Pledged

by Alexandra Robbins

  I spoke about these issues with Mary L. Bankhead, a Sigma Gamma Rho and Eastern Illinois University graduate student who was working on a thesis about whites in black sororities. She described three additional major differences between black and white sororities. First, she said, “I’m in Sigma Rho for life. If I choose not to pay my dues, I’m not active but I’m still a member. In [national white sororities], if you don’t pay you’re not a member.”

  Second, black sorority candidates, who aren’t allowed to join as first-semester freshmen, are expected to learn about the sorority before they choose which group to rush. “You can’t join when you’re seventeen or eighteen and don’t know what you’re getting into. We get a chance to know each other beyond the superficial crap so the people who join really know they want to be in that particular group,” Bankhead said. “Whites are about what they can learn about the organization as a pledge instead of before accepting. Their attitude is, ‘Whoever picks me I’ll go from there.’”

  Third, Bankhead told me that in the black sororities the continuity of a chapter and the recruitment process—which black sororities call the “Membership Intake Process” (MIP)—rely on far less bureaucracy than in white groups. A chapter of a black sorority begins MIP with an interest group meeting (not necessarily the same week as the MIPs of other black chapters on campus) during which the sisters give a presentation about their organization, explain MIP, and distribute application forms. Interested candidates are discouraged from applying to more than one chapter and, in some sororities, are interviewed by undergraduate and/or graduate members. And that’s it—no rush parties, no open houses, no Preference ceremony, no ranking. Candidates are judged on criteria that include their GPA, community service experience, leadership roles, and the way they mesh with the members. If a candidate is rejected, she is welcome to apply again, both as an undergraduate and/or after she graduates. “In my sorority, as long as you’re in good standing financially and not in trouble, you can go through the Membership Intake Process,” Bankhead said. “White sororities are based on money. They’re forced to take people or get shut down. My undergraduate chapter now has six people and it’s functioning.” (It must be said that black sororities are much less likely to have houses, which can affect the number of women that Nationals believe are necessary to maintain the chapter’s bottom line.)

  These varying emphases lend black sororities a much different aura from that of white chapters, beginning with a sense of inclusivity. Unlike white sororities, black sororities generally hold events that are open to the campus and the community, instead of emphasizing the kinds of closed parties that are supposed to be one of the main perks a girl can gain by joining a white group. Parties, in fact, are not emphasized nearly as much as service and networking opportunities. Furthermore, attention to scholarship is not merely lip service: a 2002 study found that black and other minority Greeks achieved higher GPAs than white Greeks. And the network that is available both within and among these sororities is far more perceptible than with white sororities. As a former national president of a black fraternity told Virginia Tech professor Elizabeth Fine, active black Greeks are “the best trained, most highly experienced, and most influential people in the black community [and belong to a] network that cannot be matched anywhere in the black community. The NAACP can’t match it; it doesn’t have the highly trained and sophisticated people you’ll find in a fraternity or sorority. Even the black church doesn’t have it.”

  This is not to say that black sororities are flawless. Agendas of the sororities’ national organizations are similar to the “Message from Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.,” a mission statement from the late 1990s: “The future vision of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., simply stated, is to raise its voice and its volunteer service commitment to assist African Americans in our search for racial, social, and economic parity.” Some black sorority sisters I spoke with said they wished the chapters would focus on the community as a whole, rather than on a specific African American demographic.

  Additionally, some of the drawbacks of white sororities pertain to black sororities as well. Although black groups generally don’t base their membership selection on looks, some black sisters have admitted that their chapters use “the paper bag test”: rushees with skin darker than the bag don’t get in. Moreover, in 1990 the presidents of each of the black national sororities and fraternities banned pledging, replacing it with an educational process lasting between three days and three weeks, during which time new members perform community service projects and attend meetings about their sorority’s history, structure, and values. But the transition hasn’t necessarily gone smoothly. Student and nonstudent members have since divided into “old school” and “new school” camps, with the old schoolers charging that nonpledging sisters haven’t earned their letters.

  Some chapters have continued not only to pledge girls, but also to haze them. In 1998, a Western Illinois University Delta Sigma Theta pledge told police that during her pledge process, sisters kicked and pushed her, ripped her hairpiece from her head and stuffed it in her mouth, and forced her to eat whole raw onions, hot peppers, and a concoction of vinegar and hot sauce until she vomited. She also claimed that sisters ordered her to do one thousand sit-ups until the skin on her behind cracked. Additionally, she was allegedly forced to use her elbows to grind cornflakes until she bled into them—and then to eat the cereal. In 2003, Virginia Union University suspended its Zeta Phi Beta chapter when several sisters were fined and convicted of misdemeanor hazing for paddling a pledge; after being struck approximately thirty-five times, the pledge was taken to the hospital for her severe bruises.

  In many chapters that abide by the ban on pledging, the step show has become more important as a way to prove and publicly display devotion to the group. The NPHC recommends that step shows “convey positive political, social justice, and moral messages.” New sisters are now taught their sorority’s signature steps as part of their initiation process and are encouraged to participate in shows. “Step shows,” Professor Fine wrote in her book on the topic, “have become a key venue for displaying and asserting group identity as well as for negotiating the status of each group within the social order.”

