[jenidallas]

Before I graduated from high school, I was familiar with Greek life. My mother was a sorority member (charter class at her school!) and I had been reading her sorority magazine since I was young. I often played in her jewelry box and her beautiful pearl badge (with pearl chapter guard) was one of my favorite items, but one I was never allowed to try on as she explained that was a very special privilege. I remember watching her leave the house all dressed up on occasion wearing it though – always going to “help the college girls” or “have tea with her sisters”. It seemed like a very grand thing to aspire to – I knew somehow that being in a sorority made one special.

I grew up in a town with several local universities and knew a lot of girls older than me who had come home from college wearing Greek letters. Others (friends’ mothers and women I babysat for) would all talk about how being in the “right” sorority would determine so much about your adult life (who you might marry, what kinds of organizations you might be invited to join later in life, etc.) and how this big decision would make or break your college social life.

Me? I was an academic “involved” type who was looking to leave my town. I thought I would likely go to a private school somewhere, perhaps one of the all-women’s universities that regularly mailed me brochures or perhaps a prestigious liberal arts university on the east coast. Or the honors program at a state university. My SAT scores were off the charts, I had a 4.0, and my activities were anything but basic (traveling to Russia on a youth ambassador trip in the ‘80s was always a great resume builder!) and I was more concerned with interesting academics for college so I could get into a great law school. I looked at many schools without a Greek system so the thought of membership did not necessary align with my own plans.

Those plans did not come to fruition, perhaps because I had no realistic grasp on whether my family could afford to send me to one of those schools. I did not qualify for financial aid but also due to some other dynamics did not have family resources to pay for any of my college expenses. My parents also told me loans were out of the question, so I settled on a small private liberal arts college near home because they offered me a wonderful scholarship package (four years tuition, room, board, books, and a nice stipend that would pay for activities). They had a small Greek life on their campus – three NPC sororities, two IFC fraternities, one service sorority, and one service fraternity. (All seven functioned as social organizations.)

I will call the sororities Lions, Tigers, and Bears (as I felt a bit like Dorothy going down the Yellow Brick Road and off to college

My mother was on the chapter advisory board for Bears at this campus and they were the only one of the three chapters that I had heard of prior to selecting this university as none of my older friends were in any of these three chapters on their college campus. My admissions counselor was a beautiful woman who had graduated a couple of years prior. While she was recruiting me, she talked quite about Greek life on the campus and showed me photos of all her sisters in Tigers.