The Starfish Revolution

What I'm Currently Reading

Samsara! Samsarra!
Grand!
I can walk away
from anything.

Everyone loves
the Dream but I kill it.

Atlas Mountain Cedars gush
over me: ---Up Boogaloo!

I leap free this spring
On fire. How my hair curls.
I'll destroy the world.
That's all. Big ruin all

around. With a wiggle.
With a waggle. A spin.
Allmighty [twenty-twoooo] and freeeeee.
Rebounding on bare feet.
Trembling Aspens are pretty here:

---You've nothing to lose. Go ahead.
Have it all.

-Mark Z. Danielewski, Only Revolutions

Circles, circles, circles.

I have a million things due in between now and May 11th, when I graduate.

I'm going to try to update every day with something substantive, but I'm not sure if that will happen.

Don't unlink or stop reading, though; I'll be back to full-time this summer.

Sororities are superficial? Knock me over with a feather.

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).

Something that's been bugging me for a while.

This post is the culmination of a number of conversations I've had over the course of this academic year that have left me feeling troubled, to say the least.

It all started back in August, when some football players who live in my building were complaining about a seminar they'd been forced to attend about sexual violence (all the freshman and a number of organizations had to attend the same one; athletes were not being unfairly singled out). They were informed that drunk people are not capable of giving consent to sexual activities (duh) and if they chose to have sex with someone who had had too much to drink, they could be charged with sexual assault or rape. This should be a no-brainer: having sex with someone who is intoxicated isn't a good idea for a number of reasons. However, the people I talked to were absolutely outraged:

Football Player #1: I think it's all just ridiculous.
Me: That having sex with someone who's so drunk that they can't consent constitutes rape?
Football Player #2: No! I'd never have sex with someone who said no.
Me: But that's not the issue. If anyone's been drinking heavily, they can't consent to any kind of contract- no tattoos, no piercings, nothing. Of course they're not capable of consenting to sex.
Football Player #1: But then it's not a question of "Does yes mean yes or no," but "How drunk is too drunk?"
Me: If there's any doubt, you probably shouldn't be doing it. I don't think that any sex is worth rape charges. And drunk sex is usually pretty terrible, so...
Football Player #2: I guess, but what if I was drunk, too?

Therein lies my problem. I've had similar discussions all year with people from all parts of the social, political, and feminist spectrum, and it's starting to worry me. Most everyone can get behind the idea that it's wrong to have sex with someone who has been drinking, especially if they're on the verge of being unconscious, but they balk at the idea that someone who is also drunk should be held responsible for raping someone else.

On one hand, I can understand the reasoning. We've all done regrettable things while under the influence, including my wonderful self. Case in point: Cinco de Mayo of last year, in which I met my mother and younger sister at an outdoor bar, dressed in my Catwoman pajamas because I'd just moved back home for the summer. Did I stay at the table and pretend that I was wearing normal clothes? Nope. I got ripped on margaritas and proceeded to spend the rest of the night dancing to the crappy house band. Did I mention I was wearing CATWOMAN PAJAMAS? Because I was. And that MY MOTHER was there? She definitely was, and frequently reminds me of my behavior that night, which I can't seem to recall clearly.  That's why you get to hear this story: I'm pretty sure everyone I know has already heard about it, and I'm never living it down.

The rest of my fantastic drunk stories will be published in my memoirs, to be released only after my mother, father, and grandmother have died and I have retired from all careers I've embarked upon. Especially any in politics. Eeesh.

Anyway. Back to the point. We all do dumb things when we're drunk that we'd like to forget about later, and most of us would like to not be held responsible for them, either. As Nature Boy likes to say, "If I don't remember doing it, it didn't happen." However, the world doesn't (and shouldn't) work that way. Whether or not you you would do something sober is irrelevant; it was still you, and you're still responsible for it. If you pull a Jekyll/Hyde every time you drink, maybe you shouldn't be drinking.

I'm serious about this. When has being drunk ever absolved anyone of committing any other crime? You never hear about anyone successfully arguing, "But, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, I was really really drunk when I crossed the median in my SUV and caused a pile-up that killed six people. I never would have done that sober, so it shouldn't count against me." In fact, the opposite is usually the case; people get hit with additional criminal charges if they were intoxicated while committing a crime.

You also don't tend to see victims of other crimes being blamed if they were intoxicated at the time. I have never in my life heard anyone use, "Oh, well, you shouldn't have had that third glass of wine at that dinner party; you could have heard the burglar sneaking into your house and stopped him" as a reason to tell someone whose house has been broken into and burglarized that it was their fault and/or that they shouldn't seek renumeration in the legal system. But yet, so many people say that to rape victims all the time: "Well, maybe if you hadn't been drinking, it wouldn't have happened," or, my personal favorite, "Women shouldn't put themselves in unsafe situations..." like, drinking in a bar? Going to a party with friends?

What is it about rape that makes it suddenly acceptable to give the perpetrator excuses that no other criminal is privy to? Why is it acceptable to blame rape victims for being too drunk to ward off their attackers when it isn't for victims of other types of crime? The implications of this mentality worry me quite a bit. I can't decide if it's because:

a) people don't think

b) people are more complicit in sexual assault than they'd like to think

c) most rape victims are women and people having huge double standards about sexual violence is therefore totally unsurprising.

At this point, I'm leaning towards some combination of all of the above, but I think it's a serious problem no matter what solution anyone comes up with to explain this.

And I can't help but feel that as long as "I was just as drunk as she was!" is a legitimate defense for sexually assaulting someone, nothing will change.

Ball of Happy

I just found out that I got into grad school! I haven't gotten my financial information yet and the details are still pretty up in the air, but I'm still beyond excited.

I'm still going to have to get a job. Oh well.

Still giddy.

Report from My Bed

I've been catching up on my sleep this week. It's been nice. Have I missed anything?

Further lolz, courtesy of online dating.

Guy: So, I see from your profile that you're writing a thesis. What's it on?
Me: Toni Morrison.
Guy: Yeah, he's a really great writer. I've read some of his books myself.
Me: ...

The end.

Normal people go to the beach for Spring Break

...but I will be spending most of the week in my dorm room working on my thesis and getting a head start on my work for the rest of the semester. Copious amounts of tomato soup will be consumed (since I have a freaking pallet of the stuff), much hair will be torn out and I'll make an honest and sincere effort to not re-enact The Shining.

Fun Fact: I am allergic to sunscreen. Which is why I generally avoid beaches and sunshine.

Today's goal is to get my room cleaned, organized, and ready for the week. To that end, I must:

1. Clean up everything off the floor.
2. Vacuum.
3. Take out the trash.
4. Do laundry. (Probably won't happen 'til tomorrow.)
5. Organize my desk.
6. Organize my shelves (including the yarn stash/knitting/crocheting supplies. Good grief).
7. Organize my closet.
8. Make a list of all the schoolwork I need to accomplish this week and work up a daily to-do list.
9. Make a list of all the knitting/crocheting things I'd like to do this week.
10. Make a list of all the non-school books I'd like to read this week.

I have always operated like this. I'll let my room get into a completely wretched state, have a freakout, and then spend an entire day cleaning it until it's spotless. Entropy creeps in and the cycle repeats itself. I'd call myself ridiculously Type A, but I don't really have enough free-floating hostility (it's more specific now that I've aged and mellowed out somewhat) to qualify these days.

To the end of accomplishing my cleaning spree, I have purchased a Curve CD in hopes that the fast-paced electronica will make me motivated. We'll see how that works out.