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Originally Posted by Low C Sharp
Re: chapters being forced to take legacies, it happens on occasion in Ann Rivers Siddons's books. One obese student in "Heartbreak Hotel" is pledged under alumni pressure so strong that the organization almost threatens to pull the chapter charter. The obese student is described as not merely a legacy, but having multiple ties to highly placed people in the national organization who are also rich/powerful leaders in that state. Siddons depicts this kind of thing happening in both fraternities and sororities (in different books).
This is fiction, of course. but she knows whereof she speaks. My guess is that when she describes SEC chapter operations in the 50s, she doesn't need to make anything up.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by carnation
The obese student in Heartbreak Hotel, Terry, is a guy. It seems like guys still come under a lot of alum pressure, though, because they don't have quotas.
Anne Rivers Siddons is a Tri Delt from the Auburn chapter so she's probably right on about a bunch of stuff ("Randolph University" is actually Auburn). I know several people who were in the chapter with her and they said that far from being the rebel that her protagonist is portrayed as, she was a very proper, rule-following girl.
ETA: there was one chapter I worked with in the seventies that refused to pledge the daughter of the alum club's president. This was rough. They loved the president, everyone did, but her daughter was, um, quite wild. To this day I'm not sure how the chapter got away with that.
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/crash
Anne Rivers Siddons did address legacies for both sororities and fraternities. Carnation is correct in "Heartbreak Hotel", the fraternity is forced to take the pledge, but everybody ends up loving him.
Low C Sharp is thinking of "Outer Banks", where the sorority is forced to take what they call a "Triple - grandmother, mother, aunt". They end up tolerating the new sister, but it's due to her own behavior.