<p>Pizzagirl and Aubs, I hear you and understand you, but my experience was my experience. It’s how I’ve felt since 1966. I think we just plain disagree.</p>
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<p>Very well said, poetgrl.</p>
<p>VeryHappy, your <em>perception</em> was that sorority girls at NU “weren’t allowed” to be friends with girls from other houses. But you weren’t actually in it, so how would you know? </p>
<p>I’m here to tell you I was an actual sorority girl at NU and <em>of course</em> I could be friends with girls from other houses or girls who weren’t Greek - the sorority didn’t dictate <em>anything</em> about my friendships other than I had to pay my dues and be at chapter meetings on Monday nights. I’m telling you right now I have a son in a fraternity at NU and <em>of course</em> he has friends in other houses and who aren’t Greek. (I just met two of his friends a few days ago, in fact. One’s a different house and one isn’t Greek. Whatever. No one cares.)</p>
<p>Maybe NU in 1966 was radically different from NU in 1986 or 2013.</p>
<p>VeryHappy - I am so sorry about your rush experience. What a wretched way to start college. Inexcusable.</p>
<p>I agree a sorority is a sort of tribe. And membership is troublingly discriminatory. Rush is exclusionary. Rush is “us” choosing some new members from among “the others”. I don’t really feel rush is a positive experience for those doing the choosing, anymore than for those looking to be chosen. It has been a pretty heart wrenching experience for both potential pledges and actives at Alabama. I think that exclusivity can be excused somewhat by the philanthropy. What Shrinkrap’s sorority does has to justify its existence in my mind. If the purpose of the tribe is to organize a group of women to make positive changes in the world and you are choosing new members you feel contribute best to that effort - perhaps the ends really does justify the means.</p>
<p>Where I disagree with you, VH, is that we can’t be members of more than one tribe. I do think when you pledge a sorority you are labeling yourself.</p>
<p>adding: it is more difficult to see a system as exclusionary when you yourself haven’t been excluded</p>
<p>adding: like VH, I was in a sorority</p>
<p>Pizzagirl: I was in a sorority, both freshman and sophomore years. So I went through rush from both sides. Then I deactivated.</p>
<p>It may very well have been the years I was there. 1966 was a generation before 1986, and was basically practically the 1950s! In my day we weren’t allowed to wear pants to dinner in the dorm, and we were required to be back in our rooms by 11:00 PM on weeknights and 2:00 AM on weekends. We had to “sign out” and indicate whom we were going out with. So, it really was a different era.</p>
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<p>The extent to which that labeling becomes the “deepest” or most telling part of your identity, however, is going to differ drastically from campus to campus. I’m sure there ARE places where god forbid a Chi O talks to a Kappa, oh the scandal. And I’m equally sure there are places where it’s all a “whatever.”</p>
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<p>Fair enough! I didn’t realize you were in it. I can imagine that where you affiliated made a bigger difference then. You can PM me and tell me what you were, so I can judge you :-)</p>
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<p>Cardinal Fang suggested upthread that someone who objects and understands the system is discriminatory should resign. Others responded the system will have to be changed from inside. I actually agree with both points of view.</p>
<p>Because I chose not to resign, I have to wear a label. I am part of a group that judges and excludes other women, sometimes for the most frivolous reasons imaginable. Sometimes because of race.</p>
<p>I am justifiably labeled because I chose to belong to a tribe. That tribe is made up of: first my chapter, then my national group, and finally the whole greek system.</p>
<p>But come on now. That’s where it gets into taking it all too seriously. I was an ABC. My second and third choices were DEF and GHI. I enjoyed being an ABC, but I would have enjoyed being a DEF or GHI just as much, I’m sure. I would have made a good group of friends and enjoyed my time doing the activities. I mean, at the core, they aren’t ALL that different. As an alum, it’s not as though if I accidentally walked into an alum meeting of the DEF’s or GHI’s in my area I’d think - oh my, I don’t belong here. </p>
<p>Now, if I walked into an alum meeting of the ABC’s at Alabama and they were discussing how best to overrule the collegians who want to pledge a black girl since we don’t want black girls, I wouldn’t feel kinship or sisterhood with them. I’d feel revulsion.</p>
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<p>I don’t see how you’re labeled as an ADULT, though. Yeah, well, maybe in the south, the Junior League only takes Chi O’s and Kappas but NEVER a Gamma Phi, or some other antiquated nonsense, but in the rest of the country, how would your sorority affiliation in college affect you as an adult in any way, shape or form? How would it be a “label” that’s meaningful?</p>
<p>PG: I am talking about the label one assumes when joining a group that excludes others for less than admirable reasons. It could be a sorority, a country club, etc.</p>
<p>BTW, since I was discussing how my time in college was different that Pizzagirl’s time at the same college, 20 years later: My class was the first time black students were admitted for anything other than athletic reasons. They admitted 50 whole black people, instead of the two or three they had admitted in prior years. And the two or three were always star football or basketball players. My freshman year roommate was one of the black students and so I heard a lot of discussion around the whole topic my freshman year. The 50 students collectively had a lot of difficulties, which is not surprising given how everything worked at that time.</p>
<p>Anyway, off-topic, so I’ll quietly go away now.</p>
<p>I think it’s entirely on topic, because the point was - they were grappling with these integration issues in 1966. And here it is in 2013, and some parts of the country are just getting around to grappling with them.</p>
<p>As a girl from Vermont who attended LSU 30 years ago, may I just say that I am not at all surprised. It’s a different world (and I lived in Belgium for a year before LSU and know what a different world is). Keep in mind that the people blocking this are probably from my generation and just like the girls I attended school with. So not a surprise at all.</p>
<p>How can sorority affiliation affect one’s life after college? Ms. Ellebud got an internship while in college that thousands of kids apply for five spots. Her sister, who was in her second year as an intern, gave my daughter the nod. This translated to a job that everyone wants and Ms. Ellebud got it.</p>
<p>I looked up my old sorority and it has a chapter at UA. I looked at their pictures and did not see one AA student. I’m going to follow PG’s lead and submit a similar letter.</p>
<p>I can’t even begin to understand this type of thinking.</p>
<p>“Her sister, who was in her second year as an intern, gave my daughter the nod.”</p>
<p>So it’s about who you know, which can work in many other instances than Greek affiliation. My brother’s first job came from my dad knowing a guy, an old HS friend. My mother’s first FT post-SAHM days came from a heads-up from a neighbor. A job I had when D was a baby came because H had worked for the same person. But it’s not like “brothers” and “sisters” are the only avenue to getting inside information.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, the entire things still rubs me the wrong way.</p>
<p>Bev hills- I’m not talking about networking. I’m talking about a label. Yes, I get that it might allow you networking for jobs and so forth. I’m talking about the LABEL. On what planet does a grown woman say about another woman, oh, she’s a Chi O, she must be (fill in the blank, good or bad). How are you “labeled”?</p>
<p>I’m appalled by what is going on at UA. </p>
<p>I also find the whole greek thing juvenile.</p>
<p>I’ve literally never heard a woman talk about being a sorority member except here.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I will say that there is a certain sisterhood when one meets other Seven Sisters alums, and even more so with one’s own school. Often a kind of “I <em>knew</em> I liked you!” :)</p>