There seem to be two sets of warring imagery at play. One is the image of the stereotypical sorority girl, embodying many of the traits attributed to them by outsiders; the other is the image of a different kind of stereotypical sorority girl, prude and proper, “wearing her pearls,” a 1950s throwback that Nationals seemed to hope would soon displace the former image. Two sisters of different sororities at a midwestern school told me that their Nationals were working feverishly to change the composition of their chapters. “I picked this chapter because it’s extremely diverse,” said the Delta Zeta. “Now they’re trying to tell us how we should be: we’re supposed to conform to one mold.”
Her friend chimed in, nodding furiously. “Nationals have a picture of what their ideal Tri-Delt is. But the personality of the house on the campus is why I chose it. The reason I went Tri-Delt is because the girls were personable, outgoing, and diverse. Nationals don’t know how the girls are in the house, but they have their own mold. They don’t want the Tri-Delts to be crazy and fun. But that’s why I joined.”
I asked the Delta Zeta to describe the mold. “Very old school, how it used to be when they were in sororities. Perfect, typical women.”
The Tri-Delt broke in again: “Polite, definitely passive, reserved. They can’t handle women with outgoing, strong personalities. Nationals are like PR—they look for groups of women who will represent the house. It doesn’t matter if they’re fake or real.”
“The image they want us to have,” said the DZ, “is a girl who’s proper, prim, doesn’t cuss, drink, smoke, have sex. Nationals just wants to look good! But we just want to recruit people we can live with.”
“You know that commercial for MTV’s Sorority Life 2?” asked the Tri-Delt. The commercial showed a wealthy, conservative-looking southern woman with an exaggerated drawl and teased, “done” helmet hair, extolling the virtues of her sorority and sincere sisterhood while fiddling with her pearls. “Yeah, that’s what our Nationals is really like.”
In her book Torn Togas, Esther Wright described how Nationals forced her chapter to kick out certain pledges. The sorority’s national adviser arrived at the chapter to encourage the sisters to vote two pledges out of the group. “Ladies, I cannot stress just how important it is for you to let this girl go,” the adviser said. “I know these girls are your sisters and friends, but if they are still in our sorority next semester, Nationals will probably not allow you to have all five of your exchange parties. You really have no other choice.” The girls voted to drop the pledges.
Ultimately, Nationals seems to be trying to expand the scope of its control beyond sorority houses and into individual identity. These desperate-seeming reactions from sorority officials made me realize that being “pledged” to a sorority had a much deeper meaning than merely committing one’s self to her newfound sisters. A sorority girl isn’t just pledged to a house; she must also be pledged to the group of older women in the national office who control the sorority’s activities and recruitment and watch over the house as the Big Brother—or Big Sister—of the sisterhood. Commitment to a sorority doesn’t just obligate a member to socialize with a specific group of girls—it imposes on her a set of rules, regulations, and codes that in many cases are intended to supersede even those of her school and her family. (Indeed, many girls told me, as did a sorority sister from Bucknell, “If Nationals says no and Bucknell says yes, the university rules are superseded by Nationals’.”) The danger of sororities, it became clear, is that instead of enhancing a girl’s identity as she shifts from her formative years toward adulthood, the sisterhood could have a tendency to swallow that identity altogether.
At the first session of the NGLA Values Institute, a general session during which participants were supposed to discuss the four pillars with other students from their campus, I sat in front of a group of national representatives in their thirties through fifties, expecting to hear them expound on the values associated with the pillars, guided by their NGLA workbooks. Instead, the advisers were discussing thongs. “I could not believe what those girls were wearing when they were supposed to be wearing ‘badge attire,’” said one, her nose in the air. “They were in tank tops and denim skirts with the badge on the strap of their tank tops!” The other women shook their heads and clucked knowingly. “I told them, ‘If you can slide the badge up and down, that is not badge attire.’”
