Pledged

by Alexandra Robbins

  “No,” Nicole started crying. “What are you saying—that I’ll be in your face all the time?”

  “No, I’m not saying that.” Vicki was getting really uncomfortable. “Um, I’m just saying I want to be your friend, but I think maybe you depend on me a little too much.”

  Nicole’s eyes narrowed into slits. “What’s that supposed to mean?” The girls didn’t speak for the rest of the semester. But because she had latched on to Vicki, Nicole hadn’t gotten to know any of the other pledges. Immediately after Vicki turned her down, Nicole asked another pledge to live with her. The pledge, backing away, looked horrified and said, simply, “No!” The rest of the sorority shied away from her.

  When Vicki moved into the house in August, she bumped into Nicole, who was carrying things to her car. “I think I know the girl you’re living with,” Vicki said. “I saw your names on the list.”

  “No, I transferred,” Nicole said coldly.

  “Oh, you switched rooms?”

  “No, I switched schools.”

  “Oh.” Nicole was just there to get her things out of the house.

  “I’m going to study art and be a painter,” Nicole said.

  Vicki brightened. “Oh, you can come paint my room!” As Nicole huffed and walked away, Vicki winced. Vicki hadn’t intended to be mean—she meant to be funny and cute, but her response had come out mean. She decided she wouldn’t dwell on it.

  Now, however, the pattern of finding a sister increasingly repugnant seemed to be repeating itself with Laura-Ann. Laura-Ann borrowed Vicki’s clothes without asking, dumped her papers on Vicki’s desk, and, most recently, left her wet towel on Vicki’s shopping bags, dampening the designer sundress she had bought for the upcoming Homecoming game. Inwardly, Vicki felt like she was going to spontaneously combust. She couldn’t stand one of her roommates and it was only November. Vicki suspected that Laura-Ann was testing how far she could push her. “New rule,” Vicki said to her roommates. “Anything that’s on my bed, dresser, stuff, or desk that’s not mine is getting thrown out.” The others nodded, surprised to hear Vicki speak assertively.

  What bothered Vicki the most was that she couldn’t find peace in her own home. When she first moved in, Vicki had thought that, in a houseful of girls, at least her room would be her refuge. She thought wrong. Now Vicki found herself constantly trying to make excuses to get out of the room, usually to avoid Laura-Ann, who was always watching her intently and making comments. When Vicki banged her elbow on her dresser while leaving the room, Laura-Ann was off: “Oh geez Vicki are you okay that must have hurt are you all right?” Vicki’s stomach churned in annoyance, though that didn’t bother her nearly as much as Laura-Ann’s favorite refrain. Laura-Ann was constantly pleading, “Don’t be mad,” as in, “I went to the supermarket and got juice for the room, don’t be mad at me. I got a new potpourri, are you mad? Don’t be mad, I thought you’d like it,” and, more frequently these days, “Oh geez, I’m such a fuck-up, don’t be mad.”

  Well, Vicki was mad. She woke up disgruntled every morning because she knew she would have to face Laura-Ann. One morning when Vicki looked out her window and saw Laura-Ann walking away from the house, she was flooded with a powerful sense of relief and joy, because if Laura-Ann was walking away it meant that even if just for a little while, she wouldn’t be in the house. Olivia felt the same way about Morgan, whom she believed had latched on to her. After much discussion, Vicki and Olivia bought long navy curtains and hung them around their bunk bed so they would have a place to hide.

  Reading Between the Lines

  NOVEMBER 11

  SABRINA’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

  I might have just made progress.

  IN PROFESSOR STONE’S CREATIVE WRITING CLASS, THE STUDENTS were doing a ten-minute stream-of-consciousness exercise while the professor graded papers at the front of the room. Sabrina began writing but found she couldn’t concentrate. From her seat in the middle of the class, she peeked through her braids at the professor. Professor Stone was looking right at her. Her skin reddening, Sabrina returned to her paper. A few minutes later, she looked up to find the professor staring again, with a barely detectable smile crinkling his face. This time, Sabrina stared back. The other students, still feverishly writing, didn’t notice the change in tension in the room.

