Alpha Phi sisters at UC Santa Barbara have gone public with explosive allegations that an outside recruitment adviser systematically sidelined women of color during fall rush.
The chapter president, Alana Nielsen, told the Daily Nexus that the exclusion was impossible to miss once members compared notes. “All of us started to notice,” she said. “It was not just one. It was not just a few. It was not just the women of color. It was all of us.”
The trouble surfaced during the first round of recruitment on Sept. 26, when roughly 1,200 hopefuls had initially participated. Members were reportedly ordered to leave while three representatives from Alpha Phi International decided which candidates would advance. When sisters returned, the pool had collapsed to approximately 250 women, and the change was stark.
“There was a large and noticeably diverse group of women who were missing from the pool of potential new members that had returned,” Nielsen told the student newspaper.
The numbers made little sense to members who had been told roughly 90% of prospective recruits mutually wanted to return to Alpha Phi.
Sky Achola, a Black third-year political science major, arrived at the house Sept. 27 expecting to meet potential new members and found herself erased entirely from the schedule. “Pretty much all the women of color in my family system, except for my ‘little,’ who was white, were pulled from all the rounds,” she told the Santa Barbara News-Press.
Achola said she sat in shock for three days before members began pressing questions and she was belatedly assigned to one round.
Frustration crested when Nielsen requested a chapter-wide meeting and was allegedly told by an outside representative that discussion was unnecessary and the day should end on a “happy note.” She ignored the advice and gathered members in the chapter room anyway.
What followed was raw and chaotic. “Girls [were] standing up screaming,” recruitment director Emerson Novosel told the Daily Nexus. “It [was] like a revolution happening right now. Like standing up, crying, screaming, and I had never felt so empowered.”
Members accused the outside leadership of betraying the chapter’s values. The volunteer adviser, a UCSB alumna who had assisted the chapter for two previous years, reportedly walked out after objecting to the confrontation.
That night, chapter recruitment directors met with the two remaining international representatives and learned the volunteer had controlled both which prospective members advanced and which sisters participated in recruitment groups. The adviser was subsequently reported and removed.
“It had [become] so disgustingly clear how it was just manipulation, just blatant manipulation to every part of the process with whatever her hidden agenda is,” Novosel told the Daily Nexus.
The scandal detonated across Yik Yak, where anonymous posts demanding accountability collected hundreds and sometimes more than 1,000 upvotes, according to the News-Press. But Achola pushed back against any framing that treated sisters of color as mere observers. “The women of color in the sorority were discriminated against too,” she told the News-Press.
Despite the uproar, Alpha Phi International took control of the remaining recruitment rather than suspend it. The chapter filled its quota, though it remained unclear whether women excluded earlier could still receive invitations through informal bidding.
On Oct. 1, members issued a collective statement through an anonymous Instagram account, committing to fight from inside the system. “We have chosen to remain in the recruitment process because we believe that our members have the power to create meaningful change from within,” the statement read.
Alpha Phi International later dispatched representatives from its health, wellness and accountability department, including for an Oct. 5 meeting. Nielsen said the chapter is now gathering member statements and pressing to overhaul recruitment procedures.
The emotional toll on Achola was severe. “We were extremely hurt by this entire thing. We were discriminated against. We were tokenized. We were used,” she told the Daily Nexus.
Nielsen acknowledged the path ahead with national leadership would be long. “That’s going to be a relationship that’s going to take a long time to repair,” she said.