<p>Anyone read this book "Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities" by Alexandra Robbins?</p>
<p>she went undercover reporter with four sorority girls on an unnamed campus for a year</p>
<p>and it's crazy what happened</p>
<p>so does anyone think it's accurate? inaccurate?</p>
<p>I haven't been able to read for pleasure since middle school due to time constraints, but I am curious. What kinds of things did she find? Hazing?</p>
<p>That girl was on Coast to Coast AM talking about that stuff. Pretty crazy stuff. Not as bad as toilet paper races or the elephant walk that frats do, but pretty crazy nonetheless.</p>
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I haven't been able to read for pleasure since middle school due to time constraints
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<p>LOL. I can totally relate to that statement.</p>
<p>"I haven't been able to read for pleasure since middle school due to time constraints, but I am curious. What kinds of things did she find? Hazing?"</p>
<p>uhhh...yeah....definitely...it doesn't actually concentrate on the pre-sorority stuff very much, just spends a chapter on rush and a chapter on hazing</p>
<p>but the actual sorority life is crazy...obviously the drinking and the sex, but also the group mentality created that just surrounds these girls...like two of the four girls that the reporter followed were date raped but the sororities hushed it over cos they were frat guys</p>
<p>also the black girl in the four is not actively discriminated against, but her sorority sisters are constantly making racist comments </p>
<p>also the girl sleeps with her professor</p>
<p>and other frightening stuff-- sororities seem like a nightmare, some of the girls in that book were ridiculous. Like imagine the cliques in high school elevated to the nth degree.</p>
<p>OMG that seems like a nightmare... I agree. The thought of sex with a lot of men just sickens me. If anyone is in a sorority, tell us, is it like this??</p>
<p>What's an elephant walk, or do I not want to know?</p>
<p>Is this the normal stuff that happens in soros and frats? or is this an isolated case? Or are some like this one in the book and some a bit more "less crazy"? Just the thought of living in that environment sickens me</p>
<p>She talks to a whole bunch of frats/soros and the general consensus is that the one she followed was pretty much like most of them. especially in the South, the Southern ones are absolutely nuts...</p>
<p>there are some that are solely focused on community service. she says that the African American "historically black" sororities are almost totally focused on community service and are much better behaved than the "historically white" ones.</p>
<p>There were several accounts of blatant discrimination by the white sororities against black rushees.</p>
<p>slipstream, you probably don't want to know what an elephant walk is. you can look it up on Urban Dictionary, I don't want to link to the definition.</p>
<p>I picked up the book in a bookstore and read a few pages. Some of it seemed reminiscent of my sorority experience, some of it appeared greatly sensationalized for the purpose, perhaps, of getting the young woman on coast to coast tv shows and selling copies of her books. But then, I don't want to appear cynical; it's possible that in the centuries that have passed since my on-campus sorority life, things have changed considerably.</p>
<p>Like George Bush and organized religion, sororities are something people love to hate, yet they don't ever quite go away. Some of the reasons are:</p>
<p>1) On certain more traditional or isolated campuses, they provide the central or perhaps only available social life, especially in 'dry' counties where it takes a village to raise a keg of beer.</p>
<p>2) The living conditions in sorority houses are generally more luxurious and safer than those of dormitories or off-campus housing.</p>
<p>3) The provision of an instant group of 'friends', which varies from one experience to another. Some young women truly bond for life with their 'sisters'; others may settle for living on the edges but feeling a sense of community when they come back from long hours alone at the library.</p>
<p>4) Sororities and fraternities do lots and lots of things together. Girl meets boy. Enough said.</p>
<p>5) You have 85 or so other women to tell about your new boyfriend or the boyfriend who just broke up with you, to borrow clothes and make-up from and from whom to borrow money.</p>
<p>6) A network that outlasts the four-year-university experience. You may go to school in the south but plan to conquer NYC when you graduate. Chances are, some of your 'sisters' have gone before you or will go with you, there, or to almost any other urban destination you have in mind. Between those connections and the lively alumni associations operating in most communities for the better-known sororities, you are provided an instant sense of belonging when you move to a new city. As someone who was not a wildly enthusiastic sorority girl while I was on-campus, I have to say that I truly found myself appreciating this benefit in later years.</p>
<p>Reasons not to rush:</p>
<p>1) Many larger universities offer such varied social opportunities that some people don't wish to be pigeon-holed or stereotyped by belonging to a sorority, although it is certainly possible to enjoy both.</p>
<p>2) There are shallow, superficial, materially-obsessed young women in sororities, just as there are around every other corner in life.</p>
<p>3) Sororities demand a great deal of time, especially at the beginning.</p>
<p>4) There are expenses associated with belonging to a sorority.</p>
<p>5) Not everyone wants to live surrounded with 85 other women whose hormones are careening, whose love lives are going topsy turvy, whose make-up and underwear are strewn everywhere and who want to borrow money from you at any given time.</p>
<p>If things are as they used to be, the top national sororities would be:</p>
<p>Pi Beta Phi (Pi Phi's); Delta Gamma (DG's); Kappa Kappa Gamma (Kappa's); Kappa Alpha Theta (Theta's) and, especially in the South, Delta Delta Delta (Tri Delt's). There are also Alphi Chi Omega and Chi Omega, Gamma Phi Beta and Alpha Phi at most larger universities. There are also sororities for specific racial/cultural groups, but imho, the stronger sororities encourage integration and you will see members of most or all groups within them.</p>
<p>Probably more than you wanted to know about sororities. As with most things in life, (perhaps even George Bush and organized religion?) it's sometimes better not to have pre-conceived notions. You can always go through rush and not pledge. Or, like my SD who went through high school wearing black clothes and frightening make-up and to whom I never breathed a word about going through rush, you might change your mind at the last minute, ask to fill out the paperwork and find yourself completely at home in a sorority. </p>
<p>Dizzymom</p>
<p>The book is mostly fiction. The black sororities haze as much as anyone. 2 AKA's drowned in LA from hazing. The national officers of the white sororities really crushed hazing in the 70s. There is still some going on, but not all sorority girls are the sluts, druggies, drunks, etc. that this "author" described.
The top sororities, Pi Phi, Theta, Kappa, have their wild side and b##### side, but this is the way it is. Sorority life is NOT like 80% of the book.</p>