Subscribe
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE

For two Howard University students, not getting into Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. is worth suing over. In a lawsuit filed on Feb. 28 in federal court,  Laurin Compton and Lauren Cofield allege the historically black sorority violated their human rights while Howard did not do enough to protect them from being hazed. 

The Washington City Paper reports:

According to the lawsuit, Compton and Cofield’s trouble began when they were invited to “Ivy Day,” a ceremony for outgoing and prospective AKA members in the second semester of 2010. The two then-freshmen were expecting to find sisterhood, but what they allegedly found instead was hazing!

Some of the “hazing” rules sound innocuous, if extensive, like being forbidden from wearing the sorority colors of pink and green or any colors that could be blended into pink and green. In one humorous moment, the lawsuit notes that the pledges, who were called the “sweets,” couldn’t even wear white pearls.

Other hazing allegations are more serious. At one point, the pledges were told not to talk to non-sorority members at Howard, according to the suit. “[Alpha Kappa Alpha members] on campus addressed the sweets by calling them weak b-tches,” Compton’s mother wrote in a complaint to the sorority.

The mothers of both Compton and Cofield are both members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, which was founded at Howard in 1908. The latter’s mother complained about their daughter’s difficulty getting down, leading the two aspirants to be ostracized and allegedly called “snitch-friendly” or “snitch-sympathists.”

As for the whole “human rights” aspect:

The aspiring sisters say they’re being discriminated against because, as legacies, their mothers were also in the sorority. In other words, they’re being treated differently because of their “familial status”—a protected class under the D.C. Human Rights Act. In addition to monetary damages, the would-be Alpha Kappa Alphas want the court to grant an injunction putting the pledging process on hold.

J. Wyndal Gordon, the outspoken attorney who calls himself the “warrior lawyer,” is representing Cofield and Compton. Like Howard and Alpha Kappa Alpha’s national organization, Gordon didn’t respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

So basically Compton and Cofield were not chosen as members of the school’s chapter, feel entitled to membership because they are legacies and somehow feel suing is their best path to “sisterhood.” Alrighty then.

Good luck getting down with an alumni chapter, ladies.

Photo: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc.