Article about sororities at Harvard

[aephi alum]

From The New York Times:

http://nytimes.com/2005/02/20/fashion/20SORO.html

It's in the fashion section

A snippet:


Cambridge, Mass.

AT 9 Wednesday night about 150 undergraduate women gathered in the cool mist just off Harvard Yard in front of the university's science center. They formed three groups and began shouting, chanting, clapping and singing loudly enough to draw curiosity-seekers from across the campus, which has been unsettled in recent weeks over comments by the university president, Lawrence H. Summers, about possible differences in "intrinsic aptitude" between men and women. The women's voices, though, were neither angry nor strident. They were giddy high-pitched squeals like those that might punctuate an appearance by Justin Timberlake or the Olsen Twins.

"What is this?" asked Laurie Korens, a longtime Cambridge resident who was walking her dog near campus.

Ms. Korens was told that it was a bid-night ritual for Harvard's three sororities, whose members were welcoming new pledges with cries like "Welcome to Theta!"

A puzzled look crossed her face. "Really?" she said, "I thought it was a protest."

Though they often meet with similar reactions, sororities of the traditional state-college variety have taken root at Harvard, a place where for years the biggest social event for women was the annual Take Back the Night rally. Kappa Alpha Theta, the sorority of Laura Bush and Lynne Cheney, was the first to arrive on campus, in 1992. Delta Gamma followed in 1994, and Kappa Kappa Gamma opened its chapter in 2003. But while Harvard sororities share the same Greek letters as their party-hardy sister chapters at Michigan, Texas and Ole Miss, their social agendas are startlingly wholesome, perhaps giving new meaning to the phrase Harvard Square. They hold kickball tournaments and pajama parties and take apple-picking trips. Their recruitment meetings take place not at bars but at the local Finagle a Bagel and Au Bon Pain. And far from being catty and exclusive, they strive to welcome any woman who might hope to join.