| breathesgelatin |
09-20-2008 04:49 AM |
I don't know of any NPC sorority that uses the official term "blackballed." That doesn't mean that there are not ways of eliminating a PNM from membership selection, though.
The most obvious one and the only one that anyone will say anything about here is the No-Rec, which depending on the group might be able to be overridden but at the very least is extremely, extremely difficult to override in every NPC I have heard about.
LonghornPNM, I feel you on this one. I did a lot of thinking about these issues re: membership selection when I was a collegiate - I was selected by my schools' Panhellenic to chair a sexual assault task force of Greek students, and one thing we discussed repeatedly with student life administrators and counselors was that sororities can sometimes re-victimize women.
Here's an example.
W&L has deferred recruitment (I won't throw any punches and will just use my own school as an example). There is a not insignificant number of women who have unwelcome sexual experiences during the first weeks of their college career (it could range from rape/date rape, other forms of sexual assault, unwanted touching/dancing, sexual harassment, or even just poor sober decision making that the woman later regrets). Also many women who may have had sexual traumas in childhood or high school are "released" into adulthood upon entering college and are suddenly far more free to express themselves/self destruct in various ways (depending on how you look at it).
One of the most commonly observed reactions to sexual assault among women is increased promiscuity. This stems from the women's own self-blame for the assault. She feels "Well, it was my fault, so I must really be a slut," or, "Well, I was drunk and someone took advantage of me, so what do I have to lose now, now that I have already lost my virginity" or whatever. It is usually not a conscious, rationalized decision as I may have made it seem, but for whatever reason, a common reaction of women who have been raped and assaulted is to become more promiscuous. This can be to various degrees - just a lot of making out, for example, or in extreme cases, very embarrassing situations like sex in public, etc.
So the point of the counselor who sat on the sexual assault task force was that by holding a hard line and automatically rejecting women who may have gained such a reputation in their first semester, we often might have been rejecting women who were desperately in need of female companionship and support and many of the resources and self-improvement techniques that sororities could offer. Promiscuous young women in college are often hurting very, very badly.
I always thought that was really interesting food for thought, but saw very little practical way to battle the mentality of "cut the really promiscuous girls" within chapters. Of course, I guess there are just some women who just enjoy risque sexual escapades and publicize their sexual prowess that are questionable membership material to many chapters, and you often can't really tell the difference because the hurting girls and the cocky girls in a recruitment situation. Often the hurting women compensate by being cocky. So I don't know. I always just encouraged my friends in the chapter to give every woman a chance and really get to know her personally and not believe the hype. We also had the advantage of a full semester to get to know the PNMs before recruitment.
Besides, I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that in my organization you have to have fairly direct evidence of the behavior to really remove them from consideration. eg, "I heard from Gina who heard from Jess who heard from Tom that Sally had sex with 6 members of this frat at once" wouldn't cut it. Although if enough members believed the rumor the PNM was of course likely to be released in the standard way.
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