I went to a peer school, and I don't think the groups there concern themselves much about intellect per se. It really is taken as something of a given. But someone's style of expressing her intellect...that's another matter. I think members of Group A might say that the members of Group B try to act like airheads to impress boys, and Group B would say that Group A members are uptight and have no idea how to have fun.

Looks are another matter too. On my campus, if you guessed who was going to end up in XYZ based on looks and clothes alone, you'd be right a lot more often than you'd be wrong. I know that this kind of pattern is taken for granted at most schools, but at a lot of MIT-type schools, it cuts very hard against the grain, and frankly it plays a big role in the marginalization of NPC sororities. If even one chapter in the system takes only "hot" girls, that's all the rest of the community needs to see to conclude that Greek life is just middle school cliques writ large.
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Well, that's the great thing about freedom of association. XYZ is free to pick their own members based on any standards they choose. If XYZ wants to pick their members based on their looks and their clothes they can. Hey, they have to live with each other. And anyone who does not want to join a group like that does not have to.

What I like about these posters is that they show that sorority women are multi-faceted, and they are not just giving that concept lip service, they are backing it up with evidence to prove it. Which is what I would expect from brainy MIT women! :)

I can't say anything specific about MS, obviously. But I will say we never saw a first-semester freshman who didn't meet our GPA requirements, simply because they wouldn't have been admitted to MIT in the first place. There were older students who didn't meet the minimum GPA, but they generally self-selected and didn't participate in recruitment because they knew they had to focus on their grades.

So you might theoretically hear something like this after round 1:

"OK, we have 200 PNMs. Who are we inviting back?"
"Well, we can start by cutting any PNMs who don't meet our GPA requirement."
"Done. OK, we still have 200 PNMs..."

Well, sure. But my point was that the looks-oriented chapter was driving young women away from the whole system. From the outside, you can't tell that Chapter A chooses for looks and Chapter B chooses for sisterhood. It just appears that women are being sorted into chapters just based on looks. And when you enter recruitment, you're submitting yourself to be judged by ALL chapters, by whatever secret (but obvious) criteria they may use. If you don't believe college women should select one another on that basis, then you simply don't participate in recruitment at all. And that means that the pool of women for ALL chapters is smaller...even the ones that don't give a patoot about your looks.
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Very true - I'd like to think every chapter values diversity but the simple fact is that not all do. People tend to naturally flock to and select others who are similar to them and so groups naturally tend to form into a certain mold or other. There are, of course, exceptions to this but you don't really find this out until you've gone through recruitment and really talked to other people on campus who are familiar with that college's Greek community.

On our campus, one particular house, XYZ, prided itself on being a glam girl, snob house. It actually fed into the "I am brilliant and don't hate me b/c I'm beautiful" theme that they wanted everyone to believe. Every once in a while, they would accept someone who was obviously "not" the house type, a girl who was either more on the plain side or terribly overweight. And it was always pretty clear why that was happening. Penelope NewMember might weigh more than she should, but she had a rich daddy and a nice car, or Priscilla Pledge was an ace in her pre med classes and not only raised the chapter GPA but also kept the other pre meds afloat by helping them study.

What really bothered me was that if a girl like that had joined our house, the fraternity perception was--oh, she's plain or fat or whatever, because our chapter was more diverse. But if she joined the XYZ house, then in spite of what she looked like, she was given a "pass" because she was considered to be in the elite house. It was so twisted. So the whole "looks matter" approach can work the other way--it was like membership had its privileges. The non Greeks at our school (the ones studying ancient Greek) were just baffled by the whole system and shunned us as an entire species.

Barnard, I saw that happen at my school too. We had one chapter in a particular that was that way and everyone knew how it worked for them. We were considered the more diverse chapter and I would much rather be considered diverse, genuine, and down to earth, than cookie-cutter glam girls, THANKYOUVERYMUCH!

I think what you've got there is just a reverse form of snobbery "oh, they are a nice looking group of women therefore they must all be shallow and superficial and not really intellectually gifted...bla bla bla" which is pretty much the anti-greek mentality that exists to some degree on all campuses. What's so great about these posters is that they are asking people to take a closer look at women who are sororities before you paint them all with the same brush.

Slight hijack, but is anybody else sick of all the whining about the "horrors of the elite chapters"? Believe it or not folks they do not sit around and cackle while dismissing unattractive PNMs and making plans to take over the university. They (gasp) actually do value personality and have strong sisterhoods that are comparable to the rest of any particular Greek system. Grow up and stop bashing because it sounds like jealousy. I strongly believe that if you are comfortable with your chapter there is no need to bash other chapters or other "types" of chapters. [End hijack].

You're confusing envy with jealousy. And in any case, you're wrong.

