to those who continue to support the greek system
soulsinging
Posts: 13,202
yeah... there's a lot more to it than easy sex and a social "in"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/education/25sorority.html?ex=1330146000&en=115632fdee07b436&ei=5124&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook
Sorority Evictions Raise Issue of Looks and Bias
By SAM DILLON
Published: February 25, 2007
GREENCASTLE, Ind. — When a psychology professor at DePauw University here surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of “daddy’s little princesses” and another as “offbeat hippies.” The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as “socially awkward.”
Women at DePauw University in Indiana who were either asked to leave the Delta Zeta house or resigned in protest hold a sorority photo.
Elizabeth Haneline, who was among those evicted, said, “The Greek system hasn’t changed at all, but instead of racism, it’s image now.”
Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.
The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.
“Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave,” said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization.
“I sensed the disrespect with which this was to be carried out and got fed up,” Ms. Holloway added. “I didn’t have room in my life for these women to come in and tell my sisters of three years that they weren’t needed.”
Ms. Holloway is not the only angry one. The reorganization has left a messy aftermath of recrimination and tears on this rural campus of 2,400 students, 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis.
The mass eviction battered the self-esteem of many of the former sorority members, and some withdrew from classes in depression. There have been student protests, outraged letters from alumni and parents, and a faculty petition calling the sorority’s action unethical.
DePauw’s president, Robert G. Bottoms, issued a two-page letter of reprimand to the sorority. In an interview in his office, Dr. Bottoms said he had been stunned by the sorority’s insensitivity.
“I had no hint they were going to disrupt the chapter with a membership reduction of this proportion in the middle of the year,” he said. “It’s been very upsetting.”
The president of Delta Zeta, which has its headquarters in Oxford, Ohio, and its other national officers declined to be interviewed. Responding by e-mail to questions, Cynthia Winslow Menges, the executive director, said the sorority had not evicted the 23 women, even though the national officers sent those women form letters that said: “The membership review team has recommended you for alumna status. Chapter members receiving alumnae status should plan to relocate from the chapter house no later than Jan. 29, 2007.”
Ms. Menges asserted that the women themselves had, in effect, made their own decisions to leave by demonstrating a lack of commitment to meet recruitment goals. The sorority paid each woman who left $300 to cover the difference between sorority and campus housing.
The sorority “is saddened that the isolated incident at DePauw has been mischaracterized,” Ms. Menges wrote. Asked for clarification, the sorority’s public relations representative e-mailed a statement saying its actions were aimed at the “enrichment of student life at DePauw.”
This is not the first time that the DePauw chapter of Delta Zeta has stirred controversy. In 1982, it attracted national attention when a black student was not allowed to join, provoking accusations of racial discrimination.
Earlier this month, an Alabama lawyer and several other DePauw alumni who graduated in 1970 described in a letter to The DePauw, the student newspaper, how Delta Zeta’s national leadership had tried unsuccessfully to block a young woman with a black father and a white mother from joining its DePauw chapter in 1967.
Despite those incidents, the chapter appears to have been home to a diverse community over the years, partly because it has attracted brainy women, including many science and math majors, as well as talented disabled women, without focusing as exclusively as some sororities on potential recruits’ sex appeal, former sorority members said.
“I had a sister I could go to a bar with if I had boy problems,” said Erin Swisshelm, a junior biochemistry major who withdrew from the sorority in October. “I had a sister I could talk about religion with. I had a sister I could be nerdy about science with. That’s why I liked Delta Zeta, because I had all these amazing women around me.”
Rachel Pappas, former chapter secretary, discussing the events in class. At a rally, she said national leaders had misrepresented the truth.
But over the years DePauw students had attached a negative stereotype to the chapter, as evidenced by the survey that Pam Propsom, a psychology professor, conducts each year in her class. That image had hurt recruitment, and the national officers had repeatedly warned the chapter that unless its membership increased, the chapter could close.
At the start of the fall term the national office was especially determined to raise recruitment because 2009 is the 100th anniversary of the DePauw chapter’s founding. In September, Ms. Menges and Kathi Heatherly, a national vice president of the sorority, visited the chapter to announce a reorganization plan they said would include an interview with each woman about her commitment. The women were urged to look their best for the interviews.
