Quote:
Originally posted by IvySpice
An anonymous Penn senior posting on the Daily Pennsylvanian site offered an inside interpretation, which I'll repost below. For what it's worth, this is the same impression I had of Phi Sig...they were the "uncool" house, but were probably better sisters than the "hot" houses.
Ivy
>>I have to agree with "Freshman" here. I didn't rush my freshman year because I thought all sorority girls were bitchy and shallow. Of course I was wrong--there are awesome girls in every house--but there was one house with which I was unconditionally wrong, and that is phi sig, which my roommate was a member of (until she deactivated a few days ago.)
Their sorority was really close (apparently people don't know each other's names in some of the houses!) and the girls were basically model Penn Citizens...they got the GPA award for the highest in the greek system and did lots of community service.
What is really disappointing is what my roommate told me as the main reason the national chapter wanted to kick them out. It wasn't so much low numbers (which they did have a problem with) but it was that the sorority didn't really fit their ideals...the girls weren't "cool" enough. As in, the fact that the sorority was not made up of "Penn Girls" was the REASON they wanted to disband it.
Senior
>>
edit: "Penn Girl" is campus lingo for a rich, skinny Long Island or New Jersey Jew with a perfect tan who isn't particularly studious or nice.
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I just had to respond to this post and the comments they copied from the Daily Pennsylvania. Phi Sigma Sigma sorority's Central Office and National Personnel are
not shallow and didn't not close the chapter because the women weren't "Penn Girls or cool enough".
Phi Sigma Sigma has as one of its core values Inclusiveness. Which means that Phi Sigma Sigmas are not the stereotypical blonde haired blue eyed size 5 girl who may or may not be a bubble head image that the media wants to perpetuate about anyone in a sorority. Phi Sigs (like all the NPC members) are every color and size of the spectrum of human life. We are fully abled and disabled, representatives from all religions and those that are atheist, smart and maybe not as smart, we are every age imaginable, undergrad and grad students. So for this person to post on the Daily Pennsylvanian website what the roommate (a now possibly disgruntled former Phi Sig) claims about they were shut down due to not fitting the Phi Sigma Sigma image - I would like to ask them "what image is that".
If Phi Sigma Sigma was as shallow as this article makes it out to be then I would never have been offered the bid to become a Founding Sister of the Iota Gamma Chapter. I became a Proud Sister of Phi Sigma Sigma as a 32 year old, graduate student, don't have the perfect tan, am Christian, and am what is considered morbidly obese. My chapter sisters run from Agnostic to Jewish to Wiccan to Christianity to all forms of religion. We are 17 to 37 years old. Freshman to Graduate Students. Single, Single Mothers, Married Women, Married with Children. We have sisters from America representing every race here. In my chapter alone there are sisters from Mexico, Czech Republic, Korea, Africa, Latin and Central America. We range from a size 0 to a size 30 and everything in between. We are 5 foot nothing to 5 foot 10. That is the "ideal" image I know of Phi Sigma Sigma not what the article claims is ideal.
I will take at face value what the second article said as to why Phi Sigma Sigma was reorganizing the chapter. With "around 60" sisters when every other sorority on campus has 100 plus then recruitment was the issue. As a Phi Sig I know that Central Office sets up steps to help us reach numbers (my chapter is going through the process now) and national personnel provides as much assistance as a chapter asks for, including Vision refreshers. If a chapter doesn't ask for assistance or doesn't follow the steps set up by CO to help recruit the quality (not quantity) women then maybe CO felt a reorganization was needed. From what the article said CO offered each of these women the opportunity to be Alumnae (and the opportunity to petition to become active when the chapter starts up again in 2004) and become involved in Phi Sigma Sigma that way - these women turned it down and decided to fully disaffiliate. I personally believe in and follow the saying "Once a Phi Sigma Sigma, Always a Phi Sigma Sigma" these women obviously did not.
Carolyn