Are Greek letter social organizations a factor in undergraduates' perceptions of international instructors?

The presence of international instructors on U.S. college campuses is an integral part of the growing multicultural milieu of higher education in this nation. International instructors are often met with resistance, often based on assertions about their linguistic or communicative competence. However a series of recent studies indicates that mainstream students' own negative stereotypes may be responsible for some of their dissatisfaction. Previous research provides warrant to suspect that members of Greek letter sodial organizations may be particularly prone to such xenophobic stereotypes. In the present study participants-40% of whom were Greek-affiliated-listened to the identical taped lucture. Half were led to believe they were listening to a Chinese instructor, the others to a Euro-North American instructor. In rating specific lectures and lecturers, Greek-affiliated students did not differ from their non-affiliated peers. Both sets of students were similarly subject to powerful negative stereotypes associated with the Chinese guise instructor. Perceived language standardness and American-like qualities of the instructor was the best predictor of students' evaluations. Degree of Greek-affiliation appeared to be weakly associated with negative attitudes to international instructors in general. However these generalized attitudes did not predict situated evaluations. These findings warrant the conclusions that some international instructors are unfairly subject to negative evaluations irrespective of their actual speech style, and that this is a campus-wide problem and not linited to a particular segment of the university community. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.