The tone left four women so unsettled that they withdrew from the chapter almost immediately.
Robin Lamkin, a junior who is an editor at The DePauw and was one of the 23 women evicted, said many of her sisters bought new outfits and modeled them for each other before the interviews. Many women declared their willingness to recruit diligently, Ms. Lamkin said.
A few days after the interviews, national representatives took over the house to hold a recruiting event. They asked most members to stay upstairs in their rooms. To welcome freshmen downstairs, they assembled a team that included several of the women eventually asked to stay in the sorority, along with some slender women invited from the sorority’s chapter at Indiana University, Ms. Holloway said.
“They had these unassuming freshman girls downstairs with these plastic women from Indiana University, and 25 of my sisters hiding upstairs,” she said. “It was so fake, so completely dehumanized. I said, ‘This calls for a little joke.’ ”
Ms. Holloway put on a wig and some John Lennon rose-colored glasses, burst through the front door and skipped around singing, “Ooooh! Delta Zeta!” and other chants.
The face of one of the national representatives, she recalled, “was like I’d run over her puppy with my car.”
The national representatives announced their decisions in the form letters, delivered on Dec. 2, which said that Delta Zeta intended to increase membership to 95 by the 2009 anniversary, and that it would recruit using a “core group of women.”
Elizabeth Haneline, a senior computer science major who was among those evicted, returned to the house that afternoon and found some women in tears. Even the chapter’s president had been kicked out, Ms. Haneline said, while “other women who had done almost nothing for the chapter were asked to stay.”
Six of the 12 women who were asked to stay left the sorority, including Joanna Kieschnick, a sophomore majoring in English literature. “They said, ‘You’re not good enough’ to so many people who have put their heart and soul into this chapter that I can’t stay,” she said.
In the months since, Cynthia Babington, DePauw’s dean of students, has fielded angry calls from parents, she said. Robert Hershberger, chairman of the modern languages department, circulated the faculty petition; 55 professors signed it.
“We were especially troubled that the women they expelled were less about image and more about academic achievement and social service,” Dr. Hershberger said.
During rush activities this month, 11 first-year students accepted invitations to join Delta Zeta, but only three have sought membership.
On Feb. 2, Rachel Pappas, a junior who is the chapter’s former secretary, printed 200 posters calling on students to gather that afternoon at the student union. About 50 students showed up and heard Ms. Pappas say the sorority’s national leaders had misrepresented the truth when they asserted they had evicted women for lack of commitment.
“The injustice of the lies,” she said, “is contemptible.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/education/25sorority.html?ex=1330146000&en=115632fdee07b436&ei=5124&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook
Sorority Evictions Raise Issue of Looks and Bias
By SAM DILLON
Published: February 25, 2007
GREENCASTLE, Ind. — When a psychology professor at DePauw University here surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of “daddy’s little princesses” and another as “offbeat hippies.” The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as “socially awkward.”
Women at DePauw University in Indiana who were either asked to leave the Delta Zeta house or resigned in protest hold a sorority photo.
Elizabeth Haneline, who was among those evicted, said, “The Greek system hasn’t changed at all, but instead of racism, it’s image now.”
Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.
The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.
“Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave,” said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization.
“I sensed the disrespect with which this was to be carried out and got fed up,” Ms. Holloway added. “I didn’t have room in my life for these women to come in and tell my sisters of three years that they weren’t needed.”
Ms. Holloway is not the only angry one. The reorganization has left a messy aftermath of recrimination and tears on this rural campus of 2,400 students, 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis.
The mass eviction battered the self-esteem of many of the former sorority members, and some withdrew from classes in depression. There have been student protests, outraged letters from alumni and parents, and a faculty petition calling the sorority’s action unethical.
DePauw’s president, Robert G. Bottoms, issued a two-page letter of reprimand to the sorority. In an interview in his office, Dr. Bottoms said he had been stunned by the sorority’s insensitivity.
