[Georgetown] Greeks Exclude by Class
 

A Georgetown woman wrote a thing.

I wrote a rebuttal.

As a white woman that aspect of the argument didn't even occur to me. But yet another aspect of white privilege is to assume GLO=NPC sorority. Of course it doesn't and to disregard the others reduces their value to nil.

But her premise that legacy is critical to membership is preposterous. Why on earth would so many white female NPC alumnae be so completely thrilled that their daughter was accepted if it was an obvious conclusion? I'm sorry this gal didn't feel like she fit in, but don't blame that on privilege or wealth.

I really wanted to address that part of her editorial, but I will leave that to the NPC women to post in the comments.

I DO understand what she was trying to say, but only in the context of race. A black woman is less likely to come from an NPC legacy family. A black woman who went to a predominately black school system is even less likely to know teachers or community members who were in NPC orgs. The absence of recs is a problem. BUT SURELY NOT AT GEORGETOWN, where Greek life is only two years old, if that.

Please leave her a comment, though. The conversation should continue.

I didn't go to an expensive private uni, but I was the first in my fam to go to college much less go Greek. Heck, even later got a Master's. It's not an automatic posh country club thing like this woman seemed to think. I would love to see my daughter go Greek and will help her, but I had no one guiding me. I merely saw it as a way to get more involved on campus and meet people at a school where it was hard to do that.

That was such a poorly written piece, I am surprised the editor of a prestigious university would have allowed that to be published in their paper. Shoddy journalism, bad fact checking......perhaps she should have written it entirely "in my opinion....." but even then, the lack of fact checking would have been an egregious error. The readers, however, are straightening everything out!

I feel like so many campus papers are almost reflexive in their anti-Greek stance.

I really enjoyed your rebuttal, Sen.

Ironically, she fails to point out--or may not even realize--that dues at schools like
Georgetown, and most of their peer institutions, are far less than they tend to be at large public schools. $700 may sound like a large sum (and is it really when you're paying all or part of a $60k annual bill for tuition, room, and board?), but they can be much higher.

This is sort of a tangent. I casually knew someone who moaned and whined after graduation who went to a private uni and has huge student loans to pay back. Even if I'd gotten accepted to a big name school, I wouldn't go there unless I'd received a scholarship to offset that cost--there are plenty of nice in-state public unis here. I was raised to be sensible with money. Just because you got accepted to a certain uni doesn't mean you should go there. Oh, and she majored in photography. :/ Nothing wrong with that profession, but most photographers have to start their own businesses. It's not a high dollar field, generally. Don't know what this special snowflake was expecting. It's like: don't major in education at Harvard unless you've been given a full scholarship. Same logic. Teachers don't get paid what they're worth.

Thank you.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, Georgetown meets full financial need. I know that I had enough money from my refund check back in the late 90s to cover sorority membership TODAY, if I was a woman of course.

For the past couple of days I've been trying to mull over my experiences at UCLA and Georgetown to gain some meaningful insights into this topic. I've mostly failed ;P

I did feel more aware of wealth at Georgetown than I did at UCLA, so I think I can understand the author's concern with class discrimination, real or perceived. And I think there is a significant difference between chapters that have houses and chapters that do not. At UCLA, live-out dues were more than $2,000 a year - and this was ten years ago. But, living in the house was much more cost-effective than living in an apartment or dorms, so if someone wanted to be in a sorority, they could easily make the finances work in their favor.

That said, many big universities now have chapters several times larger than what their physical houses can hold, so there can be real concern that a new member would never get the opportunity to live in her house and reap the benefits of the reduced costs. And of course, schools without facilities never offer the financial benefits of living in at all.

All that said, I think it boils down to this:
The author, and prospective members, shouldn't look at the $500-700 as an additional expense in their college budget; they should approach the figure as pre-paying for social activities they would otherwise spend money on. No, of course it won't be totally equal - there are national dues and badge fees and whatnot - but the majority of dues at unhoused chapters tend to go into programming. Every decision has an opportunity cost: almost any activity you join means that you have less time and less money to devote to other activities.

Sen - I can't speak for undergrad financial need, but my understanding is that Georgetown has a much smaller endowment than peer institutions. I know at the business school, we gave out far less money in merit scholarships to prospective students than other comparably-ranked schools did, and we lost a lot of potential students because of it.