Debbie & Gamma Phi

The red brick Gamma Phi Beta sorority house on Hilyard Street is one of the handsomest at the University of Oregon. Strategically surrounded by fraternities, its green lawn slopes away to a mill race that meanders through the campus. One morning last month, sorority row was alive with the news that the Gamma Phi lawn had been desecrated by a seven-foot fiery cross. Sorority members vowed they didn't know who had brought the Ku Klux symbol, but they knew why. One of their sisters, Sophomore Debbie Burgess of Astoria, had been dating a Negro, DeNorval Unthank of Portland, a husky senior in the School of Architecture.

The friendship had been common knowledge for weeks, and the sorority girls had been subjected to some unpleasant wisecracks from their own dates. A few of them had girl-to-girl talks with Debbie, and then the housemother spoke her piece. Finally the alumnae adviser had a quiet meeting with the errant pair, and treated them to her version of the facts of social life, urged them to stop seeing each other because "it isn't the accepted thing." It was a bad influence on the house, said she, and the house would have to take action if something wasn't done.

After the cross-burning, Debbie met the adviser again, agreed to move out of the sorority house. "I didn't say I wouldn't move, so I guess you can say I went voluntarily," she explained. "I felt I had no alternative."

With that, the Oregon Daily Emerald took up the cry. In a pair of scathing editorials, the student editor attacked race prejudice and alumnae control of sororities: "An Oregon sorority has just paid homage to one of the strongest satans of our society. It has given way to fear of an unwritten social code and executed an injustice ugly on a college campus . . ."

Last week the Gamma Phis yielded, let it be known that Debbie would be welcomed back among her sisters, whether she stopped seeing DeNorval or not. But Debbie, who still dates DeNorval, likes it where she is, and will probably finish out the term in a college dormitory. Said she: "I wouldn't feel right about moving back in after what the sorority has done."

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