“I had no hint they were going to disrupt the chapter with a membership reduction of this proportion in the middle of the year,” he said. “It’s been very upsetting.”
The president of Delta Zeta, which has its headquarters in Oxford, Ohio, and its other national officers declined to be interviewed. Responding by e-mail to questions, Cynthia Winslow Menges, the executive director, said the sorority had not evicted the 23 women, even though the national officers sent those women form letters that said: “The membership review team has recommended you for alumna status. Chapter members receiving alumnae status should plan to relocate from the chapter house no later than Jan. 29, 2007.”
Ms. Menges asserted that the women themselves had, in effect, made their own decisions to leave by demonstrating a lack of commitment to meet recruitment goals. The sorority paid each woman who left $300 to cover the difference between sorority and campus housing.
The sorority “is saddened that the isolated incident at DePauw has been mischaracterized,” Ms. Menges wrote. Asked for clarification, the sorority’s public relations representative e-mailed a statement saying its actions were aimed at the “enrichment of student life at DePauw.”
This is not the first time that the DePauw chapter of Delta Zeta has stirred controversy. In 1982, it attracted national attention when a black student was not allowed to join, provoking accusations of racial discrimination.
Earlier this month, an Alabama lawyer and several other DePauw alumni who graduated in 1970 described in a letter to The DePauw, the student newspaper, how Delta Zeta’s national leadership had tried unsuccessfully to block a young woman with a black father and a white mother from joining its DePauw chapter in 1967.
Despite those incidents, the chapter appears to have been home to a diverse community over the years, partly because it has attracted brainy women, including many science and math majors, as well as talented disabled women, without focusing as exclusively as some sororities on potential recruits’ sex appeal, former sorority members said.
“I had a sister I could go to a bar with if I had boy problems,” said Erin Swisshelm, a junior biochemistry major who withdrew from the sorority in October. “I had a sister I could talk about religion with. I had a sister I could be nerdy about science with. That’s why I liked Delta Zeta, because I had all these amazing women around me.”
Rachel Pappas, former chapter secretary, discussing the events in class. At a rally, she said national leaders had misrepresented the truth.
But over the years DePauw students had attached a negative stereotype to the chapter, as evidenced by the survey that Pam Propsom, a psychology professor, conducts each year in her class. That image had hurt recruitment, and the national officers had repeatedly warned the chapter that unless its membership increased, the chapter could close.
At the start of the fall term the national office was especially determined to raise recruitment because 2009 is the 100th anniversary of the DePauw chapter’s founding. In September, Ms. Menges and Kathi Heatherly, a national vice president of the sorority, visited the chapter to announce a reorganization plan they said would include an interview with each woman about her commitment. The women were urged to look their best for the interviews.
The tone left four women so unsettled that they withdrew from the chapter almost immediately.
Robin Lamkin, a junior who is an editor at The DePauw and was one of the 23 women evicted, said many of her sisters bought new outfits and modeled them for each other before the interviews. Many women declared their willingness to recruit diligently, Ms. Lamkin said.
A few days after the interviews, national representatives took over the house to hold a recruiting event. They asked most members to stay upstairs in their rooms. To welcome freshmen downstairs, they assembled a team that included several of the women eventually asked to stay in the sorority, along with some slender women invited from the sorority’s chapter at Indiana University, Ms. Holloway said.
“They had these unassuming freshman girls downstairs with these plastic women from Indiana University, and 25 of my sisters hiding upstairs,” she said. “It was so fake, so completely dehumanized. I said, ‘This calls for a little joke.’ ”
Ms. Holloway put on a wig and some John Lennon rose-colored glasses, burst through the front door and skipped around singing, “Ooooh! Delta Zeta!” and other chants.
The face of one of the national representatives, she recalled, “was like I’d run over her puppy with my car.”
The national representatives announced their decisions in the form letters, delivered on Dec. 2, which said that Delta Zeta intended to increase membership to 95 by the 2009 anniversary, and that it would recruit using a “core group of women.”
Elizabeth Haneline, a senior computer science major who was among those evicted, returned to the house that afternoon and found some women in tears. Even the chapter’s president had been kicked out, Ms. Haneline said, while “other women who had done almost nothing for the chapter were asked to stay.”
