Pledged (45 page)

Universities must assert that they still hold the ultimate power over sororities. “Sororities need to realize that they are part of an institution—the university—and the institution is not part of them,” said Alfred University’s Daryl Conte. Any of the recommendations in the previous section could be demanded by universities; in fact, some schools are already taking steps to move rush from first semester to second, when freshmen are more accustomed to campus life. School administrators have the capacity to tell sororities that if, for example, they actively exclude minorities, encourage bulimia, or prevent members from going to class and doing homework, they will no longer be recognized by the university. By providing resources and, in some cases, housing to Greek groups, universities imply that they condone those groups’ behavior and standards. It is well within an administration’s discretion to withhold or limit those resources if a sorority does not comply with university policies.

Universities cannot continue to let Greek alumni dictate the composition and comportment of these campus groups. Nor should universities allow sorority national offices to insist that students answer first and foremost to them. Whereas university administrators are trained officials with degrees, national officers aren’t necessarily qualified to counsel or supervise students. As Kathleen Cramer said, these sorority volunteers are stuck in the past, “struggling with change.” If universities could wrest greater control of sororities from the national offices, then perhaps individual chapters on a campus would be more on a par with each other, with less elevation of one sorority above another, less Chanel over Kmart.

In addition, adult representatives at the NGLA Conference suggested that Greek advisers are young and underpaid and therefore should have some flexibility in the time and energy they put into supervising students. That is no excuse. There will usually be some trustworthy adult who would be willing to serve as mentor and adviser to these students despite low pay and long hours. If a university furnishes a Greek adviser, then the university should at least find someone who is willing to take on the full responsibility of the position.

•
Offer other options

University administrators should understand that one of the main reasons girls join sororities is to find a more intimate community within the larger student body. Universities could offer a range of less exclusionary alternatives that could achieve the same result, such as the residential college system. The residential college system distributes students equally among a number of smaller living communities, which in many schools have their own publications, student government, social committee, and intramural athletic teams. Students have a more personal home base—and the opportunity to transfer affiliations if they choose. Furthermore, Alfred University has for years offered “First Year Experience,” which provides social, academic, counseling, and health programs to freshmen. To make up for the loss of its Greek system, Alfred has also increased the number of social programs it offers students. The student activities office holds events such as dances or coffeehouses every weekend. On Fridays and Saturdays Alfred keeps the recreation center—with a gym, pool, and movie-viewing area—open until 2 a.m. and brings in free pizza for the students. Whether or not a school maintains its Greek system, these are creative ways to offer students alternative entertainment and bonding opportunities.

What Parents, Siblings, Friends, Advisers, and College-Bound Girls Can Do

•
Learn about the system

Individuals who want to help prepare a girl for college should educate themselves about the sorority system—and about other alternatives, such as Subrosa—before the girl decides whether to rush. This learning process should not be limited solely to National Panhellenic Conference promotional materials, many of which proclaim only the platitudes the NPC thinks parents and advisers want to hear. Sororities might not be what a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old believes them to be, and she could be further misled during rush—a time when, as I learned, sorority sisters are prone to exaggerating and outright lying. It is important for a girl to know what she is getting into before rush and to be prepared for the level of commitment.

It is also crucial for a parent/sibling/friend/adviser not to allow a girl to go “on silence” during rush. That rule is intended to prevent girls from being influenced by others as they make their sorority decision. But parents, especially, should be able to counsel and to serve as a sounding board for this decision just as they have with many of their daughter’s decisions up until college. Additionally, “on silence” sets a dangerous precedent: girls need to feel that they can talk to their parents openly about sorority life—otherwise parents like those of Kristin High and Kenitha Saafir, the 2002 drowning victims, don’t find out what is going on until it is too late.

EPILOGUE

IT IS BID DAY
at Southern Methodist University in 2003. On Sorority Row, party rental and moving trucks slowly wend their way through a parking lot lined with BMWs, Mercedes, Accords, and Jeep Wranglers sporting sorority stickers and vanity plates reading DG—SMU, A CHI O, SMU 05, and IM KEG. The houses are festooned with bright, professionally made banners: “Deep in the heart of DG” on the Delta Gamma house, “Sweet Home Kappa Gamma,” and “True to Tri-Delt.” Middle-aged women—house mothers or advisers, perhaps—fuss with decorations, arrange chairs on the lawns, and scrutinize the movers hefting helium machines and elegant fountains into houses already dripping with fancy chandeliers.