  After class, Professor Stone suggested they hold their usual office-hour chat at a Starbucks on campus. Once there, after briefly discussing one of Sabrina’s essays, they somehow got onto the topic of past relationships. They ended up talking for three hours. As they got up to leave, the professor quietly asked Sabrina if she would give him a few photographs of herself for a “project” he was doing. Flattered, Sabrina agreed and walked him to his car.

  When he opened the car door, he told her, without making eye contact, that a few of the other professors had seen Sabrina with him at office hours regularly and had made some joking insinuations about the two of them. “It is a little awkward being your professor and being friends with you, because it isn’t normal,” he said as he eased into his Saab. “Although a lot of professors do end up marrying their students.”

  “I won’t come by your office like that anymore,” Sabrina agreed. But all she could think about was the professor’s second sentence.

  Friction Among Friends

  NOVEMBER 12

  CAITLIN’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

  I have no idea what just happened

  CAITLIN WAS AT A RESTAURANT CELEBRATING THE START OF a new relationship with Chris, who was officially her boyfriend again. After dinner, she planned to meet Amy and Sabrina, who were eating with Jake at the Mu Zeta Nu house, and walk with them to Alpha Rho in time for chapter meeting.

  When Caitlin hadn’t shown up by the designated time, Amy called her cell phone. “By the time you get here, we’ll be late if we walk to meeting. Do you want to meet at the house? Or, since Chris is dropping you off, can he pick us up and take us back to Alpha Rho?” Amy asked. She heard Caitlin ask Chris but couldn’t decipher his muffled response.

  Caitlin came back to the phone. “Chris says he has plans and he doesn’t have time . . . Whatever, we’ll just call you when we get closer to you.” Amy hung up the phone and told Sabrina what Caitlin had said, wondering why Caitlin wanted to hang out with Chris in the first place.

  “That is bullshit,” Sabrina said. “I’m calling Caitlin.” Sabrina had a quick conversation, then told Amy, “They’re coming to pick us up.”

  “I thought Chris had plans.”

  Sabrina sighed and tucked a few braids behind her ear. “Caitlin told me that Chris didn’t want to come get us because you were the one who asked him.”

  Amy was beside herself. She had never been rude to Chris; in fact she had taken care to make small talk with him whenever he was in the suite. Tired of tiptoeing around confrontation, Amy waited until Chris dropped the girls off at the Alpha Rho house. As she and Caitlin sat next to each other in the chapter room, waiting for the meeting to begin, she spoke up.

  “If Chris has such a problem with me, then I don’t want him in our suite,” Amy said.

  “What are you talking about?” Caitlin looked confused.

  “Sabrina told me what Chris said about picking us up.”

  “Chris didn’t say anything.”

  “So Sabrina made it up?” Amy said, putting a smooth, manicured hand on her hip.

  “Look, Chris has picked up on some tension between you. It’s no secret you guys aren’t best friends.”

  “I’ve been nice and polite to him. There have been times when I could have been a real bitch to him, but I wasn’t.”

  “I could say the same thing about Chris,” Caitlin said, her square jaw clenched.

  “If he thinks that’s how it is, then let’s clear up all this tension. I don’t want him in our suite again. Ever,” Amy said. Caitlin walked away and wouldn’t speak to Amy the rest of the evening.

  Later, Amy commiserated with her Big Sister, who coincidentally that night h
ad gotten into a fierce argument with her three roommates about a fraternity brother they all liked. After meeting, Amy’s Big Sister came to Amy’s room, crying. “They’re supposed to be my best friends,” the sister said. “Chicks before dicks.” Amy gave her Big Sister a snack and pajamas to borrow so she wouldn’t have to go back to her room. As they drifted to sleep in Amy’s bed, they discussed Taylor, the Mu Zeta Nu who had given Caitlin the tulip bouquet. It wasn’t that Amy thought Taylor was the perfect guy for Caitlin. But there was no doubt in her mind he would treat her better than Chris did. Amy had discussed this with Taylor, hoping Caitlin would come around. She decided not to bring up the Chris issue again with Caitlin.

  In the morning, when Amy’s Big Sister went back to her room, her roommates apologized. But Caitlin and Amy didn’t reconcile so easily. Since the beginning of their friendship, this was the first time there had been “drama” between the two. Amy hated it.