Another woman chimed in. “I keep telling the girls to buy beige thongs,” she said. “Tan bodies, white thong, white dress—I can see it!” I wondered how sorority sisters managed to live in an environment in which they were constantly being judged by these women and their minions. “It’s frustrating because when you’re in the house you’re under a looking glass at all times,” Brooke told me later. “You’re always getting judged. The only way I could get out of it was to go to my boyfriend’s house, where I could be myself.”
Sorority girls are often caught between having to conform to two different sets of standards: the unwritten codes of trends and styles within a house, and the standards that Nationals insist they are supposed to represent. Lissa, a western sorority sister, described a story that illustrates the consequences that can result when these two value sets collide.
“Even once you’re in a sorority, it continues to be about your image, about maintaining a good stereotype,” Lissa said. “We’re a very respectable house on campus. So much goes into public relations, parties. We’re the [Betas], so that means we’re classy but we know how to party. We’re smart but we’re not nerds. We’re wealthy and well dressed, but we’re not snobs like the Kappas and we don’t have perfect bodies and eating disorders like the Thetas and Pi Phis. The others are mostly smokers who have big parties. They’re less like Daddy’s perfect little girl.”
“Is that what your sorority is?” I asked.
Lissa sighed. “Yeah. We try to fight against that image by partying. They tell the sophomores during rush, ‘Don’t talk about grades or that the house has the best GPA. Tell them we don’t care what your GPA is.’ The national office exerts control because they want [Beta] to be a good name everywhere. If Nationals weren’t as involved, our experience would be less about stuff prescribed in the book, and image.”
One year at a pre-game, one of Lissa’s sisters collapsed after someone slipped a drug into her drink. When her sisters found her, they dragged her to another sorority house, dropped her, unconscious, on the stoop, rang the doorbell, and ran away. She was taken to the hospital to have her stomach pumped.
The chapter’s behavior was akin to the cover-ups that some officials say occur when a university learns about a rape at a fraternity party. “Generally, what happens [is] the image of the university takes precedence over the well-being of the individual, and a cover-up ensues immediately,” Claire Walsh, a former university official who now runs a rape-prevention program, told Stone Phillips of Dateline NBC. “I have been told of instances where the victim is convinced not to report, where she is blamed for what has happened to her, which of course is very devastating to the victim.”
The next day, when the girl who had been drugged returned to the house, the chapter president called her in to see her. “This didn’t happen,” the president insisted. “You aren’t allowed to tell anyone and you can’t press charges.”
“The president said this because she didn’t want to get in trouble with Nationals,” Lissa explained. “She didn’t want anyone to know it was a [Beta]. One of the national rules, though we don’t enforce it, is that you’re not allowed to pre-game.” The president was petrified that Nationals would find out that their chapter didn’t measure up to the national image. “My sister was just floored,” Lissa said. “She couldn’t believe she had been treated this way. She had something totally traumatic happen to her and she was like, ‘You don’t even care about me?’”
The Fight
DECEMBER 7
CAITLIN’S IM AWAY MESSAGE
“To err is human, but to forgive, divine.”
&nbs
p; CHRIS WAS WALKING CAITLIN HOME FROM A PARTY WHEN they got into what began as a petty argument over whether Caitlin’s lacrosse coach was playing favorites.
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, Chris, I don’t believe you.” Caitlin teased him with a self-satisfied smirk, thinking they were just playing around.
Chris stomped onto the stoop of the Alpha Rho house. “You don’t believe me?” Caitlin suddenly realized that Chris was angry—and drunker than she had thought.
“Chris, what just happened? I didn’t do anything wrong. I—I’m sorry.” She tread cautiously.
“You don’t trust me?” He was yelling at her now.
“Whoa, why are you yelling at me—because you don’t think I believe you?” Caitlin hoarsely raised her voice back at her boyfriend. “I said I was sorry.” Chris, she could see, was furious. “I’m not doing this. Fuck you,” Caitlin said, and went inside alone, still wearing Chris’s jacket and forgetting that Chris had a set of her keys.
Within minutes, Chris called her room, still yelling. Caitlin hung up on him. He called again. She unplugged the phone. Using Caitlin’s keys, Chris stormed into her room, fuming about how Caitlin didn’t trust him.
