Sororities (1)

EDITORS' NOTE: For those who aren't familiar with the ideas of Fraternities/Sororities, here's a brief outline: part way through the first (Freshman) year, students decide if they want to join a Fraternity or a Sorority. Usually, these organizations are named by Greek letters, such as Omega Alpha Theta, and each has a building, or house, on campus. The process of choosing which fraternity/sorority you want to join, and which wants you, is called the "Rush". If you 're seriously interested in one or another, you can be assigned a "Big Brother" or a "Big Sister". About half way through the second semester, the decision is made on both sides, there's a weekend during which the "Pledge" is made involving an initiation ritual of greater or lesser intensity, humiliation, and secrecy. Then you belong, and your social life revolves to a greater or lesser extent around the Fraternity/Sorority, often on a lifetime basis. People in the organization feel a great sense of community and loyalty to each other.

I am in a co-ed community service fraternity which I joined for the sense of community, because I wanted to serve. 99% of my friends are in it. My fraternity is my entire life; I do nothing else. So I am not knocking sororities. But ….

I essentially lost my best friend last semester for 8 weeks while she was pledging because pledges have to give themselves entirely to their potential sisterhood in order to pledge. For those of you who, impossible as it sounds, do not know about sororities and fraternities, let me explain a bit.

35% of the kids at this university are involved in some form of sorority or frat. There are social ones, there are community based ones, which is what I am in, and there are professional ones.

To apply for sororities, they send the freshmen around to each sorority house on campus, in packs like animals, where they get interviewed by all these girls. They have to run the gamut of all the sisters in the house who take notes on what they are wearing, what they say, what accent they have, what religion they are. The sisters are like, we don’t like her, she doesn’t talk right … It’s very judgmental. And essentially, you have to paste a happy face on yourself the whole time if you want to get in.

It's ridiculous because all the girls are trying to impress the same types of people so they all dress the same. But if you don't want to be selected or accepted for that sorority, then you want to make sure they don't like you so you will get in the one you want. I had a friend who just wouldn't respond if asked a question and would ignore them during the interview process so they wouldn't like her and then she wouldn't be put in that house.

The pledging class is designed to create a sense of community which is why people call themselves sisters and brothers. Because you spend time after time and day after day and hour after hour in special experiences together which creates that feeling of brotherhood or sisterhood. So they are taken away from everything; it's very restrictive. The pressure on them is awful, ridiculous. On my floor, there are a bunch of girls pledging now and they are not allowed to go out on the weekends. It's horrendous as these girls are used to going out every single weekend, even weekdays, so being forced to sit inside makes them all depressed because they can't go out and party.

Most of what they have to do when they are pledging is secretive but I have heard horror stories about numerous students being sent to the hospital for overdosing on certain things. But this is not always the case: my best friend doesn't drink and her big sister didn't force her to. Some are respectful of that. Others are very much into mind control stuff. My friend told me that last weekend, they had a competition in which, in teams of 8, they had to smoke 8 oz of weed, finish two 30 racks of beer, four pizzas, a bottle of vodka, and something else and whoever did it the fastest won. My friend didn't remember anything after 6 pm.

At the end of your pledging process, you get initiated into the brotherhood or the sisterhood. Hazing is the drinking and when the boys tie each other up and leave each other at the side of the road 200 miles away, in their underwear, and they have to find their way back.

Here on campus, there are sorority stereotypes. One is for the Jewish girls, one is for the hippies, one is for the druggies, one is for the, how shall I say it, promiscuous girls, one is for the social rejects, and one is referred to as the one for the overweight girls. Don’t get me wrong – there are some nice ones too with many good upstanding respectable girls. My friend is in a social sorority but she has a really good group of friends and her big sister is fabulous. She has a good head on her shoulders, great GPA, doesn’t drink to excess or sleep around. She is a great girl, but then she is in one of the respectable sororities. And she is nothing like a typical sorority girl. Or at least, as I see ‘em.

The frats have their own stereotype. One is for kind of sketchy guys, another for really trashy guys, like scheming sleazeballs, another for the Jewish boys, another for the social rejects, there is another one that is kind of a fake fraternity if you can’t even get into the social reject one. But again, there are some really nice ones too with the great guys, everyone loves them, they are kinda respectable.

So why would you want to do it? Other than all the cons that I’ve already mentioned, it is very time consuming. Rushing takes 2-3 weeks and then there is 6-8 weeks of pledging. It's an entire semester.

But on the up side, it's a sense of belonging. In my sorority, the sense of community isn't as strong as in the social ones because they are forced to do everything together. They, from what I’ve seen, mostly hang out with each other. But many of us in this fraternity are involved with a lot of other things and have many other friends outside the frat.

Bottom line is: if you are gonna do it, think about it carefully and make sure that you know enough about it before you do it. And beware that if you get accepted and then want to leave, people won't want to touch you after that. You're a reject, you’ve failed. But if you get in and make it through the pledging, you won't want to leave by that point.