I started hearing rumors about nationals coming to our school during the late part of the summer. At first, I was outraged. Why would I want to pay to be part of what looks like a glorified club? Someone said to me just yesterday that they think national sororities are the country clubs of college life... more about expenses and quantity than they are about quality and character. And from the outside, that is how it appeared to me at first. Now that I have educated myself about national sororities, I am very eager to be part of one. There is a lot that a national sorority can offer me that our local sorority cannot. Every time I talk about nationals, I learn about new opportunities that I would never have with the sorority I am in now. We have about 60 members (including our sweethearts) and we are 30 years old this year. That is a lot of history and our girls are afraid we are going to lose it all to a national sorority. Hopefully whoever we choose will let us teach our new members our sorority’s history as well as the national history. We do not want our local sorority to be forgotten. We have too much pride for that!
Our college gave us three options:
1) our sorority disbands and we have the choice to join a national
2) our sorority is absorbed by a national and we all go in together
3) our sorority stays local and we compete with the new national sororities that would colonize next Fall
I have heard mixed opinions from our alumni. Some of them see it as the current sisters betraying Delta (a letter of my sorority - it will make it easier to talk about) and some of them see the good in going national. One alumnus who is against going national suggested we trademark our name, that way if we could be sure that Delta lived on forever. Another alumnus emailed one of my sisters recently... telling her that she is very excited for us and for the alumni because alumni of our local sorority can be initiated and installed into the national sorority we are looking at. We will not betray our sorority or the girls that are in it or who have been in it. We will always be sisters and we will always know and love Delta's history. We will all teach the history of XYZ sorority at my college and Delta will be included in that history. But as our past president said last night in our meeting, "everything evolves" and you cannot expect it to stay the same forever. I see this opportunity as a chance to grow as individuals and as a group. I am not sure how most of our alumni stand. We will have a better idea (about numbers) once we send out our next newsletter explaining about going national and which sororities are interested. I think we will get a good response.
xoxo
pinkyphimu - thanks for the welcome
After the presentations last week I know of 7 girls who "were on the fence about going national" and now that they have been educated about what going national means, they're pro national and very excited about it. I knew that the majority of concern and disapprovement about going national stemmed from not really knowing what it meant. Some of our girls only knew about the CONS and none of the PROS. Since last week they've learned a lot.