The night before, on Preference Night, girls in black coats and high heels walked solemnly toward the sorority houses led by heavily made up Rho Chis in blue RC SMU sweatshirts and jeans. The rushees lined up on the sidewalks and waited patiently for sisters to come out of the houses and escort them inside. They had been instructed only to wear “cocktail dresses,” but they looked as if in uniform, draped in black, filmy dresses with short, uneven hemlines. When the Pref parties ended at seven, the rushees were shepherded to the ballroom of the Hughes-Trigg Student Center, where they were required to stay until midnight so that they could not communicate with sorority sisters. The Panhellenic Office showed them movies—
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
and
When Harry Met Sally
—to keep them occupied. Several girls quietly sneaked out of the ballroom to be alone for a few minutes or to call their mothers and cry because of the stress of the recruitment and elimination process.

This morning the rushees, with long straightened hair shining, anxiously return to Hughes-Trigg, wearing tight jeans and snug white turtlenecks or long-sleeved tees. A few brave or stubborn girls are in stilettos, the rest in sneakers because they know they will have to run. The Panhellenic Office has made some changes since the late 1990s to cut down on charges of hazing, but the Bid Day uniform and Pigs’ Run still remain in force. Reluctant to go into the ballroom alone, the girls shiver outside, most without jackets despite the bitterly cold thirty-degree bleakness. Hugging themselves for warmth, they call fellow rushees on their cell phones, meet up with them, and enter the ballroom in pairs, fours, and sixes. Inside the ballroom, guarded by Greeks with clipboards so that only rushees can enter, they wait for their names to be called. A Rho Chi at one of the tables in the room adjacent to the ballroom hands them their small, cream-colored Bid Card (if they receive one), and watches them carefully for their reaction.

[Name]

IS CORDIALLY INVITED TO BECOME A MEMBER OF THE

[Name] Sorority

IN ACCEPTING SHE IS REQUESTED TO COME TO

[Address]

IN DECLINING SHE WILL PLEASE SIGN AND
RETURN THIS INVITATION.

If the girl is distraught, the Rho Chi takes her aside, murmurs words of consolation, and hands her tissues. Otherwise the girl takes her Bid Card and waits in the ballroom, where in the chaos girls are shrieking, screaming, hugging, or crying quietly in the corners.

Upstairs in Hughes-Trigg, mothers in long leather jackets and fur-trimmed coats—their hair done, their clothes designer—pace the main floor, fidgeting and glancing at the staircase their daughters descended an hour ago.

Two mothers perch on stools near the top of the staircase, strangers chatting to pass the time. Their cell phones keep interrupting.

“Yes, I saw her this morning,” one says to her husband. “She was just about in tears. Three girls in her rush group asked me if I could buy them white turtlenecks. It was all she could do to keep from crying.” She hangs up and explains to the other mother that she has been here for days to monitor her daughter throughout rush. “She was ecstatic one day and terrified the next day,” she says.

“I heard SMU is cutting this year because there are more girls rushing than in years past,” responds the other. They watch as a lone girl, weeping, dashes up the stairs and toward a dormitory.

“I saw another girl heartbroken because she didn’t get into any. She was crying, too,” says one of the mothers.

“Oh, this is just horrible,” the other clucks.

“This is a cruel, cruel thing.”

“Do you have any other kids?”

“I had a boy who went to a college without a Greek system, thank God.”

A cell phone rings repeatedly. The mother whispers to the caller that there has been no news. “They’re calling me and saying, ‘Do you know yet? Do you know yet?’” she explains to the other mother. “I should call my mother. She’s anxious.”

“Is your mother in your sorority also?”

“Yes.” The mother cocks her head. “You don’t seem nervous.”

“No, I know she got in.”

“How?”

The mother waves a manicured hand dismissively. “Oh, one of the sisters told me yesterday, ‘Don’t worry, she’s in.’”

The other mother bites her lip and looks relieved when her phone rings again. “You did? Oh!” She begins to cry. “Oh honey, thank you, Lord. Oh darlin’, I’m so happy for you. You know who you need to thank, don’t you? I need to say a prayer first.”

