This is the first article in a two-part series on race in the Greek system. A second installment on how Greeks are addressing the issue will appear on
Monday.

On the Friday night before Halloween, Pi Kappa Alpha President Jared Averbuch watched something strange unfold at a party at his Washtenaw Avenue fraternity house.

It wasn't the number of people - an estimated 1,500 cramming Pike's dance floors, porches and narrow hallways - that was unusual.

It was their faces: a mingling of black and white on a level he had never seen.

And it wasn't the festive "Get Your Booze On" emblazoned across the event's custom-made T-shirts that made him smirk with pride.

It was the Greek letters above the slogan, the ones that listed Phi Beta Sigma, a traditionally black fraternity, as the party's co-sponsor.

The feeling was something "you can't put words on," Averbuch said.

He described a gushing of energy and excitement so profound that its afterglow spilled out into the streets and stayed there for weeks.

This was the kind of transcendence of traditional racial boundaries that the diversity advocates in the University administration dream about.

But it takes a particular social allure - something the administration often lacks - to pull off an event on this scale.

Student organizations have a unique ability to break down the racial, ethnic and religious boundaries that often split the student body.

Of these groups, few are better positioned to create change than the University's huge network of fraternities and sororities.

And now, according to executives in the Greek system's four governing councils, the desire for action is taking hold.

Greek leaders are discussing social events designed to break down racial barriers, like the one at Pike, on an unprecedented scale.

This year, growing numbers of historically black and Latino fraternities and sororities are signing up for Greek Week, a seven-day torrent of Hellenic pride in March that has been traditionally dominated by majority-white houses.

Last year, a chapter of Pi Lambda Phi, a fraternity founded at Yale in 1895 to counter the racial exclusivity of the era, sprang up on campus.

Randal Seriguchi, vice president of the historically black National Pan-Hellenic Council, said change is overdue.

"This is time to wake up," he said.

EFFECTS OF PROP 2

Averbuch might appear an unlikely candidate to usher in a new era of campus diversity: a white native of West Bloomfield, he wore a backward Michigan baseball cap, a polo shirt and a single earring in his left lobe during an interview last week.

But that's the role he has found himself in.

Last Monday, Averbuch was inaugurated as president of the Interfraternity Council, the University's largest governing Greek body. Over the next year, he will direct the council through the aftermath of Proposal 2, a ballot initiative that banned the use of affirmative action by public institutions in Michigan. The passage of similar initiatives in Washington and California has led to dramatic declines in minority enrollment at those states' flagship public universities.

Two days before he took office, Averbuch reflected on the Halloween party's success in the dim orange light of the Michigan Union basement.

"All of our big parties in the past have been the same," he said. "A lot of people, dancing - it was like going through the routines. When there's new people, people get excited to go out and make a new friend."

He sat about 15 feet away from the area in the Union that many call the "Black Hole" because of its perceived status as a meeting place for black students.

"Even though we're diverse, people think there's a lot of segregation," Averbuch said. But events like the last month's party, he said, can fix that.

"It's like integration," he said. "(People no longer say) it's one group of people over here, and one group of people over here."

In an interview two weeks earlier, Seriguchi was more explicit.

"The thing is that minority groups here tend to stay with each other," he said. "It's sort of a hesitant attitude on their part to expand their horizons. I think the Greeks could play a larger role in changing that."

The affirmative action ban has made these issues more immediate.

"It's crunch time now, game time," Seriguchi said, leaning forward in his seat. "People are seeing that now we definitely have a real thing against us."

A BRIEF HISTORY

No matter how good the intentions, cross-council coordination can be a thorny task.

Since the University's first two fraternities were founded in 1845, the Greek system has evolved into a complex and layered institution.

Today, it includes nearly 60 chapters and more than 2,000 members.

At its head are four councils, each defined by a specific set of chapters, mission statements and goals.