Six of the 12 women who were asked to stay left the sorority, including Joanna Kieschnick, a sophomore majoring in English literature. “They said, ‘You’re not good enough’ to so many people who have put their heart and soul into this chapter that I can’t stay,” she said.
In the months since, Cynthia Babington, DePauw’s dean of students, has fielded angry calls from parents, she said. Robert Hershberger, chairman of the modern languages department, circulated the faculty petition; 55 professors signed it.
“We were especially troubled that the women they expelled were less about image and more about academic achievement and social service,” Dr. Hershberger said.
During rush activities this month, 11 first-year students accepted invitations to join Delta Zeta, but only three have sought membership.
On Feb. 2, Rachel Pappas, a junior who is the chapter’s former secretary, printed 200 posters calling on students to gather that afternoon at the student union. About 50 students showed up and heard Ms. Pappas say the sorority’s national leaders had misrepresented the truth when they asserted they had evicted women for lack of commitment.
“The injustice of the lies,” she said, “is contemptible.”
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
why make friends when you can buy them?
The party was lame and besides my buddy's in the band (only one was in the frat) and my buddy's who came to see the band, nobody talked to us. They looked at us with contempt because we weren't in the frat or ladies from a sorority. To each their own I guess but the idea of it and treatment of people always put me off.
And that failure's no success at all."
"Don't ya think its sometimes wise not to grow up."
"Cause life ain't nothing but a good groove
A good mixed tape to put you in the right mood."
I've never really understood what they are. Can someone explain how it works?
-C Addison
I think you "pledge" which means you want to join and then you go through initiation bullshit, which involves humiliation. And then your part of this group of "brothers" or "sisters" that looks out after you. You live in a big house and party and have other sorities and fraternities over. I guess its a was to make friends and hang out at school, to be part of something.
I am speaking from never being in one so please correct me if anyone knows more. I disagree with the whole Greek thing but am trying to sound respectful
And that failure's no success at all."
"Don't ya think its sometimes wise not to grow up."
"Cause life ain't nothing but a good groove
A good mixed tape to put you in the right mood."
But each fraternity or sorority is like a national society right? With chapters (ie houses) on multiple campuses? So if you're a member at campus A, you can travel to campus B and stay in the house of your society there too. Is that how it works?
Do you have to pay to be a member? Or are you just paying your share of rent for the house? And how do the houses themselves work? Are they just share houses, or do they include catering, cleaning etc?
-C Addison
most pay dues and you usually pay if you choose to live in the house (though some force you to live there at some point). most include some form of catering and cleaning, or assign the tasks. you're also usually required to participate in various communal activities... floats for parades, community service projects, campus involvement, and (above all) parties. they also have a fantastic "dont ask dont tell" support network for date rape.
Sounds awesome. Does that come with comprehensive health insurance?
-C Addison
well, the sororities offer low cost std/abortion options. the fraternities dont get health insurance, but you do get access to the best legal defense nepotism can provide.
Unfortunately, a lot of the focus turns to exclusion.
I am in a fraternity. Pledging to me is an incredibly spine-building process. Hazing, within reason, is meant to build character and enforce identification with one's pledge class. The military does the same thing. There are fraternities that take it too far, but they're obviously wrong.
Building loyalty and commitment to your brothers is something that helps to create an environment of dedicated citizens. The people who hate fraternities generally hate the military also.
Excluding non-brothers or non-sisters is the prerogative of the fraternity, but it should not happen too frequently. Ideally, a fraternity witnesses to its underlying principals by being gentlemen.
And of course, you always have assholes coming into your parties acting like cocks and treating the girls like crap. It's just common sense that you don't come into someone else's party and act like a dick...
-Enoch Powell
Would you agree that there is something to that dimension of it?
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
There is a certain treatment of non-members, but it must not necessarily be negative treatment. Same goes for nationalism and fraternities. Just because I'm dedicated to brothers doesn't mean my dedication to my fellow man should falter.
