[ThetaDancer]

Originally Posted by Janerz222

-I'm willing to wager that this author's organization has/participates in a lot of what she thinks is missing. She can wait for someone to come knock her over the head with "opportunities", or she could spend a few minutes of inquiry and find a lot of them are there for her and her fellow Dukies. (She is not by any means alone in this regard.)

-as my biological sister (a longtime Duke GLO alumna) said upon reading this article: "You ARE the sorority, girlfriend. So get to it."

-I am speculating here, and may be off base in this particular case, but I'm going there anyway:

For a long time, I have sensed that many of our NPC chapters at prestigious universities consider themselves above our inter/national organizations, and therefore they ignore/do not fully participate in what the larger organization offers. There's a bit of embarrassment at being a sorority member. So to assuage that and to make themselves feel more justified that they haven't sold out, they convince themselves that "it's different at Duke/Princeton/Stanford". (Note, I'm not throwing stones at glass houses--this most certainly applies to my alma mater/college chapter and to myself to some extent during my own college days.)

By belittling your ties to and the value of the inter/national organization, you can have your cake (3-4 years of fun) and eat it too (ignore the ritual/restrictions/hard work/alumnae involvement).

Imagine how much more we could accomplish if that energy was spent on strengthening the areas our of GLOs that they see as lacking! As an exception to the norm (an actively participating alumna from my chapter), that's the tack I've taken, and I wish I had more company.

You can complain about it, or you can do something about it. I agree that the former is much easier (and makes for more juicy journalism and more hits on your webpage). However, two of the lessons I've learned from being an NPC woman are that you can only change an organization from within, and that women make fabulous agents of purposeful change.

Exactly! I think you hit the nail on the head with this one.