At one California university, campus activists have combined two of their favorite targets for harassment — fraternities/sororities and cherished icons.

George Washington University student Andrew Desiderio reports on one fraternity standing strong against the protests of a race-based group.

The 166-year-old Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, which for more than a century has used FIJI as its nickname, is apparently not backing down from the moniker, even after some students called the frat racist for using it.

Numerous requests for comment by The College Fix to the national chapter of the organization to speak on the allegations went unreturned, but its website still prominently displays the FIJI brand in photos and wording.

Likewise, the Phi Gamma Delta website for UC Irvine, where the controversy unfolded, maintains pictures and wording to indicate its members will also not kowtow to the pressure. In addition, the UC Irvine chapter’s Facebook page still has the words “FIJI” in the title.

While recent history shows that often campus student and Greek groups are quick to apologize when accused of offending other cultures, it appears this fraternity is not willing to buckle under such pressure.

The controversy stems from a fundraiser in May called the “FIJI Islander Party” at which the UC Irvine Phi Gamma Delta fraternity members and guests wore Island-inspired garb such as grass skirts and coconut bras.

But student government leaders and the Asian Pacific Student Association not only condemned the fundraiser as offensive and insulting to the Fijian culture – but took it one step further, denouncing the fraternity’s venerable nickname as racially insensitive.

…On UC Irvine’s Associated Students website, a meeting agenda from May 27 acknowledges that the ad hoc committee was created, and even goes as far as deciding that “silence or action” among the accused fraternity and other Greek organizations on campus “would reinforce the racism against, dismissal of, and silencing of Fijian and Pacific islander student voices.”

However, the student government has no authority to force the fraternity to make such changes. UC Irvine student government leaders, nor UC Irvine campus officials, have responded to requests for comment this month by The College Fix to discuss the subcommittee’s outcome.

Meanwhile, the fraternity stands proud.

As recently as late June, the “FIJI Islander Week” is still touted on the fraternity’s website as such, as they describe it as “a competition between sororities and their FIJI coaches as they battle it out in crazy games to raise money for Red Cross.”

…What’s more, the UC Irvine chapter is actually “ethnically comprised more by members whose lineage hails from South and East Asia than those whose bloodlines originating in the cool climes of Northern Europe,” writes Timothy Whiteman in the Examiner. …