Your daughter made the right choice, and you did too.

Yup. It seems like she can't get past the fact her daughter didn't join a "better" chapter (whether she says that to her directly or not), all so her friends can be impressed.

So she had options and she chose to be happy. Maybe her chapter ends up thriving. Or maybe it ends up closing (although I doubt this chapter is struggling as much as the chapter in the example carnation provided), but she clearly found her "home". Just like you did. She's not really selecting a chapter - none of us do. We're selecting our people. And she found hers.

Thanks Carnation! This is exactly what I am concerned about. I want her to have the best experience possible. She told me that during rush, some of the girls dropped out when they found out that hers was their only pref party. She thought it was silly, because everyone had been very nice to her and she really "clicked" with several of the members. ( She really liked the fact that they seemed very serious about school.) Their numbers aren't nearly as bad as the chapter you described, but they are one of the smaller ones on campus. DG Tess, I sincerely apologize for any perceived slight on my part. I'm not sure where you are located, or where you are from, but I promise you that there are strong traditions that are still adhered to in small, southern cities and towns. We laugh at ourselves in books like "The Southern Belle Primer, or Why Princess Margaret Will Never Be a Kappa Kappa Gamma", but a lot of these things still ring true, especially with some of the older members of our community. It is very much a cultural thing, and I didn't mean it as an insult.

Momoffour-I am very familiar with that book - and gave several copies as gifts! And whether right or wrong, some of the things still do ring true. (However, I think matching the punch to the color of the bridesmaids dresses no longer happens-at least I haven't seen it in many years- thank God!) But yes, it's a culture in the south that some just don't get but it's pervasive and hangs on in the darnedest places.

I grew up in a community like OP's where for a certain set of families, there are only three "acceptable" sororities to join and the social pecking order of women is dictated for life based on their sorority affiliation. If their daughters got cut from all three, the options were 1) drop out of rush and concoct some story about why daughter decided to pursue other interests in college, 2) immediately withdraw from school and enroll in a school that hasn't held rush yet, or 3) transfer to a school where those three chapters are WRCs, get a bid, and then transfer back to prestigious chapter after initiation.

Option #3 has gotten much more difficult to do in the internet age but #1 and #2 still happen every year to a few girls. There was one girl in my high school class who went through rush at Arkansas, somewhere else (can't remember), and finally Baylor before she got her KKG bid- this was all in the first 5 months of her freshman year!!

It sounds silly but kudos to this mom (who is probably experiencing snide comments and condescending looks from her social peers) for allowing her daughter to choose her own path in life.

That is fascinating to me :eek:

I hope she felt it was worth all the trouble in the end. Did she stay at Baylor, or transfer again after she got her bid?

I'm pretty sure she stayed and graduated from Baylor. The ironic thing about that girl is that she now lives out in the middle of nowhere with her husband and a couple of kids and they seem to be deliriously happy living their farm life. Even getting her into the "right" sorority didn't keep her from navigating her own path in life.

Her mom is a past Junior League of Dallas president, past sorority alumnae group president, chaired several of the biggest charity balls in town, "Top 10 Best Dreased" honoree, etc. I'm not close enough to know what their mother-daughter relationship is like.

Yes, in the South these were known as "feeder schools" where you could go get into AAA and then transfer to Alabama or wherever and be a member there. UAB here in Birmingham used to be one. And Ole Miss moved their recruitment to later in the fall because so many women would drop out of school when they didn't get the bid they wanted and go somewhere that had not started yet.

I am not saying I agree with all this....I'm just stating what happened. Like TXDG said,with the Internet this has pretty much gone by the wayside...but I can cite a lot of instances that I have personal knowledge of that fit these scenarios. Sad.

This still happens and one of my dearest friends is going through it with her daughter. For pref, she didn't have any of the chapters that she was expecting. She went to her pref parties because she knew that it would be rude not to show up like some other girls had done. She declined to fill out her MRBRA. She has asked me about COB in the spring, and I told her that it was highly unlikely that the chapters she's seeking will have Spring Rush. Additionally, I tried to tell her that if she was released by them, her chances of being picked up may not be so good. She's now telling me that her daughter is planning on transferring in the spring to a school where the chapters that released her aren't as competitive and have spring rush. Of course, I find this to be extreme, but it still happens.

I failed to mention that when asked, she's saying that her daughter developed Strep Throat and a high fever toward the end of rush and was not able to continue.

Yes to all of this. I am not saying that I agree with it, but I have personally seen it happen.

I remember vividly several girls moving out of my freshmen dorm before school even started to transfer to Baylor. One would think they could have waited until semester since Baylor has January recruitment but the social stigma of No Sorority or Wrong Sorority was too much for the girl (family?) to bear.

I also remember a girl down the hall from me freshmen year who declared she would be an ABC, which on our campus was one of the 2 (of 10 total) strongest recruiting chapters. She was cut after 2nd round and immediately dropped out, despite having quite a few chapters left.

She re-rushed sophomore year, again declaring that it was with the sole intention of being an ABC. This time I am not even sure she made it past 1st round with them. Once again she dropped, but this time moved out of the dorm and transferred schools. She chose to attend StateU-SmallTownBranch which was definitely a commuter school. However, they had a chapter of her precious ABC. Because this was in the age of semester long pledgeships she had to stay there all year in order to be initiated in January. The following fall guess who was back on our campus wanting to affiliate? And guess what chapter told her no? She was in letters every single day letting everyone under the sun know that she was an ABC, yet she had been rejected by our school's chapter 3x. I often wonder if it was worth it to her. She had the social prestige that her insecurity craved but with absolutely no friends in the organization or any college membership benefits.

When my MIL found out which sorority my daughter pledged, she asked me if she was disappointed that she "didn't get into a better sorority". She knew absolutely nothing about the GPA, activities, sisterhood, reputation... of my daughter's sorority or any of the sororities on her campus, she only knew the letters and was not shy about voicing her preconceived notion that some sororities are "better" than others.

And, yes, we live in the South.

And, yes, when I complained to my husband, he responded with his usual "That's just the way she is...." Arrrggghhh

I'm sure that anyone looking at all of this from the outside finds all of this to be ridiculous. As someone holding a sociology degree, I find the whole sub cultural aspect quite interesting. It ALMOST makes me want to pursue an advanced degree so that I could do a thesis on it. (Although I know that in true Southern fashion, these things are never really discussed openly.)

I have to write a master's thesis on some topic in higher education this spring, and I want to do something like this too, but getting students to be honest about why they joined certain groups might be hard. And William & Mary is definitely not any of the schools mentioned:p

Many years ago, my mom told me that one of the girls on her dorm floor immediately left school when she got cut from the sorority where she was a multiple legacy. At Michigan State. In 1951. For some women, the sorority trumped/s the educational experience. Out of 22 women on her freshman floor, my mom was one of two to graduate. I'll leave it there, but my mom has plenty of stories about similar situations. Back in the days of the Mrs degree, this was how women connected with the "right" future husbands.

And, I'm sure some of this still occurs. My brother-in-law and his twin and his dad are all members of the same fraternity. He grew up in Alabama and his father was president of the "I'll leave the name blank but you'd all recognize the city" country club. My sister told me that he was HIGHLY impressed when he found out that my sister is a member of the sorority that is held in highest regard at his SEC alma mater and the state where he went to school.

So, I think this goes way back and it hasn't just occurred in the south. Social circles and sorority membership, along with other things, play important roles in other places, too. ;) I've always known the sorority affiliations of all my mom's friends, and it all works much the same way where I live, just not as overtly. I've said before that Jane Austen was writing about this 200 years ago.