I know talking about the NYT article about the Delta Zetas is a bit passe, but I'd like to mention it anyway, especially since DePauw has officially removed the sorority from campus and feminist perspectives on the Greek system is something I've developed an interest in during my time at [Elite, Over-Priced University].
As I've pointed out, I'm a student at Vanderbilt University, which is heavily Greek (but we do not have a Delta Zeta chapter). According to the Office of Greek life, 42% of students are Greek. However, it is heavily female-slanted: 51% of all female students are affiliated with a sorority as compared to only 32% of male students. There was a lot of buzz on campus about this when the story first broke. The reactions were more or less what I expected: a fair degree of denial and cynicism. The most common response I heard (among my mostly unaffiliated friends) was "Of course that wouldn't happen at [Elite, Over-Priced University]! ...[Our] sororities don't accept ugly people in the first
place." From the other side, here's a fairly hilarious batch of denial, courtesy of the school newspaper's website :
Sophomore [redacted], a member of Alpha Chi Omega, said she can
see why Delta Zeta's national organization made the decision to
showcase only the sorority members whom they felt were the "best
representatives" of the chapter recruitment.
"It's unfortunate that much of recruitment has to be based on
appearances; it's inevitable to some degree in recruitment," [she]
said. "It's not all superficially based, but some of it has to be
because sororities don't have any other way to get to know some of the
girls."
I don't buy it. I would consider it if Vanderbilt did fall rush the
way most universities do and sororities had all of a month to meet
potential sisters, but it doesn't. [Elite, Over-Priced University] defers freshman rush
until the beginning of the Spring semester to allow freshmen to get
accustomed to college life, again, according to the Office of Greek Life:
The [Elite, Over-Priced University] administration encourages "the freshman year experience" and believes freshmen need ample time to adjust to college life without the time commitment of joining Greek organizations in their first semester on campus. It is important for first-year students to focus on academic achievement, making friends, getting settled into college life, and to begin making decisions about
what types of student organizations they will want to become involved in while at Vanderbilt.
This has the added bonus of giving
sororities an entire semester to scope out the freshman class, get to
know its members, and figure out who they'd like to rush their house.
By the time second semester rolls around, they all have a very good
idea as to who they want-- and who they don't. The amount of dirty
rushing that goes on is a good indicator of that.
Not all the Greeks, however, are in denial/intellectually dishonest about the system:
[Another student] said she likes that Vanderbilt has deferred recruitment, in
which freshman women participate in spring recruitment, because this
enables sorority women to develop relationships during first semester.
By the time spring recruitment comes, she said sorority members will
have gotten to know potential new members based on their personalities,
their involvement on campus and their backgrounds.
Exactly. Here's an excerpt from a comment that was left on the
website, from a disaffiliated sorority member (she doesn't say who she
is on the site, but I've spoken with her about this before):
Recruitment is all about appearance. We plan what to wear (so that we
can match and look cute - because God knows a freshman won't join a
group that doesn't have cute matching polos), are told to dress up and
look as cute as possible, etc. Look at entertainment round: all of the
women chosen for the dances are the most attractive, and many (most, in
fact) of the houses use dances which are extremely sexually
provocative, so as to show that the women in the house are hot.
Women
saying Delta Zeta is an anomaly is, frankly, bullshit. I remember at
my house, during votes for which freshmen we would take, someone said
we shouldn't take a girl because she looked "weird." It's offensive,
it's ridiculous and it's incredibly stupid; almost every sorority and
chapter does it. Is there any sorority that doesn't tell people how
hot they are?
I'm not in a sorority (obviously), for all the usual reasons. [Insert stereotypical comments about not paying for one's friends, hating frat parties here, and most of all detesting conformity here.] I know, I know, even the "alternative" among us are conformists in some way or another, and I'm well aware of that. I don't think I'm a special, unique snowflake that cannot be tainted by any kind of association with other people (mostly because I find those people really, really irritating) so much as I find the degree of conformity involved in Greek life, especially here at [Elite, Over-Priced University], truly disturbing. I think the mindset that it's a great idea to let people dictate your wardrobe on a regular basis borders on the Orwellian, and don't even get me started on the "weight-loss sororities" that set up gym routines for members that are too fat (and by "too fat," I mean "don't look grotesquely anorexic"). Panopticon much? I'm pretty sure that level of scrutiny would send me straight to the crazy house.
Anyway, I'll try to be fair. It's important to note that there is a lot of variation between sororities, even within the same campus. Unaffiliated people have a tendency to lump all sororities into the same homogeneous group, which isn't honest. Each sorority, consciously or not, has its own stereotypical image (there's the "Blonde Sorority," "The Fat Sorority," "The Jesus Freak Sorority," etc.) that it's known for on campus. It's well-known that some sororities are more service-oriented than others, that some sororities do nothing but hit frat parties, and so on and so forth. Individuals within a given sorority may or may not fall into the stereotype. That said, there is one thing that is common to all [Elite, Over-Priced University] sororities: they actively discriminate based on appearances.
The only exceptions are matters of degree; while some sororities are less image-obsessed than others, none of them honestly do not discriminate against ugly or fat people. In fact, if you fall anywhere short of gorgeous (by normal people standards, not [Elite, Over-Priced University] standards) and aren't a legacy, there's no way you'll get into one of the popular sororities. That's The Way It Is, and as much as the Greeks try to deny it to the campus newspaper, everyone knows what's what. Whenever anyone announces that they're going to rush, their peer group immediately sizes up their chances for getting into a given sorority- "Well, she's not rich enough to be an X, or pretty enough to be a Y, but she's really smart and sweet so she might have a chance with Z..." and so on and so forth. It's gross.
To be fair, though, there are multiple factors at work here, most of which aren't necessarily within an individual chapter's control. Greek life is on the decline. [Elite, Over-Priced University] is one of the most Greek campuses in the country, and the Greek population as a percentage has been steadily declining for years. In order for a sorority to be able to keep its charter, it has to maintain a certain number of members, which, in the face of diminishing popular opinion towards Greek organizations, can become difficult. Recruitment and campus presence are critical to that, and on-campus prestige is largely doled out based on which sorority has the most attractive members.
The cause of that could be anything, really, from the influence of the frats to overall American culture that evaluates women's appearances above and beyond their intellectual, moral, or humanitarian accomplishments. Either way, while being in one of the "nice" or "brainy" sororities might get an individual some social credit, it's not the same as being in one of the pretty ones, even if they have a reputation for being "spoiled rotten mean girls." The reality of appearance-based status coupled with the fear of Nationals coming in and taking over one's chapter can be enough to kill any progressive impulse that a recruitment chair might have.
I still don't think it's right, though, especially since it only works to reinforce negative stereotypes about women at my school (mainly, that we're all vapid, spoiled princesses who are only here to find husbands).