“Damn it, Chris, listen to yourself!” He didn’t usually get this drunk.
Chris threw Caitlin’s keys at her, hitting her hard in the leg. “I want my fucking jacket!”
Caitlin, almost laughing at his belligerence, tossed his jacket into the empty hallway. Immediately Chris was up against her, pushing her into the wall, his elbow at her throat. “Chris?” She tried to stay calm, but he was hurting her. “You’re drunk and nothing is getting accomplished by this. Just leave.”
He let go of her neck and said in a low voice, “I want my hundred dollars back.”
Caitlin had borrowed the money from him a few days before. “I only have eighty-two,” she said.
“I want the rest.”
“I don’t have the rest.”
“Well, find it!” Chris shouted.
“Whoa, Chris, I can’t believe this got as far as it did,” Caitlin said. “You say I blow things out of proportion? Look at where this has gone. You refused to listen to me. Just leave.”
He wouldn’t leave.
“If you don’t leave,” Caitlin said, her narrow eyes icy, “I’ll call someone who will make you leave.” Crying, she started to dial the House Mom. Chris came running to grab the phone from her, stepping on her foot on the way. She jabbed him with her elbow but he kept coming at her. She clocked him on the head with her lacrosse stick.
“Get out of here!” she shouted. Chris seized her wrists and tackled her onto the bed, pinning down her arms. “Get off of me!” Caitlin cried out. “Get out of here!”
Grace, who lived next door, was awakened by the noise and came rushing into Caitlin’s room. “Get off of her!” Grace looked terrified. “Get out of here! You have no right to be here!”
Chris, easing up on Caitlin, looked from girl to girl. “You didn’t see her hit me, did you? She hit me first.”
Caitlin sat folded on the bed, crying as Grace shut the door behind him. Chris banged on the door, this time speaking more evenly. “I just want to talk. I just want to talk to you.” The girls didn’t move. He addressed Grace. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Nobody’s letting you in,” Grace said. “Go away.” She called the House Mom, who called the police.
It was three in the morning, but it was balmy enough for the girls and the House Mom to meet the police outside so the sisters wouldn’t wake up. Caitlin didn’t rouse Amy; she didn’t want her to be involved in this situation. It was bad enough, in her opinion, that Grace had barged her way into the room and blown the argument out of proportion. She decided not to call Sabrina, either, who was probably out with the professor. Caitlin was wary of the “weird adult effect” the professor was having on Sabrina, which gave Caitlin the impression that she wasn’t mature enough to be good company. She had never met the professor, but his presence in Sabrina’s life left Caitlin feeling inferior. When she would call Sabrina and ask her to hang out, Sabrina used a tone of voice that implied that the activities they used to have fun doing together were things only college students did—and that Sabrina was trying to get out of that world.
“Look, he didn’t hit me,” Caitlin told the officers. “I hit him really good with my lacrosse stick, but he didn’t hit me. I’m not pressing charges.”
“Caitlin,” one of the officers said to her after hearing her story, “this is an abusive relationship and you should get out of it now.”
Caitlin shook her head. The officers assumed that Chris treated her aggressively all the time, but it only happened when they fought, she told herself. She knew he could be obnoxious. But sometimes he was different.
“You two need at least a twenty-four-hour cooling-off period,” the officer said. “If he comes back, call us. He’s lucky he’s not in cuffs.”
The next day, Chris IMed her, “You called the cops on me! How did they get involved? They just fuck things up. I can’t believe you called the cops on me.”
She called him. “Grace is scared of you now. That was a dumb move, threatening her.”
“Well, I’m glad you have someone looking out for you and protecting you,” he said sarcastically.
“So why were you yelling at me?” Caitlin asked. Chris said he didn’t know how the fight had escalated to that level.
“You’ve lost me, you know,” Caitlin said. “It’s over.” Chris was quiet. “I’m not going to deal with someone who feels the need to restrain me,” she said. “I’m not sorry for how I handled the situation. You say stuff and threaten things all the time.” She hung up.
