by Mindy Kaling
Thus, I never learned moderation. When I arrived at Dartmouth College in 1997, my attitude toward alcohol was that it was a delicious and dangerous treat that, when obtained, needed to be ingested quickly in case someone tried to take it away. You know, the way a raccoon eats from a garbage can.
People who hear I went to Dartmouth are often surprised by how much I liked it. I think it’s because they correctly assume that Dartmouth is extremely white, fairly conservative, outdoorsy, and in the middle of nowhere. And while all these things are true, I still loved it. How is that possible, you ask? How could a nature-hating, sedentary, aspiring (can I still say this?) fag hag feel so at home in rural New Hampshire?
I’ll tell you how. All that hunky blond tail is how! Just kidding. I find blond men creepy and unnatural! Just kidding. Every guy hated me! I loved Dartmouth because the minute you set foot on campus, it’s like you’re in a watercolor painting from your dentist’s office called New England College. Because it looked so much like the idealized film version of college, I always felt that cinematic college-y things were going to happen to me. Also, most of my fellow students did not look like me or share my interests, which actually made me feel special. Dear old Dartmouth, whose motto is “Vox Clamantis in Deserto,” which translated from Latin means “White men crawling out of the forest.” In Hanover, New Hampshire, a chirpy, Indian improv comedian who was constantly talking was something of a novelty to the scores of wordless men named Brian. And because Dartmouth was founded in 1769, it had lots of those quintessentially old East Coast college traditions like secret societies, ghost stories, catchy old fight songs that are later deemed racist, and, most important, a Greek system.
For a moment let’s pretend that I was born a white man. Chris Christie? How dare you. Obviously I would be Jon Lovitz. Now imagine the white male version of me as a freshman at Dartmouth in the late ’90s. Kind of a sweet bozo, right? Awful cargo pants, boat shoes, inviting everyone back to the basement of his frat to drink and play pong. This sweet young Lovitz version of me would probably have died of alcohol poisoning before sophomore year, since frat guys had ready, daily access to alcohol and, because at eighteen, I must admit, I loved to drink. At Dartmouth in 1997 you would walk into the basement of any fraternity and there was a 100 percent chance you would find a warm keg of Bud and a glassy-eyed young man with undiagnosed depression eager to pour you some. I could not have handled that.
Luckily, I was not born a white man.1 I was born a socially anxious Indian woman. And while I loved my college and my extracurricular activities, I didn’t have access to any kind of parties. Which is why I wanted to be in a sorority.
SEEKING FRIENDSHIPS AS SEEN ON TV
I have a complicated relationship with the Greek system. One side of my personality is absolutely suited for sorority life. I’m an organized person who loves the structure of weekly meetings and scheduled socializing, and I even see the value in hierarchies. I think gentle hazing of the “pledges must wear such-and-such outfits” variety is charming and fun. I am a firm believer that the best friendships come from mandatory time doing tedious chores. Like when a bad kid and a good kid have to spend Saturday cleaning the teachers’ lounge and learn they’re not so different after all. That said, I do think that perpetrators of some of the worst, most sexist, and most dangerous behavior at Dartmouth were from the Greek system. But, I thought, those are fraternities, not sororities. I’ll never make another woman drink her own urine while my friends chant, “Chug! Chug! Chug!” Sure, it’s hilarious and probably cements friendships for a lifetime (not to mention I once half-read an article about Madonna drinking her pee for health reasons), but it’s wrong. So, I thought, maybe I’ll join a sorority.
At Dartmouth, there are many sororities, each with its own reputation. To paint a picture of my options at the time, I will describe some of them now. Please know that these are all subjective, probably offensive, doubtlessly incorrect sentiments based on attending Dartmouth College in a pre-9/11 era.
Kappa Kappa Gamma—Svelte blond or East Asian women, frequently seen running a seven-minute mile on the treadmills in the Zimmerman Fitness Center, mouthing words to Dixie Chicks songs. Who I would cast in a movie about them: Rosamund Pike.
