NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. – Independent Women’s Law Center (IWLC) Senior Fellow May Mailman and Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority alumnae who have been integral to the fight to keep sororities female – Patsy Levang and Cheryl Tuck-Smith – joined Fox News “The Faulkner Focus” to discuss the retaliation they faced for standing up for sisterhood.
Esteemed past Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG) National Foundation President Patsy Levang and long-time member and active contributor Cheryl Tuck-Smith have been supporting the Kappa women in Wyoming who were denied the all-women sisterhood they were promised when the chapter admitted a biological male into the sorority. IWLC is now appealing the lawsuit, Westenbroek v. Kappa Kappa Gamma, in the Tenth Circuit. The opening brief was filed last week. The plaintiffs are seeking to hold Kappa to the sisterhood promised to them.
Last month, Levang and Tuck-Smith were kicked out of Kappa Kappa Gamma by national leadership shortly after they joined the fight to uphold Kappa values by keeping the sorority female-only. After over a half century of involvement and commitment to Kappa Kappa Gamma, Levang and Tuck-Smith were informed of the final vote for dismissal, with the Kappa Executive Director saying in part that Kappa “regrets the necessity of this action.”
About 50+ years of dedicated Kappa membership and leadership:
“I became a volunteer in 1970 and have volunteered for all of those years until about 2013. And in that process, I met Kappas all over the nation. So for me to connect with the Kappas, I didn’t have to break anyone’s rules to do that; I had friends, Kappa friends all over the country. And I did raise a lot of money for the Kappa Foundation at one time, and then to have them come back and we reached out, tried to have a conversation – no conversation – and kick me out, I was surprised. I was actually quite surprised that they went that way,” Levang shared on Fox News.
About deciding to stand up for sisterhood:
“What happened was we decided to speak out. And when the plaintiffs had to disclose their names in the lawsuit, and they were so brave to do that, being young women on a college campus, I thought if they can be that brave, so can I. So I sent out letters to hundreds of alumni associations explaining what was happening in Laramie, Wyoming. And I was told I couldn’t do that,” Tuck-Smith told Fox News.
About preserving single-sex spaces:
“Right, that’s at the heart of the center of the underlying lawsuit, which is that ‘woman’ is now being defined by Kappa to be its opposite. These women, alongside 450 other Kappa alumni, filed a brief yesterday in the underlying case.Women deserve to have sororities. They deserve to have single-sex spaces,” said Mailman.
Sororities were founded to provide a single-sex space for women, and Kappa Kappa Gamma leadership cannot eliminate that promise by quietly redefining the word “woman.” Independent Women’s Law Center is serving as counsel on the Westenbroek v. Kappa Kappa Gamma and has been closely advising the alumnae members in their correspondence with Kappa national.