  Latina groups, too, have adopted stepping as a dominant expression of group loyalty. More similar to the black groups than to the white groups, the fourteen national Latina sororities belong to the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations, which formed in 1998. Latina sororities are easily identifiable because their pledges can often be spotted marching silently around campus in a line that moves only at right angles. They step in time, expressionless, refusing to acknowledge the friends they pass and the spectators who inevitably heckle them.

  A 1999 alumna of the Sigma Lambda Upsilon/Señoritas Latinas Unidas sorority explained to me the meaning behind “lining,” which white Greeks, who traditionally have not lined, are quick to define as a militant form of hazing. “The line is about unity because you’re walking in unison. You’re there for each other—literally someone is behind you. Sometimes people try to harass the line, but the line does not respond. It teaches you to focus academically and prioritize your life. When you spend your day stopping and chatting with people, you waste two or three hours on nonsense. We’re cutting out the extraneous social stuff,” she said. “People are curious. Some people are nice enough to ask about the line, but other people walk up to the pledges and harass them. When people see blacks and Latinos pledging, they’re quick to say that that’s hazing. Meanwhile, we see white pledges with black-and-blue eyes. In our sorority, if you don’t want to do something, you don’t have to do it.” The pledge process for many Latina sororities is public and “like a cross between the military and the Girl Scouts,” the Sigma Lambda Upsilon said. “It’s to teach self-discipline. You fight for things in the community.”

  Members of Latina sororities described to me a scene that differs markedly from that of their white counterparts. Latinas don’
t generally stray far from home when they are growing up—no overnight summer camps and few sleepovers, a Latina sorority member told me. “So when you go to school in the boonies, with trees everywhere, it’s a culture shock. You’re lonely and far from home, so we consider the sorority to be family.” For these girls, the sisterhood, or Hermandad, is said to last hasta la muerte—until death—and exists so that the girls can support each other in an unfamiliar environment. “Our sisterhood doesn’t look like any of the white sororities,” the sister said. “A lot of our girls came from poverty and had to fight for scholarships. Some of them are single mothers. And they all work hard.”

  Some sororities do not limit membership to a specific ethnic group. Mu Sigma Upsilon, founded in 1981 at Rutgers University, was the first multicultural minority Greek-letter organization in the country, with a goal of “unity among all women.” A senior sister at one of MSU’s nineteen chapters told me it has succeeded. “I have been asked many times why I, a white Jewish girl from East Brunswick, New Jersey, would join a ‘minority’ organization rather than a mainstream sorority,” she said. “It’s true that I get looks sometimes when I’m wearing the letters or when I’m surrounded by my sisters. I have sisters of all nationalities and religions: Latina, African American, Filipino, Italian, Egyptian, African, Asian, Christian, Muslim. People can’t figure us out when we are all together. There have been many instances in my life when I have been criticized or penalized for being different. What I loved most about MSU was that the differences between each person are celebrated.”

  WHEN MELODY TWILLEY FOUND HERSELF WITHOUT A Greek affiliation, she began researching MSU and dozens of other national multicultural sororities with the aim of founding her own nondiscriminatory multicultural group. At the first open meeting she held on campus for students interested in joining a multicultural sorority—an entity foreign to the University of Alabama—fifty girls showed up, many of them white. In January 2003, Melody and eight of the girls officially started their own sorority from scratch. For reasons they keep secret, they picked a mascot (the sea horse), colors (“real blue,” blush, and silver), a flower (Stargazer Lily), and a jewel (pearl). They came up with a secret group purpose and the letters to stand for it: Alpha Delta Sigma. They wrote rituals, put themselves through an induction ceremony, a pledge period, and initiation, and a sisterhood was born.

  Now, as Melody—in jeans, flip-flops, and a T-shirt commemorating a community service event—and I lounge on couches in a student center, coincidentally across from the university’s Greek Life Office, she tells me what it’s like to be a sister. “We had an ice cream social Tuesday night, Friday night we had a dinner, and we have to fulfill our community service requirement,” she says. “We’ll rush in the fall. We’re trying to be as close to Panhellenic as possible, but there are some differences.”

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “Well, during Panhellenic rush, [rushees] wait in front of each house and suddenly the doors fling open and the sisters do their ‘door songs.’”

  “They have door songs?”

  “Oh, yes!” Melody puts on a phony wide smile and, in a cheesy little-girl voice, sings and claps the chirpy Phi Mu door song. Then she says, “We can’t do door songs because we have no door.”

  The Panhellenic Association, the university’s governing body for the white sororities, has yet to reach out to Alpha Delta Sigma. Melody plans to apply for her group to be accepted as a campus Panhellenic sorority; if Panhellenic rejects ADS, Melody will consider suing them.

  A thin white girl passes by and taps Melody. “I’m going to come to one of y’all’s things, I promise. It’s just finals and everything,” she says before moving on.

  “Potential New Member,” Melody explains to me, her face lit up as she uses one of the terms newly instituted by the national white sororities (it is supposed to replace the word “rushee”).

  I ask her why it is so important to her to be part of a sorority. “Why not just have friends?”