The mothers make their way outside to the crowd of hundreds waiting in front of the sorority houses. Police officers stationed on corners hold maps highlighting the path of Pigs’ Run. When all of the nearly five hundred girls have learned their fate, they come bursting out of the doors to Hughes-Trigg. The first pledges to leave the building are exuberant, holding hands and laughing as they sprint. Fraternity brothers pack the crowd, holding red plastic cups of beer. They are forbidden to spray water this year; in fact, a Panhellenic missive on the Student Center Bid Day calendar orders “Men must stay behind the barracades [
sic
] or in the parking lots at all times.”

“I almost brought ground beef to throw at my girlfriend instead,” says one brother.

“I just came here to watch girls run,” says another.

The last girls out of Hughes-Trigg walk slowly, trying to compose tear-streaked faces before they disappear into the waiting throngs, swallowed by a Burberry sea of high-heeled boots, roses, and fur. Within minutes, professional photographers snap group picture after group picture of the pledges, the sisters, then the pledges and the sisters, while DJs at many of the houses blast music from elaborate sound systems. Kappa Kappa Gammas and Delta Gammas pose under balloon arches. At the Theta house, First Lady Laura Bush’s old haunt, sisters line-dance on the lawn and the porch, doing the “Theta Shuffle” as they cheer. On the next block, Pi Phis dance for the crowd to Abba’s “Dancing Queen,” which competes with strains from other porches of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” and Ludacris’s “Roll Out.”

In the Hughes-Trigg Student Center, the ballroom is now empty. A few Bid Cards are strewn on the floor, and boxes of tissues still lie in their strategic spots on small couches and behind the Rho Chi tables. The girls have been judged and dispersed, assigned letters and labels signaling their new affiliations. Signaling that they belong. The pledges’ anonymous, blank white shirts are now covered by lettered jerseys identifying them forever—as long as they adhere to proper standards. They were not drenched on their way to their new homes, as sisters were in years past. They did not have to sit on the sealed envelopes bearing the name they still believe will play a critical role in the rest of their lives. But as before, girls peeled off from the pack, unlabeled and crestfallen, veering away from the houses in tears. And again, the exhibitionism, the preening and dancing for the boys, the painstakingly chosen clothing and diamonds, appropriately conformed, PradaGucciChanel with designer sunglasses on their heads as accessories. Again the rush toward the upper echelons of a scene that one SMU sister calls “90210 Goes to College,” a sphere in which Greek administrators dictate to whom the girls can and cannot speak, a world that, the sister tells me, holds for them such a penetrating pressure to fit in that it currently hosts an “eating disorder epidemic.” And it becomes clear that in the realm of the pledged, nothing much, really, has changed.

GLOSSARY

Alumna:
A sorority member who has graduated or is no longer active in the organization.

Badge (also called Pin):
The symbolic, distinctive jewelry worn by initiated sorority members.

Bid:
An official written invitation to join a sorority.

Big Sister:
An initiated sorority member who is assigned to serve as a mentor to a new member. The new member is called the Little Sister.

Chapter:
Also referred to as a house, a college branch of the sorority’s national organization.

Disaffiliate:
To give up (or be forced to give up) sorority membership.

Grand Big Sister:
The Big Sister of a Big Sister.

House Mom:
A woman who is hired by the sorority to manage house affairs. Usually lives in a private apartment within the sorority house.

Local:
A campus sorority that is unaffiliated with a national office.

National Panhellenic Conference (NPC):
The umbrella organization for the twenty-six national “historically white” sororities. (Panhellenic means “all Greek.”)

National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC):
The umbrella organization for the four national “historically black” sororities and the five national “historically black” fraternities.

Nationals:
Sorority sister slang for the central office, or sorority headquarters, that governs every chapter of the sorority. Some groups call these headquarters Inter/nationals because sororities have chapters in Canada.

Panhellenic Association/Panhellenic Council:
Sometimes just called Panhellenic, the college organization or office that governs the NPC chapters on campus.

Pledge:
A new member who has accepted a bid but has not yet been initiated.

Pledgemaster:
The sister in charge of preparing the new members for initiation.

Pledge Period:
The time between Bid Day and initiation when a new member prepares to become a sorority sister.

Rush:
The period designated by the Panhellenic Association during which the sororities and interested candidates (rushees) participate in a mutual selection process.