<p>In my experience in life, and not just in my sorority, girls want to help their friends look good.</p>
<p>Oh, and the “rule” about shopping in the closet and labels? The only label that counts is: Is it cute?</p>
<p>It’s sad to me that the girls who don’t have a lot might not understand how much the girls who do just borrow all the time, anyway, without even thinking about it. Nobody cares about that kind of thing. It’s sad to think someone might not join a group they wanted to join just because they would need to do what all the girls already do anyway. Too bad.</p>
<p>If there is such a group of girls who are all “OMG she doesn’t have a real Chanel bag, I’m not talking to HER,” I’m curious what eliminating the Greek system would do to said girls. Nothing would change IMO. But, I’ve really never met such a person and I think some of that is projection and exaggeration. It’s easier to think that the person with the Chanel bag [insert luxury of your choice] must really be some snitty-snot who is judging you for not having one and therefore you can take comfort in your own superiority over her for such a shallow mindset, than to admit to oneself that hey, that Chanel bag [insert luxury of your choice] looks pretty darn fun to have. </p>
<p>As an adult, I’ve seen women snit-snot over other women who had large diamond rings, claiming that they (the women with the large rings) were being “judgmental” of those who didn’t have large ones, when in fact the women with the large rings were doing no such thing. I don’t value large diamond rings myself (which works out really well for me, LOL), but that doesn’t mean I should impute that women who have them therefore are automatically shallow and materialistic or look down on those who don’t have such rings. Of course, it’s easier to go about resenting others than to say deep down, gosh, I wish I had that too, or that looks like fun.</p>
<p>PizzaGirl: “snittysnot”?! Love it…will use it.</p>
<p>(and I agree with you)</p>
<p>When I was in high school and college, girls did get all involved in who had what clothing and jewelry, and how much it cost. Nowadays, the big deal seems to be house size and furnishings, and zip code, at least in our suburb.</p>
<p>I don’t know how I have managed to avoid living, working and being educated around “snittysnots.” Sure, I know a few but they’re not well tolerated in my area. My daughter has been just as fortunate. She went to a magnet high school with very strong academics and arts that drew kids from all over the county and no one cared where anyone lived or what they wore. </p>
<p>Thank goodness I am around people who find it tacky to talk about money and labels. I think the area in which I live is influenced by the attitudes of people with “old money.” This part of the county was historically populated by the landed gentry who thought that people who talked about money didn’t have enough to talk about. The only people I know who talk money and labels are the nouveau riche and NO ONE wants to labeled as nouveau riche.</p>
<p>“Harvard does nothing to prevent students from rooming with others of the same race.”</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s your roommates, a group of 8 at the largest. But your entryway, the dining hall, House library, masters’ teas, House community service projects, the House leadership committee, dance parties, formals – they are all House-wide and include every type of student (racially and otherwise). At someplace like U of I, all those functions operate through your fraternity/sorority, and don’t provide opportunities to work with people outside your hand-selected group.</p>
<p>I suppose you could choose to live under a rock, not participate in any House events, and eat either alone or with your blockmates every single meal for three years. But the university is doing everything in its power to discourage that kind of life, and I don’t see many students making those choices. If you’re the coolest social superstar, you still go to your House formal and party with the dorks, and vice versa. I appreciate that there’s a system providing a counterbalance to the tendency to just hang out with a similar crowd.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, Sure you can deactivate. However, in a campus where members live in, deactivating in the middle of the school year is a really, really difficult thing to do because you have to find another place to live. Even if you move out at the end of the academic year, there’s usually some deadline for submitting a room request, etc., so that your “sisters” are aware of your intent to move out for several months before you actually do. </p>
<p>But more importantly, once you moved into the Greek house, you really didn’t socialize that much with non-Greeks. MOST people at large state Us don’t belong to ECs other than Greek houses. (That’s a fact; not just my opinion, BTW.) So, should you decide sorority life is not for you after all, it can be very difficult. The GDIs–they were called far worse in the state where I attended high school, BTW–weren’t exactly going to welcome you with open arms. </p>
<p>Now, maybe sororities at Northwestern were different than they were at the large public Us in the state in which I attended high school, but, yes, dating a guy “not up to our standards” was the kind of thing your “sisters” would “advise” you about. So was piling on the freshman 15. (Was Northwestern so different that the rate of bullima/anorexia was the same as that of the college as a whole? )</p>
<p>And at MANY colleges, sororities aren’t just whiter than the student body as a whole, they tend to be segregated in other ways. There’s the “Jewish house” or the “jock house” or the houses you can only join if your mother belonged. (Supposedly, this was a de facto requirement to join the house Jenna Bush belonged to at UTexas-A.) </p>
<p>So, no it’s not the Mafia and I don’t believe I said anything remotely like that. I just said that when you choose to live with a group of people who invited you based on the person you are at 18 it’s harder to evolve into a somewhat different person.</p>
<p>PS Hanna’s post was posted as I was typing. I agree wholeheartedly. My own offspring refused to consider any colleges with racially based housing. And, unlike Harvard, there are universities which assign students to residential colleges or housing groups BEFORE they start college. IMO, this tends to be more successful in encouraging those from different groups to become friends or at least interact.</p>
<p>How a young woman evolves is strictly up to her. If she views her sorority membership or theater group or Robotics group as her sole identity and focus through college, she may not grow as a person. But I think that a lack of evolution is due to the young person and NOT the membership. She isn’t held prisoner in the house and in the classroom. The GDI and the sorority girl go out. And at least sororities at my ds’ school STRONGLY encourages campus wide participation in a variety of activities which speak to her interests and community.</p>
