I sat in my psychology class during fall of last semester when in walked a girl I will call Emily. She was a petite blonde from the Mississippi Coast who had sat next to me since the beginning of the semester. Emily wore the usual attire for her caste, a pair of Adidas track shorts, dark leggings and a v-neck T-shirt covered with a swooping cardigan.
If the attire did not tell you, Emily was a member of one of the Greek sororities on campus. She had arrived late to class and quickly took her seat next to me. The contents of her North Face backpack quickly took up the entirety of her portion of the shared table, and my eyes caught on to a small sheet of paper with the word “initiation” typed across the top of it.
“May I see this?” I asked, pointing to the piece of paper.
Emily looked up from her laptop directly at the sheet of paper in question and paused a moment. The top of her lip pushed down steadily on the lower as she thought for an answer.
“Sure,” she quipped half unsurely and pushed the sheet of paper in my direction.
I thanked her and began to scan the paper. What I had been handed was by no means confidential, but Emily’s reaction and quiet reluctance at my viewing the paper told me I was looking at something few people, few men, outside the sorority house had the pleasure of reading. The paper told details of the sorority – important dates, founding members, symbol, etc. – that Emily and other freshmen pledges had to memorize and recite in front of senior members as a part of their initiation into the sorority. What struck me immediately was a line under the section titled, “Founding and Purpose,” which was for female students to show they were intellectually equal to male students.
What the initiation paper meant by intellectually equal was that at the time of most modern fraternities’ foundings, somewhere in the vicinity of the mid to late 19th century, it was commonplace for fraternities to center around the discussion of literature, philosophy and politics.
According to alphadeltapi.org, the founding of sororities stemmed not just from women longing for a social institution of their own, but also for the ability to openly discuss topics like philosophy and politics that were taboo for women to discuss at the time. With women just joining the collegiate world in substantial numbers around the mid-19th century, they saw social kinship with other females at their colleges and the temptation of involving themselves in an all-female secret society as a great opportunity. Thus, the rise of what college students now know as sororities had begun.
You can see how surprised I was when I read that sororities were founded more for the advancement of social issues like equality than for . well, other things.
When psychology ended, I handed the sheet back to Emily and left the classroom. My mind began to think about the statements I had read on the initiation paper.
Had sororities really been founded in part as a social movement to motivate women intellectually as well as socially? If so, are the MSU sororities promoting this image? We’ve all heard the witty nicknames for Greek women on campus, “sorostitutes” being one of the less offensive of the lot.
We’ve all seen the stereotypes walking around campus: Greek girls with hair in a ponytail underneath a Polo baseball cap with Adidas shorts and ruby red lipstick.
I ask that some sorority members on the MSU campus take a step back and analyze the image they portray to many non-Greek students. Is it an image of female empowerment or is the image you are giving off leaning more towards an inebriated, college-age June Cleaver?
I am well aware of the GPA requirement for entry into the sororities on campus, but book smarts do not always materialize into the personality of the individual. I mean to say, you may have a 3.8 on your college transcripts, but if you walk into the Union wearing a [insert sorority name here] T-shirt while screaming, “OMFG, Tiffany, you did what last night?!” into your Blackberry, you will just be playing into the stereotypes that have befallen your class.
As I see it, the plight of the modern sorority is an ongoing battle between two ideals: the belief that sororities are a way to better women’s roles in society through sisterhood and the belief that the purpose of sororities has diminished to nothing more than glorified pageantry and modernized domesticity.
Sororities are not without their high points. For example, each sorority sponsors various charities. And dare I say that the stereotypical sorority member many of us have tightly embedded in our minds is the exception rather than the rule?
This article was written partly in defense of many sorority members that are dear friends of mine. I feel they exemplify what the original founders of women’s sororities yearned for in women: intelligence, class and motivation to succeed. Sadly, these exemplary women go unnoticed next to stereotypical sorority members on campus who bring down the very ideals their sorority strives to promote.
A former member of one of the sororities on campus, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “Stereotypes will never cease to exist. No matter if it is a sorority, athletic team or a chess club, people will always make assumptions, and there will always be exceptions.”
And on the sororities philanthropic endeavors, she said, “Every sorority requires its members to take part in a philanthropy project specific to the Greek chapter. From spreading breast cancer awareness to helping underprivileged children, sorority girls give back to their community.”
My advice for the sororities: Modernize with deliberate speed. Gone are the times of Victorian angels of the house. Our country is in desperate need of more Hillary Clintons and fewer Paris Hiltons. Do not sit in class and be silent. Speak up! Argue with your professor on whether Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus Complex is a viable psychological disorder. Do not accept your place in the collegiate society as one of Southern gentility and hair products.
The next time you are riding with that escort on your way to the date party, lean over and whisper into his ear, “So, what’s your opinion on Barack Obama’s foreign relations policy?” With every sorority touting itself as producing female leaders of tomorrow and having among its members the crŠme de la crŠme of the female upper-middle class, it is time that these sororities strive to show these qualities to those of us who don’t inhabit Greek Row.
The next time you step out of your sorority house carrying a Styrofoam cup of Diet Coke, realize that people are looking at more than what you are wearing or how tight your ponytail is pulled. You are a living, breathing representation of part of the female population on this campus. Ask yourself, “Am I a good representation of the modern university woman?” Or better yet, ask yourself, “Am I what the founding women of my sorority wanted to see in future generations?”
I can appreciate a tall, blonde sorority woman in high heels gliding across campus just like any other man, but what I can appreciate more is a tall, blonde sorority woman with her nose buried in a Jane Austen novel as she crosses the Drill Field. True beauty never sleeps, but intelligence is in the eye of the beholder.
Joshua Bryant is a freshman majoring in political science. He can be contacted at [email protected] .