-Enoch Powell
well at least we know how they've become the way they are then... cos if YOU are talking about how they need to be humble it's no wonder none of them ever actually do it.
i was referring more to the assholes that host the parties and act like cocks. i've been in college and been to schools that revolve around the greek scene. for any guy to get into a party he has to bring 2 girls (keeps the number of potential victims high and their chances for protection low). the girls are fed shots as quickly as they want them and get to the front of the line by latching onto a brother who keeps the booze flowing to impair her judgment. once she's sufficiently intoxicated, other brothers distract her friends so he can get her alone in his room where no one will hear her protest. in the morning, she's kicked out still disoriented before she can figure out what exactly happened under the auspice of "we're not supposed to have female overnight guests, you've got to sneak out now."
My college did not have a greek system other than honor societies.
I recognize the benifits and comraderie of quite a few houses and there are good ones, but the sterotypes hold true the vast majority of the time.
Fraternities and sororities, like every other group, are extrememly sterotyped. People join for all types of reasons, its not just people buying friends.
Most people usually end up finding a few good friends out of the entire chapter and then just hang out with the other dudes on occasion. There will always be assholes who slip through the recruiting process though.
Pledging was rough, but overall it was one of the best experiences of my life.
I appreciate the loyalty-building aspect of a frat, but to me, it seems weird to quickly try to develop a bond between those who have not known eachother for a long time.
A streetgang, at least, usually conatins members who grew up together, and probably have more in common.
Most of my friends that joined frats went from being shy to overly confident and arrogant, as if they felt strong because they were all of the sudden part of an organized group.
Doesn't seem like a healthy progression, but I am sure members of the greek system have positive experiences, so the system does benefit them.
But, as a whole, it is human nature for people to get a bit of an ego when they feel they have moved up the social ladder, be it with money, fame or social standing.
Yeah, I agree 100% with this. It was amazing to see dudes come in that were really shy and unsure of themselves. And next thing you know they start pulling chicks for the first time in their life and have Johny badd-ass high-fiving them on the way to class and suddenly they become a different person. Essentially everything about them would change.
That shit was kind of annoying... I think it's great to see people grow and gain confidence, but completely changing who you are or denying who you were or where you came from isn't good. Those are some of the dudes that give the whole thing a bad wrap.
Reminds me of the people who work in music/movies whom I deal with everyday...you'd be surprised how arrogant a lower-rung employee at a movie company acts, simply because of with whom they are associated!
Good point. Seeing it on the outside is different. Most friends I have who have been in the Greek system are very positive about the experience. And not just because of the parties and sex.
And that failure's no success at all."
"Don't ya think its sometimes wise not to grow up."
"Cause life ain't nothing but a good groove
A good mixed tape to put you in the right mood."
Your broad generalizations indicate that you probably hung out with the celibate acappela singers in college.
-Enoch Powell
one week it was my turn to be the alarm clock for the house, the wakeup call. fuck man, what do those things cost, like $20? why do they need some rushie waking their dumbasses up. I pissed off everyone in the entire house that week, it was great. fuckheads. and then the next week the communal bathroom was never cleaned, and the next week it was some other stupid chore that never got done. but they couldn't do shit....if you don't play the game there is nothing they can do. my buddy and i had a blast, met really cool people outside of the house...but shit, those guys were tools.
or that my girlfriend was raped by a fratboy. or that i have a number of other friends who were sexually assaulted at frat parties by fratboys.
Ohhhh so all frats must be exactly that way at all colleges. Broad generalizations get you nowhere.
At my college, girls have claimed they were raped by frat guys also. In many of the cases though, they brought charges against the guy and then the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.
It is not hard to get evidence of a rape, people.
Rape is a serious serious issue and when people lie about it, they are no better than the guys who rape innocent women.
-Enoch Powell
nevermind.
-Enoch Powell
Why even respond to that nonsense.
Frats are just a group of people getting together for a common reason. There's nothing sinister about them.
when it hits you, you feel to pain.
So brutalize me with music.”
~ Bob Marley
the other foot in the gutter
sweet smell that they adore
I think I'd rather smother
-The Replacements-