<p>I know that during my time in college I changed and grew, intellectually and socially. My older daughter, a GDI, did the same. My youngest, a freshman, has matured and changed in quite a wonderful way. Her sisters, her other involvements on campus, and her classes are changing her in a good way.</p>
<p>And her boyfriend, who is not in a fraternity, has been known to set up his friends with the sorority sisters.</p>
<p>The perceived lack of interaction with GDIs is a red herring, imo. The only difference between the GDI world and the Greek world is that GDI’s are not Greeks. In my experience, sorority girls were involved with every single aspect of college campus life, from student government to athletics to dance troupes to computer science. Its not like you are cut off from participating in anything or being exposed to people who do, if you join a house.</p>
<p>And the idea that its just so hard to deactivate if you want to is an exaggeration. If you are not living in the house at the time, it is a no-brainer. If you are living in the house, then so what if everyone knows you won’t be coming back? Obviously, you don’t want to hang around these girls any longer, so why should you be surprised if they don’t take to the idea with lots of warm hugs and best wishes? You would get the same response if you told your roommates/apartment mates that you don’t want to live with them anymore.</p>
<p>May I chime in with what this thread reminds me of, more coming from the non-greek side than the other, but either way?</p>
<p>[The</a> Sneetches and Other Stories - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“The Sneetches and Other Stories - Wikipedia”>The Sneetches and Other Stories - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Our house was a real house and only 15 girls could live there. Now, I think it only holds 12. Opportunity to live there was offered based on GPA. It wasn’t a big deal to deactivate unless you lived in the house. My sophomore year, two of the members brought their non-Greek room mates into the house to live because several of the seniors wanted to live off campus. So, we had GDIs living in the sorority house. Horrors!</p>
<p>Hanna:
</p>
<p>You need to understand this that in order to achieve this Harvard has to lower its standard of admission for under-represented minorities and raise tuition of the full paying students to pay need based students.</p>
<p>Harvard and all other top schools have done it on the expense of other deserving students. You need to be a parent of full paying capable student to realize it. When you can neither deduct the >$50K expense as part of tax returns nor become eligible to get a signle cent.</p>
<p>So don’t talk about Harvard or other top schools being inclusive, these are just making one sector of population happy on the expense of another.</p>
<p>Sororities neither have a need to mend requirements nor have funds to provide subsidies.</p>
<p>Arguing that joining a sorority somehow cuts one off from a more racially-diverse college experience is also spurious. The majority of colleges do not provide on-campus housing for 4 years. At most colleges, you will be lucky to get a dorm for your freshman year. That was the case at my college. Starting sophomore year, all students lived off-campus in rented apartments. The university was not involved in “encouraging” students of different races to mix in any way at all.</p>
<p>So while my freshman GDI friends lived, dined and socialized together in groups of about 3 or 4 of the same (all white) apartment mates for the remaining 3 years, girls in my house got to mix with 60-80 different girls, who were doing a range of different ECs, and did not share all the same interests. If the GDIs had a more racially-diverse college experience, it was certainly not because they didn’t live in a sorority house.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Can you say woefully misinformed. </p>
<p>What constitutes lowering admissions standards? The schools themselves say that there is no magic SAT/GPA combination that determines whether a person is a lock for Harvard and any other school.</p>
<p>If you did not have the opportunity to do so, I would recommend that you read the Overachievers, by Robbins</p>
<p>From p. 202</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>At the end of the day, schools are looking to build a community of learners. It will not always be about who has the highest gpa or SAT score, as there will be places, for artist, poets, dancers, computer geeks, good deed doers, legacies, developmental admits, athletes and those who just plain folks with the potential to do extraordinary things coming from various walks of life. </p>
<p>Every student who attends Harvard and pretty much every other ivy/elite LAC is getting a discount as the cost of tuition (even amongst the full payers) about half the cost of education from these schools, with the balance met primarily through income from endowment investments and annual giving. So a family that pays full tuition is not even paying the full cost for their own child, let alone other people’s kids.</p>
<p>Jonri, the whole concept of Greek life being the only EC simply doesn’t compute for me. Why on earth would it preclude a girl from joining whatever other activities she was interested in? And having friends from other spheres? It’s just so odd to me. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to me.</p>
<p>Hi Bay,</p>
<p>ITA with what you are saying because not many schools guarantee housing after freshman year. For some students living in their house was a less expensive alternative (at my D’s school, you paid the same amount for room and board wherever you lived on campus).
It was my D’s experience that there was not enough room in the house (and they had a big house) for all of the active memebers. D was only “required” to live in the house when she was an officer. Other times, she was an RA, studying abroad, on leave term and by the time they were seniors, they either wanted to live off campus, in the senior apartments or because they were first in room draw, were primed to get singles if they wanted one.</p>
<p>It was also my D’s experience that she and many of her sisters were involved in many other things outside of being in the sorority.</p>
<p>BTW, why is making friends because you’re all on the tennis team good, but making friends because you’re all in the jock house bad? Why is participating in Hillel good but joining the Jewish house bad? What’s the difference?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m neither misinformed nor ignorant.</p>
<p>You on the other hand ignore any child achievement at standardized tests or 4 years of rigorous high school curriculum as either a one day wonder or 4 year of parent pressure.</p>
<p>There is certainly no best way to measure raw intelligence of a human being but there are certainly well defined way of accessing one academic potential and their future success.</p>
<p>If you ignore these standards way of measuring academic preparation or future success at college curriculumn then there is no argument.</p>
<p>But choosing an apllicant much lower than the regular pool of students on the same measurement is considered as lowering standards of admissions.</p>