"Brother" has a new meaning for members of Psi Upsilon fraternity.
Psi U voted last month to become a coed fraternity, thereby making it the only residential, coed greek organization on campus. The decision has already begun to take effect, as two members of its nine-person pledge class this year are female.
The Interfraternity Council and student affairs administrators said they are pleased with Psi U's decision.
"I thought right off the bat that there would be no problem with [Psi U's decision]," said Trinity junior Lex Wolf, IFC president. "Each fraternity has the right to its own self-development. The more diverse opportunities we can offer, the better we serve our constituencies."
IFC did require Psi U to send out an alumni newsletter about the change and share alumni response with the IFC. IFC also asked Psi U's national headquarters to send a letter endorsing the decision.
Janet Dickerson, vice president for student affairs, said Psi U's decision "does not indicate any trend" for the possible future of other fraternities on campus.
Psi U is the only fraternity on campus that has the option of becoming coed, because its national bylaws do not mention or specify the gender of members. None of the four other national residential fraternities that are allowed to have coed chapters have chapters on Duke's campus.
Two other Psi U chapters nationwide are currently coed. The Duke chapter of Psi U has had one female member in its history, when it was a local fraternity in the 1970s.
Women who pledge Psi U would not be allowed to pledge a campus sorority also, said Trinity junior Katie Higgins, president of the Panhellenic Council.
Higgins said she did not know whether national bylaws would allow any campus sorority to become coed.
"If a group really thought [going coed] would strengthen its individual situation, then it would obviously be considered," she said.
Although Psi U has a membership of 16 brothers, uncommonly small for a Duke chapter of a national fraternity, Trinity senior Paul Koss, Psi U president, said the decision to become coed was not an effort to increase the group's size.
The fraternity has been discussing such a change for about 10 years, he said, and. voted in January to extend bids to women.
"We are a very small, diverse group with lots of different viewpoints, and we thought this was the right decision for us in keeping with that," Koss said. "We don't feel friendship is an exclusively male thing."
Indeed, Psi U's long-standing coed social membership program, which aligns students as "friends" of the fraternity, was a strong factor in deciding to go coed, Koss said. Currently, all five program members are female, although a sixth male member graduated in December. Three of the women will graduate in May; the other two were given bids for this spring's pledge class.
Psi U will probably need to do some publicity work to make female students aware of the coed fraternity in the coming year, Koss said.
"A lot will depend on the impact of the women who are coming in this year, but I think we'll definitely try to do some sort of publicity," he said. The fraternity has not set a cap or quota on how many women can pledge.
"We brought [the two female rushees] up because they invited the kind of character we're looking for," Koss said.
Going coed should have little effect on the fraternity's normal operations, Koss said. Psi U will be working with IFC to examine its rushing and pledging practices.
Trinity sophomore Chris Hester, IFC vice president for rush and pledging, said that if any changes are necessary, they will most likely be made to pledging and not to rush, as "rush is just a getting-to-know-you thing. With pledging, we just want to make sure that there's gender-equality included. We don't want to discriminate or offend the girls. I don't anticipate any major problems."
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