Later, Chris called her back on his way to class.
“Why are you calling me?” Caitlin asked.
“I’m really sorry for what happened. I don’t know what got into either of us. But I know your mom would want us to talk this out, and I’m really sorry.”
Caitlin relaxed. He didn’t apologize often. “Me, too.”
“What does this mean for us?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what it means,” Caitlin paused. “But I do know I love you a lot and that we’re worth fighting for. If you think it’s a lost cause, that’s fine. I’ll love you regardless of what decision you make.”
Later, she scrounged up $18 in quarters from her change jar, put it in an envelope with her $82, and asked a sister to bring it to Chris.
“I’ll take it to him.” Amy, who by now had been caught up on the situation, spoke gently and held out her hand.
That night, Caitlin, Amy, and Grace met quietly to talk about how to handle the incident. They agreed it was in Caitlin’s best interest to keep it from the other sisters and from the Alpha Rho Disciplinary Board.
“I know it looks like I’m the girlfriend who keeps going back, but I’m not like that,” Caitlin explained. “If anyone put their hands on me, it’d be over. But I don’t blame him.” The raised bruise on Chris’s cheek would last for a week. “When Chris tackled me onto the bed, it was because I tripped and brought him down with me. I know he could never hurt me.” The other girls looked unconvinced.
“He would never hurt me and I know that for a fact,” Caitlin repeated, kicking off her Sambas and crossing her bare feet beneath her.
The group decided to have a secret meeting with the House Mom in a week. Meanwhile, they would consider their options: either Chris wouldn’t be allowed in the house or he would be allowed only when others were around. “If he’s not allowed in the house,” Caitlin warned, “there would be resentment on my part, and I would consider getting an apartment. You guys shouldn’t be able to dictate who I have in my room.”
Exploiting the Rules
DECEMBER 10
SABRINA’S IM AWAY MESSAGE
Why can’t this semester be over already?
SABRINA WAS IRRITATED. THERE WERE SO MANY OTHER things to
worry about this time of the year, with the semester quickly coming to a close. She didn’t need another house drama on top of it all. But this week was room draw, which perennially had the potential to be the second most stressful time of the year (next to January’s rush). The Alpha Rhos had an unofficial agreement that every semester a new sister would get to move into “the Palace,” the one single room in the house. Because Grace’s three roommates were going abroad for the semester, the consensus was that Grace, a senior, should move into the Palace.
The logical option for Charlotte, who as president automatically earned the Palace in the fall, was simply to switch places with Grace for the spring. But Charlotte wasn’t cooperating. She insisted that because of her seniority as president, she shouldn’t have to move into a quad. Instead, she said she was going to pull Fiona from the Penthouse and the two of them would take the largest double in the house. The double, however, wasn’t empty; Charlotte would have to kick out those sisters, whose room eviction would create a domino effect throughout the house. Charlotte had the power to do so, she said, referring to Article X of the chapter bylaws, which stated that if the outgoing president chose to switch to a new room, the girls in that room were required to move. There was nothing even Caitlin as vice president could do. Sabrina, who hated the bylaws, considered pointing out the hypocrisy of enforcing some bylaws and not others. Article XII, for example, stated that no boys were allowed upstairs, but that rule was broken on a daily basis.
When Charlotte hadn’t arrived by the start of the house meeting for the preliminary room draw, the sisters who were present talked about her. Nobody wanted to live with Charlotte. She hadn’t been elected president out of popularity; rather, she was elected because she was Little Miss Sorority, as some of the girls referred to her. The sorority meant everything to her, and she was always involved in every Alpha Rho activity. But as president she had focused so intently on the sorority that she had had no time for the sisters. They tried to come up with various alternatives to present to Charlotte. One solution was that Grace, who didn’t want to cause trouble, could stay in the quad for a semester with new roommates and Charlotte could keep her bed in the Palace. But many of the girls thought Charlotte didn’t deserve that privilege. “She’s the main problem,” they argued. “So she’s the one who should move.”
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