Following a spate of bad publicity after the campus newspaper alleged racial discrimination in the University of Alabama pledging system, President Judy Bonner released a video statement late Friday announcing diversity in the school's sororities, according to USA Today.
Seventy-two bids – offers to allow a person to pledge – have been offered by the mostly white sororities on the Tuscaloosa campus in the last week, Bonner said. Of those, 11 went to black women and three to women representing other minority groups, Bonner said. Four black women accepted and two women representing other minority groups accepted.
"This campus will be a place of inclusion and opportunity for all," Bonner said in the statement. "We will do the right thing, for the right reason, the right way."
The several-minute video was the second released this week by the president since The Crimson White, the campus news organization, published a piece detailing how the daughter of a state senator and granddaughter of a trustee – a young woman with high grades – was denied a chance to pledge 16 of the primarily white sororities on campus. The piece painted a picture of a staunchly segregated Panhellenic system on campus controlled, in some cases and in part, by alumni.
Read more at USA Today and click here to watch the video.