According to an Associated Press report published in the Kansas City Star and referenced in today’s Inside Higher Ed, the University of Missouri at Columbia has given up trying to make a fraternity explicitly chartered for Christians abide by the university’s non-discrimination policy. AP writer Alan Scher Zagier wrote:

The 10-member Missouri chapter was formed in April and previously approved by campus leaders, Tracey said. But on Dec. 7, an administrator advised the chapter’s president by e-mail that the fraternity must comply with campus rules forbidding discrimination based on “race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability” and status as a Vietnam War veteran.

The university reversed course after Tracey responded with a letter noting several legal precedents protecting religious student groups’ First Amendment rights of free association.

In response, a university attorney acknowledged that the campus nondiscrimination policy “shall not be interpreted in such a way as to violate the legal rights of religious organizations.”

Nick Evans, the university’s coordinator of student organizations, said his department wasn’t initially aware of that exemption. “At the time, we were unaware of that clause,” he said. “That’s why we pressed the issue.”

I’m not sure what “clause” Evans is talking about (see the final paragraph of the quotation); surely he doesn’t mean the “free association” clause of the United States Constitution! Then again, he might. Who knows?

But the free association issue is not what really caught my attention in this article. Rather, it’s the name of the fraternity: Beta Upsilon Chi (ΒΥΧ); according to the article, “its Greek letters stand for Brothers Under Christ.” The article also mentioned two similar sororities, Sigma Phi Lambda (ΣΦΛ), “Sisters for the Lord,” and Kappa Upsilon Chi (ΚΥΧ), “Keeping Under Christ.” Even a minimal knowledge of Greek will enable you to immediately recognize that all these clubs have done is dress up a three-letter English phrase in Greek letters—they haven’t actually adopted Greek names at all. I suppose the ΥX could be considered genuine Greek, if the Υ is for ὑπὸ rather than “under”—a nice coincidence for these utterly Anglophone clubs. But Β can stand for “brother” only by mere phonetic coincidence; it should be ἀδελφοὶ ὑπὸ Χριστοῦ (adelphoi hupo Christou). Similarly, you can’t get a Greek acronym for “Sisters for the Lord” that will come out as ΣΦΛ; instead, you need something more like ἀδελφαὶ ὑπὲρ τοῦ κυρίου (adelphai huper tou kuriou). I’m aware that many fraternities and sororities do this sort of thing. But if every fraternity were jumping off a cliff …

Back when I was an undergraduate at Abilene Christian University, we had only local “social clubs,” not chapters of national fraternities and sororities. For a couple of years I was active in Gamma Sigma Phi (ΓΣΦ), initials derived from the club motto, γνῶθι σεαυτοῦς φίλοι (gnothi seautous philoi), which the club’s founders had adapted from the lintel of Apollo’s temple at Delphi (great source for a Christian motto, don’t you think?), changing the original σεαυτόν to a plural and adding φίλοι, which they incorrectly took to mean “brothers” (it really means “friends”). Yes, a key word was mistranslated, but at least our letters derived from actual Greek. not English written with a Greek alphabet.