  Caitlin saw the situation differently. Unless Caitlin had to deliver a presentation, she and Sabrina usually smoked marijuana before meetings. By the time Amy confronted her, Caitlin was so high she couldn’t think straight. Figuring there must have been some miscommunication and not knowing what else to do, Caitlin had walked away.

  After the meeting, Caitlin and Sabrina went outside to smoke some more. They didn’t “do drama,” preferring not to gossip like the other sorority girls did. “What’s going on here? Our entire house is falling apart tonight,” Caitlin wondered as they smoked. “Is this just a girl thing? Is that their nature? Catty and dramatic and obsessive over stupid things?”

  Days later, Caitlin and Amy hadn’t said anything further about Chris. Both of them, it seemed, wanted to act as if the argument had never happened.

  Mean Girls, Queen Bees, and Alphas

  IS IT JUST A “GIRL THING”? MANY SORORITY SISTERS TOLD me about daily and ongoing dramas that constantly split the house. “When you get a hundred girls together,” Laney, the Nevada Alpha Sigma Alpha, said, “there’s no way they’re all going to get along. It’s not possible. Whoever says they can is lying. But thirty of those one hundred girls would have bent over backward to help me, without a doubt.” Especially in houses in which sisters are loud, outspoken leader types, personalities clash almost daily. As an officer of the first house I visited remarked, “If you don’t have some sort of [interpersonal] problem in this house, then there’s something wrong with you.”

  The most common catalysts for cattiness in sororities are boy-related issues. As a newly initiated Alpha Sigma Alpha, Laney went out several times with Nick, an older fraternity brother. At one event Laney was greeted coolly by an older sister.

  “What did you do today?” the sister asked loudly, in front of the entire sorority membership.

  “Nothing, why?” Laney responded.

  “Did you see Nick?”

  “No, not today.”

  “Don’t you think it’s funny that you’re fucking my boyfriend?”

  Laney stood there, shocked and devastated—she had had no idea Nick was otherwise committed (and she hadn’t had sex with Nick)—as the hisses ricocheted around the room: “You’re sleeping with a sister’s boyfriend?”

  Laney later confronted Nick, who insisted the sister wasn’t his girlfriend, but the sister was hostile to Laney for the rest of her college tenure. “It’s bound to happen that a sister is going to date another sister’s boyfriend,” Laney said now.

  Several factors associated with sororities create an atmosphere that provokes discord among the sisters. The race to get dates for sorority functions, especially when the acceptable pool is limited to one or two fraternities, as well as the often looks-based acceptance criteria, further a sense of competition among the sisters. Rosalind Wiseman—who discusses “how [young] girls’ social hierarchy increasingly traps girls in a cycle of craving boys’ validation, pleasing boys to obtain that validation, and betraying the friends who truly support them”—also points out that “girls’ fights over boys are . . . one of the consequences of girls’ social hierarchies.” In addition, the grouping of dozens of girls in small living spaces and a “sister is forever” mentality ensure that they can’t merely walk away from an antagonist. And the implicit and explicit hierarchies within the sorority distribute power unevenly so that sisters are never on equal ground. Between pledge class order and the executive board, there are always sisters or groups of sisters who have official power over other girls. In extreme cases, they assert this power by making other girls do things—like the Chi Omega sisters who allegedly arranged Kristin Verzwyvelt’s date rape. In the more mundane cases, they verbally cut other sisters down to size, like Fiona’s “go down there right now” or Whitney’s “Are you actually talking to me?” It is fertile ground for what Wiseman calls the Queen Bees and others have called the Alphas or “the mean girls.”