  She tells me that sisters are more than friends. “We want to leave a legacy, perpetuate this. We’ll be seniors and then the next year all of us are gone,” she says. “I wanted to start a sorority so my future daughter can join it. All the other little girls would get to say, ‘My mama was a Tri-Delt,’ or ‘My auntie was a Pi Phi.’” Melody laughs as she mimics the you-go-girl gesture of snapping in the shape of the letter Z. “My daughter will be able to say, ‘My mama founded Alpha Delta Sigma.’”

  MARCH

  Hazing activities are always mandatory unless a girl is physically unable to take part, gets sick during the activity, or is terribly upset about the hazing. Girls who are unable or have the courage to refuse to participate in hazing are less a part of the pledge class.

  —Rush: A Girl’s Guide to Sorority Success, 1985

  Your pledge educator, the chapter’s Vice President of Social Advancement, will outline specific requirements in the areas of Moral, Mental, and Social Advancement.

  —Pi Phi Forever, 1990s

  Revolving

  MARCH 1

  VICKI’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

  you’ll never remember class time, but you will remember the time you wasted hanging out with your friends. downstairs in the tv room

  THE CONSENSUS AMONG BETA Pi sisters was that the 2003 rush had been extraordinarily successful: the current pledge class was the best overall group the sorority had recruited in many years. Granted, the sisters still commented to each other about some of the pledges’ flaws. “Oh, that one’s not as cool as we thought she was,” the Beta Pi sisters said about a girl they had persuaded to come to their house instead of going to Alpha Rho. Even Vicki got into it, making fun of a “dorky-looking” pledge with Ashleigh and wondering aloud why they had accepted her. But the Beta Pis were largely satisfied: they heard from the Rho Chis who returned to Beta Pi that many of the rushees had ranked Beta Pi as their favorite house.

  The officers were determined to take full advantage of this opportunity. Now that they had an impressive collection of pledges, the sisters’ job was to mold them into a unified pledge class. During the first Saturday night sleepover of pledge period, the pledges had to listen to the insufferably repetitive Kylie Minogue song “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” over and over again, for the entire night. On the second Saturday, the girls participated in a mandatory scavenger hunt that sent them scrambling into various other Greek houses to coerce members into giving them the desired objects, and when that failed, to steal them. During the third sleepover, the sisters got the pledges drunk and forced them to serenade and dance at several fraternity houses.

  Meanwhile, the pledges were expected to find time during the eight-week pledge period to interview every sister in the sorority. They recorded the interviews in their “pledge books,” which the pledgemaster reviewed periodically. This was a way to force the pledges to spend time at the Beta Pi house and participate in activities, such as planned pre-games with fraternities, so they could get to know the sisters. Each day, the pledges were also required to carry a different item around with them everywhere—a box of Lucky Charms, a fork, corduroy pants, bright pink azaleas in their hair—and to be prepared to present the item whenever a sister requested to see it.

  For the fourth sleepover, the sisters decided to celebrate the halfway point of pledge period. Beta Pi officers lugged several handles of vodka upstairs to the fourth floor “pledge room”—a large, cold, loftlike room where the pledges were already beginning to curl into their sleeping bags—and told the girls they had to finish the alcohol. Vicki and a few other sisters smuggled away one of the handles for themselves and hid in Vicki’s room to empty it. At the preapproved time, when the pledges were sufficiently drunk (and Vicki was practically keeling over), the Beta Pi sisters entered the pledge room. The president waited until the room was full, then came barreling upstairs.

  “The campus police heard we were having a party and are coming to check it out!” she yelled. “You have to finish the
alcohol right away!” The pledges drank faster. Vicki generously helped them. When the doorbell rang and the president hurried downstairs, the girls screeched; when she returned with a uniformed police officer by her side, the screeching subsided until the officer flicked on a stereo and started dancing. Now the girls screamed in delight, continuing to drink as the officer, blond and chiseled, stripped. Later, Vicki spent the rest of the night throwing up in William’s bathroom. William held back her hair.

  Vicki, Olivia, and Morgan thought that the pledges—who often went out of their way to be extra nice to Vicki and her friends—were “cute.” They tried to spend time with the pledges when they came to the house to do interviews or for their weekly pledge meetings. Vicki and her friends also helped some of the pledges acquire fake IDs. Gradually, a new division emerged in the house: the girls who had IDs and went out to the bars (on average about five times a week), and the girls who didn’t and stayed home. The first group would learn about the evening’s social activity by finding Vicki or Olivia, both of whom could now usually be found holding court in the television room. The pledges, some more nervous than others, would peek into the room and ask in a deferential tone, “What are you guys doing tonight? Are you going out?”

  Vicki was euphoric about the changes in the house this semester. Her bedroom was calm, lacking the tension and drama of last semester’s room. Morgan seemed more tolerable. When Vicki ran into Laura-Ann, Vicki was outwardly kind and inwardly remorseful that their friendship had been ruined because they had roomed together. Laura-Ann, who lived in a world of her own, felt differently. A sister had informed Vicki that Laura-Ann said how happy she was that she and Vicki could be “best friends” even though they didn’t live together anymore.