Bad Reputations?

[33girl]

UCLAgirl,

I feel bad for your friend, but when you are dealing with big $$$ and lots of members like UCLA sororities are, ALWAYS GET IT IN WRITING.

[IvySpice]

>I'm fully convinced that whether I put on a DG jersey in the morning or an XYZ jersey in the morning, I'm still the same person

I'm sure this is true of you, but I'm not convinced it's true of every 18-year-old. I know that I changed enormously during college. I think the average freshman has the capacity to grow in a number of directions, depending on her environment. Freshmen look to their upperclass friends to teach them how to be a college woman. If they are surrounded by snobbish glamour girls who encourage them to act like princesses, they may end up with a very different character four years later than they would have if they were surrounded by an open-minded and humble crowd.

I've certainly known friends who were accepted into a "snotty" group or an "elite" college and never associated with any of their lesser friends again. On the one hand, it's easy to say that they were never my friends in the first place. On the other hand, I'm not sure that's true. We all have good and bad qualities to our character. But which qualities control our behavior, and when, has a lot to do with what we see other people doing.

Don't we think that sororities can have a positive influence on character? Don't we agree that being exposed to high ideals and surrounded by supportive friends can change a new member for the better? It works in reverse, too. Those letters on a new member's jersey, and the sisters they represent, may have a meaningful impact on the woman she becomes...sometimes for good and sometimes, unfortunately, for ill.

Ivy

[FuzzieAlum]

I totally agree with IvySpice. I've seen close friends, very much alike, go through rush, and join very different houses. As the years passed, you could see how they became different, both in superficial and more meaningful ways. Heck, there were even identical twins one year who joined different houses (and I'm pretty sure it was their choice). As freshmen, I couldn't tell them apart, but by their junior year, you knew who was who without letters on, just because they had adapted to the style of their sororities.

This may be a superficial matter of how much makeup you wear or how much you dress up, but I believe the personality changes are equally big, if less obviously quantifiable. I don't think I could have gone into college and come out anything, but I could have come out any of several things, and my choice of chapter - and joining a sorority at all - helped maked me the thing I did become.

[AXOLiz]

Originally posted by justamom
It really is funny how MANY different reputations a single sorority can have. Ask 10 people, you could easily get 10 different responses.

As a freshman, you have the hometown buzz. Here, almost everyone is a legacy to two or three sororities. Of COURSE our area will view these at the "best", because that is the mind set...NO EXCEPTION! Then, you get to campus and you hear the fraternity version. They certainly have a different criteria on which they base their opinion as do independents and other sororities. So, the PNM has all these images playing in her head and it really does make keeping an open mind difficult. So, she chooses a group and discovers that once the hubbub of recruitment is over, a different image emerges...the REAL deal.
They ALL have sweet, nerdy, popular, sweet, "bitchy", sticks, curves, skanky, prudish women as sisters. Yes, the percentage may vary, but variety still remains.

My daughter made a lot of sense when she said you have the top, you have the bottom and you have all the rest. This is a VERY different opinion/image than what she was told prior to rush. She never was the kind to need a safety net that following the crowd could have offered. She never needed to have others validate her. Though I know she may not have been comfortable in a struggling situation, I also know she wouldn't have been comfortable where so much importance is put on physical as opposed to inner beauty. (That is her nature) You will ALWAYS have those young ladies who can only find their happiness through their associations. Yet, it seems to me that many women of today are finding strength and fulfillment in choosing inner over outer beauty. An important point.

This is where we (GLOs) lose a lot of women who would be wonderful assets to any sorority, yet they are stuck with some outdated image that is perhaps propagated through our own system! To put it bluntly, some of the qualities that TEND to go hand in had with a "top" sorority aren't real turn-ons to a lot of girls. Not everyone has money-laminates-tans-gets her nails done-wears designer labels- but this is the image they have in their mind. These are images that are weakening the whole. The strength of the Greek system does NOT lie in the hands of the "top".(Though many would argue this point.) It lies in the strength of those middle, down to earth, mixed up, crazy fun loving groups of girls. These are the people whose image should be associated with Greek. Maybe, rush as well as retention would pick up for more campuses if young women would realize that they really can identify with the majority of women in sororities.
Just an opinion.

Amen.

While we don't really have the hometown buzz up here, I 100% agree with reputation depending on the person you're talking to. I didn't join the most popular chapter on campus at the time because there was NO way I wanted to be there. Period. While a lot of guys thought they were "hot," they were also THAT image that turns off most girls - stuck up, vain, promiscuous, etc. - and many times, they had no problems proving that reputation was well-deserved.

I joined an "average" house and it was the best fit for me. While I am glad I wasn't in a smaller chapter - since I think it's much harder on the members sometimes with all the responsibility spread on fewer shoulders - had a smaller, less popular chapter been a better fit, I would've gone there. But the funny thing was, depending on the individual you were talking too, we weren't necessarily the "average" house. Some people loved us, some hated us, some thought we were nerdy, some thought we were the fat sorority, some thought we were alcoholics, whatever. But I'd rather prove I'm not nerdy than have a REALLY bad reputation to prove wrong.

And the even funnier thing about reputations - which I doubt many 18 year olds consider - is how quickly they can change. One pledge class can change a chapter completely, for better or for worse.

[AlphaSigOU]

The chapter of my college fraternity already was suffering from a bad reputation on campus by the time Ipledged for many reasons.

First, we were the northernmost fraternity on 'North Greek' in OU's Greek community, far from the action of the more established fraternities and sororities further south in 'North Greek' and the unofficial community of 'South Greek'. In olden days we were one of the more popular fraternities on campus but the demolition of the old house (which was formerly the Gamma Phi Beta house) and the building of a new one began the long decline of Alpha Sig at OU.

The new house was a novel (and radical at the time) experiment in Greek housing. The house was built as an apartment complex with the idea that if membership levels were down the unoccupied apartments could be rented to non-members. We had no formal social room (though there were plans to have them done, they were never built) and it wasn't very long before we were dubbed 'the apartment dwellers' in OU's Greek community.

Our numbers were very small compared to the 80-100 member-strong houses of older fraternities -- and we didn't appeal to many during rush. The most we had at the house when I pledged was probably about 15.

Like many houses at the time, alcohol and drug abuse was rampant. I think I must have spent my pledge period drunk out of my mind or stoned out of my skull. Since we were very small, we barely registered on the radar screen of OU's administration. Needless to say, our grades were rock bottom.

But being a smaller fraternity on campus made for a closer friendship that I didn't quite feel when I rushed the larger houses. The pressure to go Greek at OU was (and still is) high, and OU doesn't make things easier by forcing freshmen under 21 to live in the dorms until they have earned 24 credit hours.

[nucutiepie]

In response to the person who said that if you asked ten people you would get ten different responses:

As I mentioned in another thread at my school a book was published that laid out several people's vision of sororities reputations. This was bad for several reasons. For one thing, some of what was written was downright cruel. One group of girls was called "museum statues" and another a "second-tier sorority". While what was said about my house was not so bad, comparatively, it was misrepresentative of my house as a whole, as it only described one portion of my house.

We have deferred rush and I think it would have been better had we had rush first thing. I went into it knowing a lot of stereotypes and I am sorry to say, it affected my recruitment, even though now many of these stereotypes have been proven untrue.