Attendance at the Delta Sigma Theta sorority’s “Icebreaker” event Friday was down sharply as a result of subterfuge by members of the Iota Phi Theta fraternity, sorority members said.
Sorority members said the Friday night party at the Newport attracted about 800 people, 600 fewer than most years. The Delta Sigma Theta members said fraternity members posted fliers around campus claiming the event had been canceled.
Delta members said the fliers, which they first noticed Tuesday night, were posted in an effort to draw students to a fraternity event instead.
“We believe it is the members of Iota Phi Theta fraternity,” said Kedada Bethel, adviser for Delta. “They had an event scheduled for the same night as our Icebreaker, and we have eye witnesses of someone in their fraternity putting up the fliers.”
The poster read, “We are SORRY to inform you that the Party at the Newport Music Hall on Friday Sept. 24 2004 has been cancelled!!” Pictured on the fliers was a dead elephant lying on its side with its tusks removed.
The sorority uses the elephant as a symbol, Bethel said.
Janaya Trotter, president of the sorority, said Iota Phi Theta has tried having a rival Icebreaker in the past, but always ended up canceling it as ordered by the Pan-Hellenic Council, the governing body for the nine historically black sororities and fraternities on campus.
This year, she said, despite the declaration by the council in April that the official Icebreaker was to be held by Delta Sigma Theta and not Iota Phi Theta, the fraternity disregarded the ruling and had a party anyway.
Chibundu Nake, president of Iota Phi Theta, said his fraternity did not post the fliers.
Nake said he received a phone call Tuesday night from someone outside the fraternity telling him the fliers were posted. A member of the fraternity looked for the fliers to see if the claims were true. As he was outside his car taking a clloser look, a Delta member walked by and saw him standing near the flier. Nake said he believes that led the members of the sorority to believe his fraternity was responsible for the fliers.
“If they are using the logic that just because we were near the fliers that we hung them, than we can use that same logic and say that they were the ones that hung them because they were there, too,” Nake said.
Council officials were unavailable for comment.
Nake said his group has tried to compromise with the sorority on the issue of competing parties.
Through the presentation of a proposal to the council in May, the fraternity said it would work with the sorority to hold the Icebreaker together, splitting all costs and profits down the middle, he said.
Trotter said the proposal required the sorority to move the night of its Icebreaker to Saturday, but the sorority refused because it did not feel it should have to change a tradition.
“We had the party planned for that night since 2003, and they only planned it this year, but we tried to compromise anyway,” Nake said. “We have no problem with them. They have a problem with us. We go to their events and support them because we are all working for the same cause. They just don’t support us at all.”
Nake said that 10 years ago OSU enacted a rule that said no annual event could be a party.
Delta cannot legally claim its Icebreaker is the only one allowed to be called an Icebreaker, he said.
He said the sorority should not be upset that the fraternity had a party on the same night.
Trotter said that at a Kappa Alpha Psi event Monday, members of Iota Phi Theta were pushing sorority members while line walking. She also said that a member of the fraternity scratched one of her sorority sister’s cars.
“We try to uphold our principles and behave like women, and we don’t understand why a group of grown men are keying cars, putting up posters and threatening us,” Trotter said.
Nake said that at the event, both groups were both performing step routines – complex performances including sychronized percussive movement. Members of the sorority were purposely getting in the fraternity members’ way to make it seem as though the fraternity members were knocking into the sorority members.
He said both groups were bumping into each other as a result of a certain step in which their elbows were out at their sides.
“We don’t disrespect women,” Nake said. “We are a first-class organization.”
The car of one of his fraternity brother’s was egged and scratched, and a side-view mirror was knocked off Thursday, he said.
The event is a tradition for the sisters of Delta Sigma Theta and has been held annually at OSU since the early 1940s to raise money for programming and charity events including a scholarship program, a Thanksgiving event in which the group provides food for families and a Christmas program that provides underprivileged students with winter coats, hats and school supplies, Trotter said.
Trotter would not give the amount of money typically made by the event, saying she did not want to encourage other groups to start competing events.
“I would just like to see (Iota Phi Theta) respect people’s traditions, respect PHC as a whole, respect women and act like men,” Trotter said. “We are less concerned about what they did – but more concerned with raising money for what our chapter has always done and what we need to do for the community.”