Delta Delta Delta—Never not smiling, never not baking cookies. Their finely toned arms replace a finely honed sense of irony. Who I would cast in a movie about them: Carrie Underwood.
Kappa Delta Epsilon—Brunette Kappa. Most rumored access to cocaine. Highest proportion of tramp stamps. Sexy party girls who could do cool things like rip a condom open with their teeth. Who I would cast in a movie about them: Mila Kunis.
Sigma Delta—Brassy girls, athletes, drinkers who could “party like the guys.” Girls who owned dogs. Feminist and lesbian-friendly. Who I would cast in a movie about them: the background actresses of Orange Is the New Black.
Sigma Delt didn’t expressly advertise to be the place where minority women interested in the performing arts would thrive, but you know how all the guys who were into theater tech from your high school were also into Monty Python? Something about these rowdy rugby-playing lesbians seemed like they would be into my little sketch-comedy plays.
I learned about Sigma Delt because I was a member of a student group called Hanover Crew. Hanover Crew was a group of sophomores, juniors, and seniors selected to welcome incoming freshmen through songs and sketches before they departed for a weeklong outdoor adventure. I applied because it was very exclusive, and I longed for the power trip and free T-shirt that came with it. This school-wide freshman tradition, imaginatively called “Trips,” was one of the best experiences I ever had at Dartmouth. Groups of nervous eighteen-year-olds arrived for their freshman year and were greeted by Hanover Crew. They were then clumped with other freshmen they didn’t know to kayak, canoe, hike, and horseback ride through the beautiful White Mountains for a week, and then they all regrouped at the top of Moosilauke Mountain for a night of delicious food, a student-written musical performance, and ghost stories.
Trips lasted three weeks, during which Hanover Crew lived, ate, and slept in the same place, so the fourteen of us grew very close. There were seven guys and seven girls. I was the only sophomore girl and was taken under the wing of two impressive junior girls named Risa and Jeanette. Risa and Jeanette were also in Sigma Delt. Risa was captain of the crew team and the first openly gay woman I had ever met. She looked like Jennifer Garner, had a voice lower than any woman or man on Hanover Crew, and, even now, I have never seen a woman with a body as good as hers. Jeanette was a tiny, stylish, potty-mouthed party girl who wore a blue clip-in extension in her jet-black hair. She taught me how to fill in my eyebrows with an eyebrow pencil. Her catchphrase for whenever anyone was excited or into anything was “Oh my God, they are going to come their pants.” To this day, I use this disgusting phrase at least once daily, because I think it must be as incredibly charming as I thought it was in 1998.
I had never met two cooler, more self-actualized, strong women. I followed them around, smitten, and in return Risa and Jeanette adored me. They thought I was funny and subversive because I did things like greet freshmen by saying, “Welcome to Dartmouth College. I am the ghost of a kid who died on her freshman outdoor trip.” (I should remind you that there are only, like, twelve funny people in the state of New Hampshire at any given time, so this was pretty impressive.)
By the end of Hanover Crew, after spending all of my time with Risa and Jeanette, I became infatuated with the idea of being in their sorority. I could hang out with the two coolest upperclassmen I knew and be invited to all their cool activities? They were planning a spaghetti dinner where everyone would watch the Nagano Olympics on their giant flat-screen TV. I remember this detail very clearly. The fact that I had no place to watch the Olympics was stressing me out for some reason.
Pledge season started and, with Jeanette’s and Risa’s recommendations, I was offered a bid. That moment I will remember forever. The feeling of being offered entry int
o something old and exclusive was like a drug rush to my young, elitist brain. I accepted, proud of my achievement, ignored the fact that I had done virtually nothing to earn it, and started the pledge process.
