Laurin Compton and Lauren Cofield, two Howard University senior students and their mothers have filed a lawsuit under the D.C. Human Rights Act in the federal court, Feb.28, against Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority for denying them membership for a second time and violating their human rights.
Their lawsuit alleges that they were denied the membership for the second time because the sorority decided to restrict their offer to only limited members, which included younger students. Their applications were pushed to the end of the list they claim because of their legacies (both their mothers were sorority sisters).
The students allege that it is their birthright to attain sisterhood because they are daughters of women in the sorority and they should have been given priority.
As a result, they feel that they have been discriminated because of their 'familial status.'
The plaintiffs are asking $75,000 in damages and the sorority to be stopped from accepting new members, or to provide membership to the students.
The lawsuit was also filed against the University for failing to protect them from being hazed.
The students told abc that they did attend recruitment events as freshmen in 2009 but experienced abuse in the second semester in 2010 when they attended 'Ivy Day'," a ceremony for outgoing and prospective AKA members.
They were not allowed to wear the official sorority colors of pink and green or any colors that combine with pink and green and also were banned from wearing white pearls.
In addition, they were told to pick up dry cleaning, not to talk to non-sorority members or eat at a particular restaurant; they addressed them by their full names and forced them to pick up sorority members from the airport.
They were mentally tormented and were allegedly called 'sweets', 'snitch-friendly', 'snitch-sympathists' and 'weak bitches,' complained Cofield's mother.
Both their mothers were members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, which was founded in 1908 at the university.
