Originally Posted by KappaKittyCat
(Post 227659)
I got into a bit of a tussle with a southern alumna at our Convention last month. The hot topic this summer was alumnae initiation, which some of the older members, especially southern ones, felt would compromise our sisterhood. The woman in question told me that she felt only women who could "make it through collegiate rush at a school with a good Kappa chapter" were deserving of membership. She felt that Kappa was deteriorating as it was and that this measure would let the riffraff in. She insisted that I was too young and inexperienced to understand. I informed her that, as far as she was concerned, I was probably riffraff [I'm from a small, young chapter at a small, north-midwestern school and my family has neither prestige nor old money nor any sort of old, antebellum heritage], but that I was wearing a Key the same as she, so I was a sister and there was nothing she could do about it. I probably wouldn't have made it past first set where she came from, but more importantly, I probably wouldn't have ever wanted to be Greek there anyway. Everything she showed me in those five minutes proved to me that she knew nothing about the gentle sisterhood that I'd found at my chapter, the love that broke down my preconceptions and stereotypes. The situation almost came to blows (in the middle of a buffet lunch-- it would have been beautiful!) but our chapter president rescued me. Our chapter president happens to be Indian (i.e. her parents are from India), and the scornful look that this woman gave her... oh, it was priceless.
Why am I telling you this? Well, I came to find out later that this woman had originally initiated at a northern chapter and then transferred "back down home." She sent her daughter to the same school, where as a legacy she would be almost guaranteed a bid, and the girl was transferring to her mother's southern alma mater for the fall.
So the moral of the story? Hmm... well, people who have problems with "letting riffraff in" probably have a touch of an inferiority complex themselves. And yet those same people are the ones who we find hedging their bets by "sneaking in" at a school where there "aren't any standards for membership" and then transferring. All that for a girl to say that she's an XYZ from U of _____. I guess what I'm saying is that I feel bad for people with the attitude that a sorority is nothing more than a Greek-lettered status symbol. They're missing out on a lot of the joy that I've found in my sisters.
I'd like to think that a chapter invites a woman to membership because they believe that she will live up to its ideals. I'd like to think that they do this out of the desire to develop a friendship. I'd like to think that a woman joins a chapter because she feels she's found a home. I shudder to think of all the wonder I would have missed if I had gone to a different school, or even if I hadn't sucked it up and learned about an institution that I was convinced I didn't like. At a time when the Greek system is under fire, it is unfortunate that we are turning on each other, both between chapters and within them. All stereotypes are based in a certain amount of fact, and until we can minimize or eliminate that fact and convince people that being a sorority member is more than a stepping stone to Miss America and president of the Junior League, we're going to have an uphill fight to woo wonderful potential sisters out of hiding behind the walls of prejudice.
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