Re: hmmm...my thoughts on the situation...
 

I also thought it was odd that the camera crew was right outside the door of their ritual room!! In my opinion no one who is not a Sigma should have been within 500 ft of there. Seemed very informal to me, but I guess everybody does their own thing anyway.

It's obvious MTV focused heavily on the renegades. I thought the last episode showed the bonding in sorority life much better than the previous episodes. They gave Jordan and Maya waaaay too many chances and warnings to fit into the group. This simply set up the opportunity for her to make her whiney speech at the end and to try to dissuade others from joining.

I'm sort of sorry to see that all of them didn't make it. I never felt any of them didn't deserve a sisterhood, but I do feel this may not have been a good fit. I wish Mara had joined, though. I really liked her. The one thing that I don't like is that the editing (of course) made it seem as if the chapter didn't do any sisterhood things. I know that we all were probably with our new member classes as a whole a heck of a lot more than these women appeared to be. I only saw partying and drinking and slapping and bitching. I wish they had shown some sort of love and affection. Also, if the cookie baking was one of the few attempts of the chapter to bond with the new member class, that was really piss poor. I really hope they did learn from this experience.

Sigma needs to change some pictures on their web site. They have Jordan in the picture of the recently initated sisters' picture

Re: Final Episode
 

I could NOT agree with you more!!! I hadnt ever watched the show until they had the marathon leading up to the end.... and i was steadily getting more and more PO'ed as i watched it!!!!

the back talking, the breaking the rules, the "attitude of entitlement" (thinking the sisters owned them something), the drinking was ridiculous and the TOTAL lack of 'hood was more than i could take. them girls should have been dropped on day one.

i'm SOOOOOO glad i am what i am and proud of the process that got me here!

Okay, first I just want to say that I agree with what a lot of you have said here. I also found it incredible disrespectfull that Jordan got up and said those things at the dinner. She's just permanently out for as much attention as she can draw to herself. I mean please, she didn't have to call her mom for directions to the funeral in the middle of a friggin meeting. Then, to get up and just sh** all over what the actives had tried to create at the Blue and Gold dinnner.... Selfish, petty and mean.

However, I think the actives realize that they did a lot of things wrong here. Becca even said so while talking to one of the pledges before initiation. What some of us may be forgetting here is that many of us joined 100+ year old sisterhoods that have lots of experience and thousands of members to fall back on. This is a fairly new little local who is pretty much figuring it out as they go along. Yes, they need to figure out where they stand on the whole selection process vs. accepting girls that obviously don't belong there debate. They need to develop a policy of dealing with sisters that don't live up to their ideals and enforce them with some consistency. They need to do dozens of things differently. To their credit, they are recognizing this and trying to go forward. I really do like Leslie, Leah and Becca and I hope they can turn this experience into a learning opportunity and grow stronger from it.

___

Another personal story:
After they closed the door to go into ritual my boyfriend rolled his eyes. A few minutes later....

Him: Do you guys have some super secret ritual.
Me: Yes
Him: Well what is it
Me: If I told you it wouldn't be super secret.
Him: Tell me
Me: No
Him: Tell me
Me: No

(Yeah - It's like living with a five year old.)

He got mad and threatened not to talk to me until I told him. Then he tried pouting about me "keeping secrets from him."
Such a baby. :rolleyes:

OH My GOD I agree!!!!!!!! But you know what perhaps that is just the differeance. Capris in a ceremony...are you kidding??????

If anything this show has made me appreciate MORE AND MORE the process I went through. As I look at thier experience I realized that if MTV had of filmed my process there was probably NOTHINg that they would have been allowed to film except the Rush....public services....and probably.....well that is about it.

I dont know if these girls realize how EASY they had it. They didn't have to give up luxuries as simple as....hmmmmm SMILING or..........hmmmmm Talking..........Or hmmmmmmm Your Free Will to wear what you want every day of your process.

They needed to get over the DRAMA.

Uh, who on earth gives up smiling, talking, or picking your own clothes during pledging? No one I know! I wouldn't call that "easy," I'd call it common sense. No GLO is worth that, and it's not what they're about - "Oh, let's join and become CLONES! Cranky, quiet clones!"

I dont expect you to understand...which is why the very nature of many orgs are different.

