DZ and AOB

[rm]

I was in a sorority in college, Alpha Theta Beta, a regional founded at Hofstra. We were small and by most expectations of such things, strange -- I was one of several openly queer women, many members were non-white (the president one year was a Saudi national, the president another, was Hawaiian), one girl was in a wheelchair (she'd bend down and rip off the footrest and brandish at guys who were rude at frat parties). And while other houses talked shit about us, and we may have cared, changing or hiding what we were was never in the game plan of our reaction to it.

I can't say I learnt much from sorority life. It's not where I found friends for life or developed leadership skills. I did not learn to be pretty or popular, nor did I network for a future career. What I did learn was that tradition and ritual matter if you choose for it to and that there were, in fact, practical applications to the odd sorts of self-discipline I harboured. Ultimately, it made me feel powerful because I was never cowed, not by exercises designed to make pledges uneasy and not by my school's Greek system that had no respect for us. I remember a girl named Soo Bang, who didn't get a bid from any other house, several of which later admitted in earshot of me, that it was because of her name.

And so, the following utterly enrages me, not just because it's wrong, but because I swam upstream in the Greek system, as did AOB, and while it didn't change my life, you can't say I got less out of it for all that.

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/education/25sorority.html

Comments

[ekatarina.livejournal.com]

Sigh.


Just,... sigh.


I'm glad there is no Greeking at the universities I attended.



Ekatarina

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

I love that half of the 'pretty', 'approved' girls quit. Nice system.

[pennswoods.livejournal.com]

That's just asstastic. Some of these greek shenanigans stink of cultism.

BTW, you made a reference in a prior post to someone on your f-list with an interesting theory about Snape's patronus. Do you think you might be able to point me in the direction of said person or theory. I'm highly intrigued.

[mizg.livejournal.com]

I'm proud of the six women who quit.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Basically in the "I Trust Severus Snape" essay I linked to teh author notes that e don't know what Snape's patronus looks like and that Harry, while unlikely to trust Snape as Snape at this point has a habit of trusting unsourced seeming benevolences and drawing the wrong conclusions about them -- Riddle Diary, the HBP's book, even his own patronus in book 3 when he thinks it's his father come to help him.

Combine this with the fact that JKR has said Dumbledore is really dead but that he was giving her trouble in this book, and that we know patronuses can change under extreme circumstances and that members of the order can use them to pass messages, and I think the essay implies (so the theory is really mine) that Snape's patronus will in fact be Albus Dumbledore in book 7, as a) it makes emotional sense for severus, b) it squares with all the facts of patronus' we know, and 3) it squares with what Harry (and possibly other order members) would need to accept information from Snape under the new circumstances.

So the theory is kind of mine, but the essay does lead any close reader right there I think.

Sorority Life

[keith418.livejournal.com]

A recent book - Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities by Alexandra Robbins covers a great deal of this ground and has some very interesting observations about the differences between various sororities and their inner dynamics.

It's worth reading just for the exploration of "secret-type group" issues alone... if-you-get-my-drift-and-I-think-you-do.

Re: Sorority Life

[rm.livejournal.com]

I absolutely do get your drift. Thank you for the rec.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Me too, and I hate to say it, but also surprised.