On a campus where academia is tops in the world, one should expect more out of GLOs than the superficial image pigeonholing that already plagues the rest of the greek universe. I was extremely proud of my chapter, which had models and pageant winners, as well as no-makeup girls who rose to top leadership on Wall Street and in politics.

It greatly saddened me that we had chapters on my campus that couldn't rise above the crap, and had to perpetuate the usual stereotypes (that's a slut house, that's a boring girls with boyfriends house, that's a fat house) in order to further their own cause. That did not move the ball an inch towards improving campus respect for our system. I had no envy for any chapter that had a hyperfocus on image, precisely because there was no room there for a nice personality or true sisterhood if the only concern was where she bought her clothes or how much her parents made(yeah, they called my dad and asked him where he worked, during FR).

Please try not to speak from a position of misinformation. The whole point of this thread was to applaud the innovative MIT panhellenic marketing, because it emphasized everything right about being greek, instead of everything that is wrong.

Position of misinformation? I will try to put this in a way as to not further sidetrack this thread...but my post was addressing the general trend (which was featured in multiple posters in this thread, not just your post) about stereotyping "elite chapters" as airheads, shallow, horrible, whatever you want to say. The ironic thing is that if you go to Barnard (I'm assuming this is the university you are talking about cause of your SN) I am 95% sure I know what chapter you are talking about and I actually have a high school friend who pledged and joined. From all accounts that is NOT how membership is decided...and she is very opinionated about that matter and would have certainly deactivated (or at least been vocally displeased) if that had been the case. Believe it or not, chapters like that DO have great philanthropy, strong programming, solid grades, standards requirements and most importantly strong sisterhoods. Although some women who do end up in these chapters do come off as cold during rush, many more of them were standouts academically, personality wise and talent wise who most any chapter would love to have.

I just find it a little hypocritical that you are railing against the chapter for "stereotyping other chapters as this and that to further their own cause" by STEREOTYPING THEM. Food for thought. Not trying to start an argument, but please realize that if these chapters in general (there are always exceptions) were really so rampantly air-headed, shallow, rude, materialistic, dramatic or whatever else there would be massive self-destruction. No chapter, no matter the status at the school, can maintain a destructive sorority.

If indeed they are stereotyping the Greek system, please stop harming the Greek system by their very method...stereotyping. It isn't endearing.

I very much applaud the MIT women for their promotional materials, I think it sends a great message about Greek life.

Just an aside, I figured Barnard1897 was an AOII - not that Barnard was her alma mater.

I understand your point...yes, chapters who are filled with the most beautiful women who ever went through recruitment can and do have great sisterhoods. The point of the posts on this thread were to point out that students at MIT who are not interested in looks...because most of them presumably value intelligence more highly than appearance...will look at groups that appear to only value superficial beauty and condemn them as airheads, etc. This statement is valid since to the outside world the outward appearance is all they see. These women may very well have been chosen for completely different reasons, but it will be assumed that they were chosen just because they are pretty.

Thank you, AOIIAngel and SWTXBelle, for clarifying 2 very important points.

I did not attend Barnard, as JWSteele assumes, so again, please try not to presume you know what school or chapter(s) I am talking about. I am glad that your friend's chapter there is very well-rounded. I would never presume that any and all chapters with attractive women and good image could not also be well-rounded. It is too bad people at Barnard have viewed her chapter as such.

I simply pointed out that unfortunately, there are superficial chapters out there, even at the schools where greek life is not big and so many other factors like the ones you mentioned could otherwise make for some great, diverse chapters. It's a fact, not a stereotype, that some women have chosen to push this when they recruit. Maybe they have wonderful attributes among their individual members. But that is not what comes across because of the way they have chosen to market themselves on campus. Even though your friend's chapter was not thankfully not like that, you cannot presume to know what all other chapters on these campuses are like.

I also think it's important to note that while I can speak candidly on GC, because we are somewhat "internal" here, primarily among GLO members, about the concerns I have about stereotyping, I would not and do not ever publicly badmouth the particular GLO chapters I referred to earlier or perpetuate the sterotypes. I'm actually quite involved in NPC and one of my main tasks each year is to make sure girls from this area get referred to every one of the houses in the NPC, no matter where they go to school.

I didn't say that they didn't. That's the thing about MIT-type campuses...100% of the female students are so smart, accomplished, and motivated that a chapter can choose based on looks and popularity and still end up with a new member class with all kinds of great attributes. But that doesn't change the fact that only pretty, popular girls are welcome in that chapter. It's obvious that Chapter A cares about looks, and it's obvious that if you enter NPC recruitment, Chapter A will judge you on those shallow attributes. If you think that's unacceptable -- and most MIT-type girls think that's unacceptable -- then you don't rush at all, and the less shallow chapters don't get to meet you.

These posters are terrific, but there's only so much they can do to change PNMs' ACCURATE perception that they will be judged on their looks and popularity during formal rush.
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