n the midst of the largest Greek system in the nation, 13 chapters remain unseen, unheard.

In efforts to appeal to incoming freshmen, the newly established United Greek Council will attempt to promote multicultural Greek organizations in hopes of increasing membership in their Greek community.

The minority Greek community, which is considerably smaller than mainstream Panhellenic Council (PHC) and Interfraternity Council (IFC), decided to unite and continue marketing what their chapters have to offer. This newly found union created the United Greek Council.

“United Greek Council (UGC) is the representation for all culturally based Greeks on campus,” president Richard Chen said.

UGC will be the fourth Greek governing body on campus, alongside PHC, IFC, and Black Greek Council (BGC). The goal of UGC is to function much like any other Greek governing body does for their respective communities, said Chen, senior in engineering.

“We have just as much ‘power’ as any other council will,” Chen said.

UGC consists of 13 culturally based chapters, which range from Asian-American chapters, Latino/a chapters and a South Asian fraternity. The distinctive feature of UGC is that as a multicultural organization, the houses must unite the culturally based Greek community and work together, Chen said.

Lisa Moore, assistant to the Dean of Students at the Office of Greek Affairs, said the idea for a council of this nature has been brought up in the past, but students have only recently shown the commitment and cooperation to actually do it.

Martha Ramirez, a member of the Latina sorority Alpha Delta Rho, said minority Greeks have talked about a fourth council for years but couldn’t put it together until last spring. The majority of the young chapters needed to grow their membership and their national recognition first.

“People were just ready to do this at different times,” Moore said.

Ramirez, senior in LAS, said there was Latino Greek Council many years ago, but it failed because of petty misunderstandings among houses. She said this made people wary to try and form a similar governing body again.

Competition between chapters for members and recognition blocked cooperation in the past, said Chris Garcia, member of the Latino fraternity Sigma Lambda Beta. Because old members have moved and graduated, the Greek community can now mend old issues, he said.

“We haven’t had anyone with the motivation to do it. There have been long standing negative attitudes about each other. We weren’t being mutually productive,” said Garcia, a recent graduate.

Chen said he felt cultural Greek houses did not have the representation they deserved – they needed to put differences aside and unite. Currently, 28 percent of all the chapters at the University have culturally based interests. However, their membership reaches about 100 members, compared to IFC’s 2,940 members and PHC’s 2,900 members.

“We are all about culture and teaching each other our culture, and we can’t accomplish that if we segregate ourselves further,” Ramirez said.

Moore said that because there are major differences between the cultural organizations and the non-cultural organizations, the organizations became frustrated with issues that didn’t apply to them, such as housing, serenades and even recruitment. Chen said they did not feel their respective councils were addressing or identifying with their needs.

“The formation of UGC created a way for us to finally have our voice heard. It takes the right amount of people to voice their concerns,” Chen said.

In contrast with IFC and PHC chapters, many UGC chapters do not have houses. Garcia said this is because of liability and insurance issues. Marcus Coleman, president of BGC, agrees that one resource IFC and PHC houses have that BGC and UGC chapters don’t is houses.

Although there may not be a big mansion with the letters Sigma Lambda Beta on it, Garcia said he doesn’t mind. He said his fraternity is small organization on purpose and that they firmly believe the quality of their members is more important than the quantity. He said because they do not have a house, this allows for better recruitment.

“We don’t recruit based on filling a house. We can have flexibility in choosing members,” Garcia said.

UGC provides that flexibility and acts as a reliable source for any chapters who need anything, Chen said. They can comfortably come to UGC, where as before they had to appear before IFCC or PHC.

Chen said they made a constitution and a risk management guide similar to IFC and PHC, but it will be appropriately disproportionate to UGC’s size. UGC can’t change rules for culture, but they can accommodate for size, Chen said.

“It’s not so much that we requested someone govern us, but you need to be part of a council and be recognized,” Garcia said.

Chen said they started talking and creating their constitution during Spring 2003 and presented themselves to the Board of Fraternity Affairs and the Board of Sorority Affairs in the fall. They were established in January 2004, Moore said.

One fear UGC had was having a chapter drop out of IFC, PHC or BGC, and then try to join UGC out of spite for their old council, Garcia said. Rules were created that assure that only chapters with legitimate reasons and desires to join UGC will be accepted.

According to Ramirez, the council itself has been working well together their first semester, despite the obvious challenge that they are all from different backgrounds.

“There are a lot of things that could have gone wrong, luckily they didn’t. They have the responsibility to set the precedent,” Ramirez said.

Garcia said he doesn’t see the differences among the organizations as a problem.

“Diversity in this day and age can only help us,” he said.