  Many sororities, with their strict subdivisions, are the next obvious stop for the mean girls from junior high school and the popular groups from high school. They are the segue to the Junior Leagues, the country clubs, and the Hamptons-type cliques of young adulthood. In fact, several groups have a specific subsorority, a group of girls who set out to destroy selected sisters’ psyches, supposedly out of devotion to the sorority. A sorority at one mid-Atlantic university in the late 1990s actually referred to its die-hard sisters as “the mean girls.” The mean girls from the class above them had taken them under their wing by choosing them as Little Sisters and inviting them to join their clique. These new mean girls erupted after one of their sorority sisters agreed to wear her boyfriend’s lavaliere. (At some schools, if a fraternity member gives a girl his lavaliere—a charm of his fraternity letters, usually fastened on a necklace—his fraternity hazes him terribly. The girl who receives this token therefore feels that “he loves me enough to get tortured by his fraternity.”) The boyfriend was attractive, but the mean girls decided that he belonged to a “loser fraternity.” They repeatedly harassed the girl to break up with him, even though the couple’s one-year relationship had been going well. They pressured their sister so relentlessly that she did break up with him. After college, away from the girls, however, the couple got back together—and eventually married.

  The mean girls often did what they called “slumming,” or visiting a fraternity that was not considered cool. Because these girls were from one of the top sororities, the boys were excited and treated them like royalty—giving them their most expensive alcohol and falling over themselves trying to please them. After they left the fraternity house, however, the girls made fun of the fraternity, laughing at them and boasting to others about what they had done. “There were pockets of mean girls and it was really easy to get sucked in by them,” a sister told me. “They’d get on a trend of ‘Let’s make her the outcast and make her feel unwelcome,’ and since they were the cool girls, you didn’t want to be on the outs with them. You wanted to stay on their good side. It was very, very, very junior high.”

  Once a girl is initiated into a sorority at one school, she automatically becomes a member of that sorority at any other school if she should transfer. This posed a problem when Mary, who had been a Delta Zeta at a small southern school at which the Delta Zetas were not a desirable sorority, transferred to a larger school, where Delta Zetas were considered the fun sorority, with pretty sisters (though not the “supermodels,” a sister was quick to clarify). Mary was, two Delta Zetas told me, the nicest girl they had ever met—a compassionate, sincere, naïve girl who came from a small town where she was adored. But she had extremely thick glasses, sported a short, “monkish” haircut, and constantly wore a bright pink satin jacket with the Delta Zeta letters on the back. She wore matching outfits, like pink shirts and pink socks, and different glasses frames to match each getup. While she had supposedly been the most popular girl in her small hometown, her style didn’t fit in with that of her new sisters. To her face, this sorority’s mean girls wouldn’t be outright hostile. But they left anonymous messages on her answ
ering machine: “Your sisters don’t like you.” “Leave the sorority.” One night the mean girls broke into Mary’s dorm room and stole everything she owned that bore the Delta Zeta letters—sweatshirts, T-shirts, mugs, the pink satin jacket—because they didn’t want a girl whom they considered a loser to be seen wearing their letters. Mary was heartbroken. She didn’t return to the sorority and, at the end of the semester, left the school for good.

  Just as appalling as the mean girls’ actions is the fact that not one of the other sisters in the sorority—not one out of dozens of bystanders—stood up for Mary. Nobody was brave enough to speak out against the mean girls on Mary’s behalf; nobody openly questioned whether the girls were getting carried away. I asked several sisters why they were reluctant to intervene when a clique of sisters targeted another girl. The girls who joined in spoke of what could be called a herd mentality. The girls who watched without comment said it wasn’t their “place” to get involved, they didn’t want to “get in the middle of things,” or they didn’t want to turn a drama between sisters into a full house war.

  A June 2002 Newsweek article cautioned that the current popularity of “mean girl” books is based more on anecdotes than scientific study, that there are girls who fall in between the Queen Bee and Wannabe categories and are neither bullies nor victims, and who turn out just fine. The same could be said for sorority girls. But even for these middle women it is difficult not to get caught up in the social battles of the sisterhood. Amy, Caitlin, Sabrina, and Vicki were neither “mean girls” nor alienated targets, at least to the extreme of Mary’s case; one of the reasons I chose to follow them was that each of them could be the sweet, sincere, cool girl next door. And yet all of them were involved in subtle scenarios that illustrated the power plays of sorority girls. Amy and Caitlin made fun of Priscilla, Greg’s nonsorority girlfriend who wore headbands. Sabrina accepted being bossed around by other sisters, especially Fiona. And Vicki admitted that because Nicole considered her such a good friend, she must have played a large role in driving her out of State U.