Eugene Okino was a freshman at Oregon State College in the winter of 1966 when he became a Sigma Chi pledge. As a third-generation Oregonian, Okino fit in with his fellow pledges, and all were approved for initiation by the active members of Beta Pi. The pledge initiation reports were sent the Grand Praetor or Regional Director, Robert E. Joseph, a Portland attorney. Anticipating difficulty in approving Okino’s initiation with the national organization, Joseph suggested that Jay Greenwood, President of the Beta Pi chapter, poll national Sigma Chi alumni for comments.
On June 10, Greenwood sent out a letter to over nine hundred alumni to inform them on Beta Pi’s intention of initiating Okino and asking for any comments. The response was overwhelmingly supportive, with the exception of George W. Reynolds of San Diego, California, who told Greenwood about his recent trip to Tokyo, where “they exclude whites, and in fact any but Japanese, from their private clubs, except golf and other athletic clubs.” Based on this experience, Reynolds believed “there is nothing wrong with our adhering to our own kind in a social situation as close as Sigma Chi.” Reynolds, along with three other alumni in his family, threatened to vote to suspend Beta Pi if there was a vote on the matter.
The students of Beta Pi were now in difficult situation. Reynolds’s letter was interpreted as a vote against Okino in accordance with their constitution’s allowance for any active members to object to admitting new members for any reason. By the fall of 1966, The Barometer described Beta Pi as “being skewered on a double-edged sword” between OSC and Sigma Chi. Greenwood told the Barometer that he had three options for getting Okino initiated: convince Reynolds to withdraw his objection, get Sigma Chi to ignore Reynold’s objection, or change the Sigma Chi constitution at the upcoming national conference in June. While the first two seemed unlikely, the third would be too late for OSC. Until the matter was resolved, Greenwood ended up postponing all initiations.
