Quote:
Originally posted by adduncan
I had a talk last night via IM w/ one of my college classmates who was a sorority member during my unfortunate undergrad rush.
We talked about how I was pursuing AI, and she actually remembered my coming through. After this many years, she spilled as to why I was cut heavily:
I came from a predominantly Jewish town. Everyone, therefore ASSumed I was Jewish. According to her, there was a combination of things associated with that. 1) They thought I would object to Christianity in ritual and 2) the predominantly Jewish sororities called "Dibbs" on anyone thought to be Jewish. Imagine her shock when I told her that I was an outcast in that town for being goyim.......
If they had asked, they would have known what my background was - but they weren't allowed to.
This was the mid 1980s, folks.
(Didn't mean to hijak, I am just still reeling from that convo last night, and it fit the thread, so.....)
Adrienne
|
Unfortunately I'm sure stuff like this still happens at some schools.
At my school, where lots of the girls going through rush are Jewish, you can pinpoint a number of them via some combination of last name, geography, looks, and other miscellaneous factors -- I remember during rush this year while we were reading through the recs that some of the girls had sent in and when one of the girls' extracurricular activities were read off, two of the Jewish girls in our house immediately squealed, "Yay, she's Jewish!" The rest of us had no idea what they were talking about, but apparently one of her activities was some sort of Jewish youth leadership group.
I think that at this point every house has at least a couple Jewish members so there's no way that blatant religious discrimination would take place. But I'm pretty sure that there was a point in our none-too-distant past where it did, probably much in the way you described your experience, Adrienne. And even these days if you're presumed to be Jewish and you don't look interested at a rush party, people will start to assume that you only want to go AEPhi or SDT and that that is your way of showing it -- so if you're clearly Jewish and you're not only interested in primarily Jewish houses, you usually have to go out of your way to show it.