Since I was a little girl I’ve always known I wanted to be in a sorority. My mom was in one when she was in school and would always tell me stories about her time with her sisters. From the outside, it seemed like such a genuine way to find your people. Girls coming together to be apart of something bigger than themselves. Growing up playing sports I have always been apart of a team. Being in a sorority seemed like a team. All I wanted was a support system but that is not what I got. 

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I severely underestimated the value placed on the chapter’s image. It became very clear to me that they put more emphasis on what the sisterhood looked like from the outside rather than the authenticity of it internally. One of the first things I was told when I ran home to the house was from an older girl. She said, “Wow we got such a good pledge class this year they’re all so pretty.” Which at the surface may just seem like I’m being a bit dramatic and hey maybe I was. However, she immediately walked away from us. She deemed I was acceptable based on my looks but put no effort into getting to know me. To this day that is the only conversation I ever had with that “sister”. 

 

One part of being in a sorority that I was particularly excited about was philanthropy. I was excited to be apart of something that really made a difference. However, I soon came to realize a majority of the chapter couldn’t care less about our philanthropy. I would hear girls complain endlessly about having to attend philanthropy events. They would come for maybe 30 minutes take an Instagram picture and leave. Most of them only talking to the girls they came with. Nothing about the chapter was unified. It was just a bunch of friend groups who happened to wear the same letters on their t-shirts. 

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I want to make it clear I am not innocent in this. I fully fell into the trap of focusing on the image of the chapter too. It’s easy to do when you’re fully emerged in it. However, I came to my breaking point after being on the opposite side of recruitment. It’s all about “looking the part”. We had to get all our outfits approved before we could wear them. I had 3 looks get thrown out for not being “trendy enough”. At my chapter, we had a thing called “kitchen girls”. During recruitment, they would assign the girls who were not conventionally attractive on kitchen duty where they would prepare the snacks rather than talk to the PNMs. It was used as a way to hide them so they wouldn’t, and I quote “give off the wrong idea of the chapter.” The whole thing disgusted me. While they were trying to hide girls they would also highlight the pretty girls. Our chapter has a tradition of doing a door stack. They would choose which girls would be in the door stack. They would always say they decided who would be on the door stack based on how good they were at it. But it was just clapping. They would really just choose the prettiest girls. 

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Greek life is very problematic but because of its long history, the issues never seem to be properly addressed.