[33girl]

Firehouse, I agree with you to a point, but at some schools the situation was the other way around. At my campus, sororities had deferred rush - you couldn't join until you were a second semester freshman. Little sisters didn't have this restriction. Lots of women joined their first semester. Unfortunately, lots of women also quit or joined sororities in addition because being a little sister wasn't what they expected.

Some groups had a rule (PSK & Delta Chi) that you couldn't be in a sorority and a LS at the same time - divided loyalties. Not surprisingly, these 2 groups had the most well organized LS programs and the ones who are still treated like alums of the fraternities.

Then there were the programs that were complete jokes. One of my friends was a fraternity little sister at Penn State & she can't even remember the name of the fraternity.

I never had a problem with little sisters - I never thought that they had better "access" to the fraternity men - I mean, if a guy is so lazy that he's just going to ask out someone because she's THERE, it probably isn't someone I would want to date. IMO it wasn't a better choice or a worse choice - just a different one. There are some women who joined sororities who would have probably made way better little sisters.

I'm not doubting that for some schools (and definitely for the national officers) they did feel threatened, but as we know, the agendas put forth by national offices often have zero to do with how the collegians feel.