[bolingbaker]

You'll never, ever understand why the girls do it different than the boys. 33girl is right: it's a difference between the sexes. To us guys, it really is mysterious and confounding as to why the girls bind themsleves with these endless, complex rules. What's more confounding is that the small sororities - the ones most likely to be destroyed by the rules - are among the ones most frantic in their insistence that the rules be applied. The truth is that on a campus where there are a lot of good sororities, there are some small, weak sororities, and they do not have any real chance of ever getting better under the rules. The most they can hope for is survival. There is no chance at all that they can ever improve to compete with the good, big ones. Not so in the fraternity world where the lack of rules puts a premium on aggressiveness, passion and competition. If a big fraternity stumbles because they have not been aggressive in seeking out new members, a small-but-ambitious fraternity can overtake them.
It is not and has never been that way with the sororities. Formal rush is full of rules about what you can say, do, how you can present yourselves, so that it is painfully obvious to everyone who goes through rush just who are the leaders and who are perceived to be the losers. If a young woman goes through rush and figures she can't get a bid to one of the presitge houses, she is more likely not to join at all. The small, weak sororities are like mom-and-pop stores trying to compete with the big mall chains.
Now the truth is that the small, weak soroities CAN COMPETE EFFECTIVELY but they never do it because they are so schooled in the culture of rules and punishments that they don't know how. The members generally don't think of themselves as being aggressive and competitive; they generally don't think in terms of beating the system. They do not know how. They've bought into the notion seen earlier on this board that NPC and PanHellenic are there to help everyone be good and keep the system strong. What the rules do is keep the strong ones strong, and keep the weak ones weak. Do you know, are you aware, of ANY small, weak sorority on ANY campus with a campus (with a good sorority system) that has ever worked its way up the ladder through aggressive, competitive strategies and overtaken one of the leading sororities? Have you ever seen, or heard of, a sorority that traditionally has around 35-50 women ever following an aggressive plan to grow and compete with the 150-women chapters on the same campus? Never. Ever.
Does anyone doubt this? Let's try an experiment. Go to a large campus with big, strong sorority system. Allow a new sorority to come on campus unencumbered by any rules whatsoever. At many schools, the large sororities won't pledge junior transfers because they can fill their ranks with freshmen only. Our new sorority will fill it's ranks with junior transfers, all of whom fit the profile of the aggressive, creative, competitor. Our stated plan is to create a 'top competitor' on campsu; our goal is to become one of the best. Then, they will informally recruit younger women who have not gone through sorority rush, or who went through but did not pledge because sororities they liked did not have room for them. By the time our new group participates in formal rush, they will look just like, act just like, have the same fraternity relationships as, all the traditionally powerful sorority chapters.
Sorry to ramble on like this. I love the sororities, and I know the sorority system as it's constituted is exactly what the sororities want. We guys look at their system, and listen to their patient explanations, and scratch our heads. They have what they want, and it's none of our business. But, it is strange and confusing to us why the sororities on the receiving end of the "rules" think they're being protected.