PLEASE LIKE ME
I’m going to gently assume that if you’re reading this book, you are a little bit of a nerd, or perhaps you’re a man whose nerd girlfriend is taking a long time in the bathroom and you can’t figure out how to turn on her television, so I need to give you a quick primer on sorority language. “Rush” is the mutual selection period where two things happen: 1) prospective fraternity and sorority members investigate houses and 2) the sororities and frats evaluate the would-be members to see if they’d be a good fit (a.k.a., if they are hot enough to attract members of the opposite sex to their house for parties). After a few weeks of strange little tea parties and “chill barbecues,” the frats and sororities ostensibly know enough to offer “bids.” Ah, bid day. The day on Dartmouth campus you could see girls either shrieking with happiness in Food Court or, for the unlucky ones, weeping on the phones to their moms, wondering if they should transfer to Duke. Once the bids are accepted, the prospective members become “pledges” and the pledge period begins, lasting for several months until Initiation Night. Initiation Night is usually the most important night of the year for the Greek system, and where most traditions are shared with the youngsters. It can be emotional and moving, or mired in vomit and blood. Sometimes both!
Pledges populated the Dartmouth campus scenery like pine trees, red Solo cups, and built-in-bra tank tops. They were always in some amusing state of mandatory fraternity garb. You could tell a pledge was a Chi Gam because they all wore signs with their names around their necks. Alpha Chi made their pledges grow out facial hair or wear the same plaid shirt for four weeks. Because Dartmouth is in the middle of nowhere, I think giving people secret rituals was also a way of entertaining everyone on campus. I’m the kind of person who encourages her employees to dress up for every holiday—even bank holidays—in a literal-minded way (for example, green and brown for Arbor Day! Leaf earrings!), so I found this gentle sartorial hazing charming.
As a pledge, I was game for all of this. What would Sigma Delt dream up? Pigtails and face paint? Color-coordinated kilts? All any girl wants to do in college is dress like a hot slut and be able to say that it was “mandatory.” But they didn’t do any of that. All the sisters of Sigma Delt required was for us to show up at events with the other pledges and drink.
I met the other pledges. There was Jenna, the younger cousin of the icy and startlingly thin Sigma Delt recruitment chair, Caitlin (this is not her real name). Caitlin looked like the actress Angie Harmon crossed with a Mexican Day of the Dead skeleton. The cheekbones on Caitlin’s stone face could open a bottle of Stoneface. Her gorgeous/alarming appearance was perfect for a powerful senior, because whenever she entered a room your inclination was to stare at her anyway. We all thought her cousin Jenna was incredibly cool and connected. She was in the same extended family as Caitlin! She was there, ostensibly, when the cheekbones first emerged! We were impressed. The only other girl I remember was a small blonde named Maddy, whose main distinguishing trait was that she had been a child actor in Home Alone 2, which was something we actually thought was pretty cool. I’m sorry, do you have any Macaulay Culkin stories? I don’t!
We spent a lot of time together. One afternoon a group of us hiked down to the Connecticut River to cheer on a junior named Abby who had a crew race against Columbia. I did not know Abby, but I went along, face painted with a big green “GO” on my forehead and “ABBY!” across my cheeks. While we waited, we chatted, and I felt my heart race with the hope and excitement of a good conversation. Did they like comedy? Did they have funny opinions about stuff? Jenna steered the conversation with stories of her and Caitlin’s family’s jointly owned vacation property in the Berkshires. I actually like hearing about rich people’s vacation homes, but only if they’re filled with scandalous stuff, like the Kennedy Compound. As Jenna talked about her amazing cousins and the splendor and tranquility of her family’s second home, we watched two boats glide by in the distance. Abby was on one of them. If you’ve never watched a crew race, this is how it goes down: once the boats appear, you scream loudly for nine seconds until they disappear out of view. Then you wait forty minutes for someone to bike over from the finish line and tell you the outcome. It’s a little anticlimactic.
That night when I got home, I had a slightly uneasy feeling. I had hugged all the other pledges when we left, and we declared it a “super-fun afternoon,” but was it really? It secretly felt more like when someone gives you a holiday card that says “A donation has been made in your honor to such-and-such charity” and all you really wanted was one of those enormous tins of tri-flavored popcorn.
The wonderful thing about being at Sigma Delt was that I was the only person even approximating funny, and therefore I was deemed insanely hilarious. It’s a nice feeling when, during a particularly uneventful house meeting, you mime “slitting your wrists out of boredom” and people around you think you are the next Jim Carrey.
