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Originally Posted by Hartofsec
My point is that we need to stop implying that posters will never, ever, have what "we" have, in terms of bonding and forming life-long friendships, just because "we" have a Greek affiliation and they do not.
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No one has implied that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hartofsec
It's disrespectful, and IMO, just an erroneous assumption.
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It's only disrespectful and an erroneous assumption if one assumes that by saying someone else's experiences are different one is saying that they are inferior. Again, no one has said that marvelous bonds and life-long friendships can't be formed without being Greek. I'd hazard a guess that we all know from personal experience that's far from the truth.
But I know that the bonds and friendships I have that arose in different contexts -- childhood, college, camp, fraternity, law school, neighborhood, church, work, etc. -- differ in some noticeable ways because the experiences in which those bonds and friendships were formed, and sometimes even the reasons they were formed, differ. There's nothing at all disrespectful about acknowledging that.
Often, what posters like the OP were looking for is the "College Greek Experience." Nevermind that that experience can have
many different forms -- what matters is that the posters have in their mind an image of what that experience is, and most likely the main parts of that image are the things that make GLOs different from other organizations. It may include formals or mixers, or "the house," or candlepasses, or being part of a national organizations whose members consider each other "sisters," or having bigs and littles, or ritual and secret meanings of words and symbols, or, yes, even wearing letters and being able to say "I am an ΑΒΓ." When these posters realize that the experience they wanted isn't going to happen for them, the loss of what they hoped to experience is what they're mourning.
Of course there are many other ways in which they can form bonds and friendships just as strong (or stronger) as can be found in GLOs. But what seems disrespectful to me is ignore the loss these posters are feeling. As 33girl says, often those feelings need to be resolved before one is ready to move on to other possibilities. Otherwise, one risks imposing the expectations of the "College Greek Experience" on other great organizations that not only can't meet those expectations but shouldn't be expected to. More disappointment is often the result.