If imagine were as important here as it is to you and if all five of our chapters were so uptight there wouldn't be ANY greeks here...

Your method doesn't work everywhere. In fact at my campus, for instance, it would be COMPLETELY detrimental to be so uptight and nitpicky.

I imagine that if you could spell image correctly it wouldn't reflect poorly on you or your group.

KIDDING! I'm only kidding. :)

Hey, it's not a good idea to eat while walking because of the risk of choking! Many child-rearing books point out this particular hazard, so for safety's sake, just stop walking for a minute while you are eating your whatever-on-a-stick.
Gum chewing is my personal pet peeve. I've seen bridesmaids chomping on it as they went up the aisle - and a friend swears she saw an actual bride chewing as she made her way down the aisle. I can't tell you how many times my children have stepped in someone's discarded gum in a parking lot - and as a teacher, I hate finding it on the bottom of desks.
As I look around, it seems to me the problem with our society is not that too many people are concerned with following ANY rules. Nope - it's this "Me me me - whatever makes ME happy is okay" attitude that results in a general disregard for the welfare of others.

I think it's very funny that you assume the groups on my campus were uptight or nit picky. We have rules....OH MY GOD!!! I had many sisters who would qualify as sluts by most people's standards, but they were discreet. I had a sister who broke her jaw after she was kicked in the face by a man who we all thought was selling her drugs. We didn't know for sure, but it wouldn't have surprised any of us. She didn't get kicked out....she was well liked and accepted. Nobody actually was kicked out of my chapter or any other chapter during the time I was a member. We all put up with a lot of crap, but if we started being known as the "sluts" or the "druggies" some heads would have rolled. But...that's my campus...and it did work. Maybe at your campus, squirrel, every chapter has their open sluts and crackheads so no one group is ostracized for it....more power to y'all, but THAT doesn't work at most campuses.

jwithers,

honeychile is indeed a real person, who was raised properly by her southern mama. she is genteel and gracious-the epitome of a southern lady, even if she was raised in pittsburgh.

for instance, she would never tell a fellow gcer, especially one relatively new to the forum, how crass and ridiculous her post was. that would be too, too tacky for words.

Too true.

honeychile is the LAST person I would accuse of putting on airs. She wrote a reasoned response detailing why certain rules of polite society are not nit-picky, but are instead considerate of other people. Those of us "raised right" as the expression goes would never put on airs - but we also know rudeness and crassness when we see it. It is a free country, as they say, and you may do whatever you wish. However, you do not get to dictate my response to it, and if you chose to belong to a sorority you do have to consider how your actions reflect on that sorority. If you think that a rule is silly, if you are an active bring it up for discussion at your meeting and vote on it would be my suggestion.
JWithers, if your mother attended or debuted at the St. Cecilia's Ball, she followed many rules that may have seemed nit-picky - but I would suggest reading C.S. Lewis' wonderful discussion of ritual and formality in his Introduction to Paradise Lost to understand why the rules do matter, and why your own dear mother undoubtly followed them.
I think it is important to distinguish between rules particular to a certain group, campus or region, and those actions which would be rude, immoral or illegal anywhere. While I do not think anyone would get kicked out of a group for eating her hot dog while walking, participating in a wet t-shirt contest with your letters would seem to warrant a talking to by the standards committee. (I have personal knowledge of the wet t-shirt incident - and the member had trouble understanding what the problem was - "But I won!" she said !!!)

Maybe in your chapter, but not in your whole sorority, and certainly not in mine.

In all seriousness, I think the issue of expelling sisters is a very difficult one. If you read other threads...like the Legacy one, people advocate kicking out people because they're annoying or trouble makers. I think for most chapters the decision is very tough and is usually preceeded by some very egregious actions by the member. I'm sure there are those very judgemental, uptight chapters out there, but I'm hoping they are few and far between. One thing I learned from living with many sisters in college, taking courses in psychology in college as well as my psychiatry courses in med school is that you'll never get along with everyone! When you gather 50 or a hundred women together there will be many with personality disorders or poor upbringings. You can't bond with everyone, but you can show them respect. In general, I think most chapters do a good job of balancing the need to preserve a good campus/national or international reputation with accomodating members whose values may be slightly different. But, I'm sure anyone can think of at least one action that would be contrary to everything their ritual teaches that would warrant discipline.

Silly me, I thought that sisterhood was everything in a sorority.

Ha Ha! What universe are you living in?

ASA's universe. The no-pretentious BS seems to be a Nationwide thing for most of our chapters. I'm sure there's one or two out there, but for the most part, not so much.

You have got to be kidding me. :eek: How could she not realize that doing that in her letters would be a huge problem? :eek::eek:

After a group of sisters went to Florida for Spring Break one year, I recall hearing very vague details about an "incident," but the 2 women involved were mortified and everyone was completely discreet about the whole thing. Although some of us heard very generally about the fact that there was an "incident," no one was told specific details. (Not even me - who was very close to both women, both were my roommates at one point or another and also from my pledge class.) Apparently, as the story goes, they were running very low on money and ended up entering a wet t-shirt contest - they assumed that no one there would ever see them again. They won the contest...and then saw that 3 guys from a fraternity at our campus who we did a lot with were right there in the audience. The gory details were never released, but supposedly they had to get pretty wild to win and were horrified to find out that fraternity guys from our campus who recognized them were there - these 2 women were typically very reserved and conservative while at school and under normal circumstances. The situation was never brought up before a standards committee, because it never became common knowledge (I only knew b/c one was my roommate), the fraternity men were kind enough to be discreet about it when they came back to campus (if they did share the story w/their other brothers when they came back, they at least all had the decency not to discuss it openly or spread the story around campus), and the sisters were genuinely upset that someone they knew from our campus was there.

Now, if they had participated in a wet t-shirt contest near our campus, while wearing our letters, and didn't care who saw them or how it would reflect upon our chapter...heads would have rolled!

noob. :p

People going buck wild on spring break thinking they won't get busted crack me up. Hello mensa, if you book the trip through your school, don't you think someone else (or a lot of someone elses) from your school might be there too?