Being funny made me well liked, but it also made me the sorority jester. After a night of drinking beer and playing pong, we could go to the basement library, where I was encouraged to do impromptu comedy routines in the center of a circle of sisters. They loved when I would do impressions of guys whom Sigma Delt sisters had slept with, so that was an area I drew from. “Do Andy Trevello!” someone would shout, and I would do my best impression of lacrosse player Andy Trevello, whose defining characteristics were that he was not very smart and rumor had it that he could suck his own penis. You know, just really highbrow, intelligent comedy.
“She is so funny you will come your pants,” Jeanette said of me on our first pledge night. Now I started to wonder, sadly, If I’m so busy making people come their pants, who is going to make me come mine?2
I looked forward to our Initiation Night, when at last I would break the chains of pledgedom and become a regular sister. We had heard rumors of Initiation Night from Jenna, and how special and sacred it was. I was so excited that I remember calling my mom and saying earnestly, “I think this might be one of the truly memorable nights of my life. I hope I never forget it.” She laughed, told me I was over my meal plan by more than $1,000, and asked how many meals I was eating a day. I hung up, a little miffed.
On Initiation Night, we arrived to an empty house full of lit candles. Ooh, I love this, I thought. This is so very The Skulls (starring Paul Walker and Joshua Jackson at the height of their hotness). We were then told to strip down to our bras and underwear (a little gay?, but nice), were blindfolded (gay), made to drink “mysterious libations” (fruit punch laced with vodka), dip our hands in “eerie concoctions” (spaghetti and grapes), and then led downstairs, where the blindfolds were removed and we were standing in the basement surrounded by all of our sisters and twenty pizzas. These were essentially the activities of a kids’ Halloween party that a pedophile might throw, but these were the ancient Sigma Delt pledge rituals. It wasn’t exactly the secret rituals of the Masons, but it was some enjoyable bonding on a junior varsity level. And what percentage of blindfolded activities end in pizza?
The following week, I missed a Sigma Delt pumpkin-carving party because I had a Latin exam I needed to study for. The next day I received an email from Caitlin about it: “We were just really bummed because we were so excited to see what funny thing you would carve into your pumpkin!” It was sad thinking of hot Día-de-los-Muertos-skeleton Caitlin waiting for me hopefully with a pumpkin. After I missed a Sigma Delt rugby game to go to my Dog Day Players rehearsal, Risa sat me down at the Dirt Cowboy, a cool Seattle-style coffee shop in the middle of town, where people went for serious talks. When she explained what the meeting was about, I was surprised and a little alarmed how closely my attendance was being monitored.
I explained how important my improv troupe was to me, and Risa nodded, serious-faced, with the resolute e
mpathy of someone who has no idea what you are talking about. She leaned in and took my hand. “We’re just worried that you’re withdrawing from the other sisters. And that maybe you’re depressed?”
So much of college is girls labeling other girls terrible things when they don’t like their behavior, but using concerned language so they have plausible deniability if they get accused of being bitches: That girl is not cheerfully doing what the rest of us are doing, so she is probably “depressed” or “has an eating disorder” or “is weird with guys,” and so on. I was also slowly discovering that I had nothing in common with any of these girls except that we were all excited to see the Nagano Olympics on a big TV.
Even the majesty of the Olympics could not keep me loyal to this group for much longer.
The last straw was one weekend when I was away at Middlebury College with my improv troupe and Sigma Delt was throwing a party with Phi Kap, the fraternity across the street. I couldn’t attend, but I wasn’t upset because Phi Kap was mostly handsome closeted guys on the diving team, and a chubby Indian freshman girl into improv comedy was probably not a convincing beard. Even your mom would know the jig was up. I mean, why not just come out at that point? So I gladly sat that one out and went to Vermont to do improv. The next afternoon, however, when I arrived back in Hanover, I found a letter had been slid under the door of my dorm room. I was being fined $100 for not reporting to Sigma Delt at eight a.m. to clean up after the party, which was a chore for pledges.