Skip to content
Home
>
Opinion
>
Sororities go woke – and...

Sororities go woke – and taxpayers helped pay for it

By: Lesley Davis - August 22, 2025

  • Lesley Davis says American taxpayers unwittingly funded a radical ideological takeover that discriminated against women by pushing men into single sex organizations and private spaces.

When most Americans think of sororities, they might imagine the bonds of sisterhood: women mentoring women, philanthropy, leadership development, and lifelong friendships. What they don’t expect is that these same organizations were some of the largest recipients of the federal taxpayer-funded Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) during Covid—even as they were openly discriminating against the very women they claimed to represent. 

At least 13 National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) sororities took nearly $3 million dollars in taxpayer-funded COVID bailouts—while simultaneously forcing radical gender ideology on its members and punishing any woman who dared to speak against it. 

The Long and Then Very Quick History 

In recent years, national sorority leadership (NSL) and their governing body NPC underwent an almost sudden and radical shift, embracing progressive “trans” ideology under the guise of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI). This was not an organic groundswell led by local chapters. Nor did it occur thoughtfully and transparently with local collaboration. These top-down policies were foisted upon local, unsuspecting chapters by NSL during a time of national chaos. 

In direct opposition to sororities’ nearly 175+ year history of being women’s only organizations, NSL changed their admission policies. While they claimed to be “women’s only” on their public websites, behind closed membership walls, they defined women to include “men who identify as women” and required under threat of lawsuit that their local women-only chapters admit them into membership. 

What deceptive, Orwellian nonsense. 

This leftist transformation began when the NPC established an “Equity Audit Committee” and hired DEI consultants like the Kirwan Institute, inspired by the ideals of self-proclaimed Marxists Angela Davis and Ibram X. Kendi. Unsurprisingly, such “input” fundamentally altered the structure and values of the entire NSL. 

But the year of Black Lives Matter protests and the Covid years brought about an explosive fundamental change, with NPC organizations committing to DEI racial and social justice training, and updating membership policies to allow “trans-identifying” men into full sorority membership, sharing without limit formerly female-only private living quarters and other single-sex spaces. 

Your Tax Dollars Funded: “You Must Accept Men as Women.”

During these tumultuous years, taxpayers gave at minimum almost $3 million in PPP handouts to these sororities according to their own 990 forms. American taxpayers were unwittingly funding a radical ideological takeover that not only blatantly discriminated against women by pushing men into their single sex organizations and private spaces—in some cases, it aggressively helped silence, ”re-educate,” punish, and even purge members who dared to disagree. 

A few examples: 

● Sigma Kappa (received almost $200,000 in PPP): proudly initiated a 37 year-old “alumna initiate” who is a “trans-identified” male. 

● Chi Omega (received over $750,000 in PPP): dismissed a man, not because he is a man, but because he does not “identify as a woman.” 

● Kappa Kappa Gamma (received almost $200,000 in PPP): forced a chapter at the University of Wyoming to accept Artemis Langford—a 6’2′′, 260‐lb male who “identifies as female.” Objections from local sorority members about his admission and noticeable physical arousal around them were dismissed as bigotry. 

● KKG also initiated an“alumna initiate” who is a trans-identified male and who was fast tracked to NSL. 

● KKG also booted Patsy Levang and Cheryl Tuck-Smith, two members for over 50 years—for opposing their sorority’s decision to admit biological males. 

● Delta Gamma (received more than $225,000 in PPP): initiated a male student “who identifies as a woman” at Georgia College and State University. 

● Emily Hines of Louisiana State University— kicked out of Alpha Phi after posting a TikTok questioning the current cultural obsession with gender identity and criticizing then-Assistant Secretary for Health Rachael Levine for his “transgender” identity. Alpha Phi received over $150,000 in PPP. 

● Michele Bunker, Carolyn Cook Maiden, Carolyn Carroll Neese, Stephanie Mire Theriot, all alumnae of Phi Mu—Stripped of their membership after defending the sorority’s single-sex status and posting about their Christian faith. Phi Mu received over $100,000 in PPP. 

● Kellyn Weber of Shippensburg University – a potential new member of Alpha Omicron Pi had her bid revoked due to social media posts including conservative views on immigration, DEI, and males in women’s sports. AOPi received $120,000 in PPP. 

● Payton McNabbkicked out of Delta Zeta At Western Carolina University after confronting a man in a dress in the women’s bathroom. DZ received almost $30k in PPP according to ProPublica. 

These women didn’t violate the mission of sororities—they defended it and their sisters. Yet woke national leadership kicked them out for refusing to affirm that men belong in sororities, even as your tax dollars kept these organizations afloat.

It raises the question: should these sororities have ever received millions in forgivable taxpayer-supported loans as they were openly discriminating against and punishing women? 

The Federal Government Strongly Weighs In 

On June 2, the Trump Administration’s Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights announced June as “Title IX Month,” and declared a self-evident truth: “A sorority that admits male students is no longer a sorority by definition and thus loses the Title IX statutory exemption for a sorority’s single‐sex membership practices.” 

Translation: if you admit men, you are no longer a women’s organization. 

The DOE simultaneously launched investigations into the University of Wyoming and Colorado public schools for allowing males into female spaces, including sororities and overnight housing. 

The DOE’s statement is a shot across the bow—and long overdue after years of the Biden administration, NSL, and NPC forcing these discriminatory policies on women. The message is clear: sororities must choose between remaining women’s organizations or they will become co-ed, forced to admit men on equal footing with women. 

The Future 

We will win this fight—by demanding transparency, exposing the money trail, holding leadership accountable, and by protecting women, not wokeness. Across the nation, we are coming together in overwhelming numbers as a collective sisterhood, standing firmly for reality, biology, and truth. 

And in doing so, we will ensure that America’s daughters inherit sororities that are true female-only sisterhoods that value and protect their privacy, dignity, mentorship and safety—and are not unsuspecting nefarious training grounds for radical political indoctrination.

About the Author(s)
author profile image

Lesley Davis

Lesley A. Davis lives in Flowood, Mississippi. She is a long-time advocate for women and children, an attorney, President and CEO of Mississippi Advocacy Group.