Like I said...........This Bull just made me appreciate MY process even more. ONE that MANY would NOT Be able to complete. CERTAINLY not those scrubs. Which is why I stated in an earlier post........DID THE SHOW REFLECT MORE REALITY THAN SOME ORGS CARE TO ADMIT.

I couldn't agree more with you. And after hearing about what some of the so called newer pledge processes are like, it makes me appreciate mine and my time as an active all the more.

I give the Sigmas a lot of credit for learning as they're growing, admitting their mistakes and not being afraid to be real about it. I'm going to miss being a vicarious part of their organization, and I wish them the best.

And I'm especially proud of Candace, for someone who very obviously pledged to be on MTV, I think she learned more than any of the others what it really means to be part of a greek organization, and what being a sisterhood means. Her final comments about how all of a sudden she "got it" - I can totally relate to that, it was me.

I'm willing to bet she'll be one of the best sisters to come out of that organization when all is said and done.

Candace may have "gotten it" about sisterhood, but she apparently didn't pay attention when she received her badge. In the final scene (chapter meeting) she wore her badge on the right side, while everyone else wore it on the left side.

some notes about SL-

i was really disappointed with the finale. as a side note in mine and jordan's defense, she and i were the pledges with the most pledge points, and two of only 5 who got the required 200 points. so for all the talk of disloyalty and lack of dedication, we were there more than many of the others. just wanted to add that, a bit sad mtv didn't find that important enough to mention.

my decision to quit had nothing to do with jordan's decision to quit. how could i have joined and looked myself in the mirror, let alone expected these women to respect me knowing full well they were going to see how disrespectful we were of the organization? i am shocked candace and amanda stayed in knowing full well they had lied to the faces of the sisters on multiple occasions, in my opinion, that is not sisterhood. we did things that hurt them, and whether we felt we were wrong or not, their feelings were hurt and i knew that. also, it was very evident to me at the end that many of the sisters didn't want us there.

i told becca i didn't want to cross at initiation, she gave me the go ahead to speak in front of the sorority. my intention was not to ruin initiations. but given my track record with leaving my actions up to sigma interpretation, i felt i needed them to hear the words, from my mouth, and see that i cared. initiation was the only time at that point. it would have been wrong to be a part of their secret ritual knowing i had no intention on joining, and this was not something i wanted becca to voice for me, nor something to be told through email.

i was also surprised that a woman joining a jewish sorority made compared crossing with church experience. i just found that a bit humourous based on all the "are you jewish" stuff we saw in the beginning.

so, i have a question, as a sisterhood, how would you all address some of the behaviors seen on the show, by both pledges and sisters? how do you rebuild that trust once it it lost? just out of curiousity???

thanks for all the commentary, i appreaciate it.

Question for Mara
 

Mara,

Wow, I just found out yesterday that you live right by where I work in Bethesda, that is a really small world.

I have a question that has been bugging me, and I'm trying to ask this as tactfully as possible.

On one hand, I appreciate that on camera you had said that you realize that you did something wrong and deserved the reprimand regarding the formal, and that you accepted that, etc.

But what really bothers me is some of the things that you have said on the boards about the Sigmas, and your fellow pledge sisters, specifically Amanda and Candace. Now of course, there is no way to know for sure that it was really you - I was especially taken aback by the mean and vindictive things that were said in the yahoo groups chat of the Sorority Life group, I dont' know for sure if it was you or if it was someone pretending to be you.

I also saw some really nasty stuff on the MTV board, and I have to say the whole thing was really disturbing, what I've seen on the message boards is a lot more disturbing than anything I saw on television.

I don't know that this was really a question, but it is a general comment that I needed to get off my chest. I'm looking forward to reading the second parts of what both you and Jordan had to say on the mtv site.

Actually in my organization the associate members can't drink at all during the pledging process. So 95% of what happened on that show would of been eliminated. Also, if someone in a pledge class is acting in a way that we think is not representative of our organization, the ENTIRE pledge class is talked to. I really didn't like certain people getting singled out. It wasn't right. Also you don't wait until the end of the process to rebuild trust. A lot of times pledges lose trust because they don't understand why things function they way they do, but most of the time it take you to actually cross into the sisterhood to understand everything. It's a totally different ball game when you are actually in the organization.

Why would that surprise you - despite the sorority's open policy, Candace was NOT Jewish so I would only expect her to make an analogy based on her own experience and I thought it was stated in a way that a lot of people would understand especially because it focused on God, not Jesus!