the women already inside Alpha Phi.
On the morning of Sept. 27, Sky Achola, a Black member of the chapter, arrived at the Alpha Phi house expecting to spend her day recruiting potential new members.
Instead, she looked at the schedule and found her name missing from every round.
“At first, I was just a bit confused,” Achola told the News-Press. “I had thought they had, like, misput things or there were still some rounds coming out.”
Then members started comparing schedules.
Within Achola’s own sorority “family” — which she described as a network of members connected through the chapter’s mentorship system — it became apparent that there was a striking divide.
“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 said.
Achola eventually was added to one round of recruitment, she said, but only once members started questioning what had taken place.
“A very large number of the women of color in our own chapter were being left out of those opportunities, or were being placed in significantly fewer rounds compared to many of the white women in our chapter,” Nielson said.
For Achola, this was a pattern that was personal.
Initially, she thought her absence from the schedule was some kind of administrative error. But then she started talking with another woman of color from the sorority, who began crying as they compared what they had witnessed.
“I was like, this is complete discrimination,” she said. “I don’t know how I missed it.”
Achola said she and several other members went to Panhellenic representatives overseeing recruitment to voice their concerns.
“We wanted a conversation, we wanted transparency, and from the very beginning, we wanted accountability,” she said.
The chapter has since publicly acknowledged that “critical decisions were made without the knowledge or approval of our members or executive board” and said the outside individual responsible was reported and “removed from her position immediately.”
“We are deeply saddened for PMs who were not given a chance as a result of the external representative,” members wrote in the statement, referring to potential members.
‘Do not let them send you home’
By the end of the day’s recruitment rounds, the frustration inside Alpha Phi house had reached a breaking point.
Nielson said she approached one of the outside representatives and told her the chapter needed an opportunity to talk.
The answer, Nielson said, was that it wasn’t necessary.
Instead, she was told the day should end “on a happy note,” with music and a dance party before members went home.
At this point, Nielson determined this was no longer a possibility.
While members were upstairs completing their post-recruitment evaluations, she said she quietly moved room to room, telling them not to leave.
“They are going to try and send you home,” Nielson recalled telling members, “but do not let them send you home without giving you an opportunity to speak.”
Eventually, members gathered in the chapter room.
One member stood up.
Then another did.
And another.
“One by one, other women started standing up and sharing how they felt,” Nielson said.
Achola remembers screaming, crying and confusion as members demanded answers. But she also recalls something else.
“I think something that really stood out to me is that even the white members of our chapter were standing up, like really feeling and sharing in our pain,” Achola said. “It was real solidarity.”
For Achola, this experience carried a particular heaviness.
She said one of the primary reasons she chose Alpha Phi’s chapter was because it was one that had historically prided itself on diversity, and that she stands behind those values.
Growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, Achola said she was no stranger to racism and discrimination. But in moving to Southern California, she said, she had hoped to leave some of those experiences behind her.
What she found most difficult to witness was younger women of color in the chapter confronting discrimination themselves.
“They had never experienced discrimination in their life,” Achola said. “They felt tokenized, used, and were super, super upset.”
‘Outside volunteer removed’
After the confrontation, members learned more about what had happened behind the scenes, Nielson said.
The chapter’s two recruitment directors met with the two other Alpha Phi International representatives that night to determine what had happened, Nielson said.
Nielson did not attend the meeting but said that was when members learned the outside volunteer had been responsible for making key decisions without the chapter’s knowledge or approval.
The volunteer was subsequently reported to Alpha Phi International and then removed from the UCSB house that night, Nielson said.
Neither Nielson nor Achola identified the volunteer to the News-Press.
Recruitment continued
The controversy left the chapter with another decision: whether to finish recruitment.
Nielson said withdrawing wouldn’t have reversed what had happened, and because Panhellenic recruitment is a mutual selection process involving multiple chapters, Alpha Phi could not simply invite previously eliminated prospective members back.
Ultimately, the chapter chose to continue with its recruiting process, but with “members taking greater control over what remained,” Nielson said.
“Continuing recruitment wasn’t about moving past what happened or pretending it didn’t happen,” Nielson said. “It was about saying, we’re not gonna let this experience define who we are or how we operate moving forward.”
By the final round, Nielson said that the chapter had taken the “driver’s seat” and ended up filling its recruitment quota.
Achola said the chapter’s inability to bring back prospective members weighs on her.
“It’s unfortunate that we can’t go back,” she said.
Chapter faces campus backlash
With the chapter’s decision to continue, the controversy has continued as well.
Achola said that some of the online reaction obscured the experiences of women of color within the chapter.
“The women of color in the sorority were discriminated against too,” Achola said.
“It’s also been tough when you have other members on our campus calling us racist, but all we’ve been trying to do is, like, push against racism.”
Achola said that next, she hopes to see an investigation.
Nielsen said Alpha Phi International has sent representatives from its health, wellness and accountability department to meet with chapter members. Within the chapter, members are also working on changes to recruitment procedures and pushing for greater transparency and control over future recruitment.
Achola said she stepped into a leadership role after other members asked for her guidance through the fallout.
“As a Black woman, in a time where I have been through so many experiences like this, I knew that my presence for these younger girls specifically was something that could really help,” she said.
“When it comes to racial trauma, I will always step up to the plate,” Achola said. “I just — I had to.”
