Conduct Becoming of A Sorority Girl

[SWTXBelle]

honeychile is the LAST person I would accuse of putting on airs. She wrote a reasoned response detailing why certain rules of polite society are not nit-picky, but are instead considerate of other people. Those of us "raised right" as the expression goes would never put on airs - but we also know rudeness and crassness when we see it. It is a free country, as they say, and you may do whatever you wish. However, you do not get to dictate my response to it, and if you chose to belong to a sorority you do have to consider how your actions reflect on that sorority. If you think that a rule is silly, if you are an active bring it up for discussion at your meeting and vote on it would be my suggestion.
JWithers, if your mother attended or debuted at the St. Cecilia's Ball, she followed many rules that may have seemed nit-picky - but I would suggest reading C.S. Lewis' wonderful discussion of ritual and formality in his Introduction to Paradise Lost to understand why the rules do matter, and why your own dear mother undoubtly followed them.
I think it is important to distinguish between rules particular to a certain group, campus or region, and those actions which would be rude, immoral or illegal anywhere. While I do not think anyone would get kicked out of a group for eating her hot dog while walking, participating in a wet t-shirt contest with your letters would seem to warrant a talking to by the standards committee. (I have personal knowledge of the wet t-shirt incident - and the member had trouble understanding what the problem was - "But I won!" she said !!!)

[AOII Angel]

In all seriousness, I think the issue of expelling sisters is a very difficult one. If you read other threads...like the Legacy one, people advocate kicking out people because they're annoying or trouble makers. I think for most chapters the decision is very tough and is usually preceeded by some very egregious actions by the member. I'm sure there are those very judgemental, uptight chapters out there, but I'm hoping they are few and far between. One thing I learned from living with many sisters in college, taking courses in psychology in college as well as my psychiatry courses in med school is that you'll never get along with everyone! When you gather 50 or a hundred women together there will be many with personality disorders or poor upbringings. You can't bond with everyone, but you can show them respect. In general, I think most chapters do a good job of balancing the need to preserve a good campus/national or international reputation with accomodating members whose values may be slightly different. But, I'm sure anyone can think of at least one action that would be contrary to everything their ritual teaches that would warrant discipline.

[susan314]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

participating in a wet t-shirt contest with your letters would seem to warrant a talking to by the standards committee. (I have personal knowledge of the wet t-shirt incident - and the member had trouble understanding what the problem was - "But I won!" she said !!!)

You have got to be kidding me. How could she not realize that doing that in her letters would be a huge problem?

After a group of sisters went to Florida for Spring Break one year, I recall hearing very vague details about an "incident," but the 2 women involved were mortified and everyone was completely discreet about the whole thing. Although some of us heard very generally about the fact that there was an "incident," no one was told specific details. (Not even me - who was very close to both women, both were my roommates at one point or another and also from my pledge class.) Apparently, as the story goes, they were running very low on money and ended up entering a wet t-shirt contest - they assumed that no one there would ever see them again. They won the contest...and then saw that 3 guys from a fraternity at our campus who we did a lot with were right there in the audience. The gory details were never released, but supposedly they had to get pretty wild to win and were horrified to find out that fraternity guys from our campus who recognized them were there - these 2 women were typically very reserved and conservative while at school and under normal circumstances. The situation was never brought up before a standards committee, because it never became common knowledge (I only knew b/c one was my roommate), the fraternity men were kind enough to be discreet about it when they came back to campus (if they did share the story w/their other brothers when they came back, they at least all had the decency not to discuss it openly or spread the story around campus), and the sisters were genuinely upset that someone they knew from our campus was there.

Now, if they had participated in a wet t-shirt contest near our campus, while wearing our letters, and didn't care who saw them or how it would reflect upon our chapter...heads would have rolled!

[33girl]

Originally Posted by susan314

After a group of sisters went to Florida for Spring Break one year, I recall hearing very vague details about an "incident," but the 2 women involved were mortified and everyone was completely discreet about the whole thing.

People going buck wild on spring break thinking they won't get busted crack me up. Hello mensa, if you book the trip through your school, don't you think someone else (or a lot of someone elses) from your school might be there too?

[susan314]

Originally Posted by 33girl

People going buck wild on spring break thinking they won't get busted crack me up. Hello mensa, if you book the trip through your school, don't you think someone else (or a lot of someone elses) from your school might be there too?

lol...I know. I think they thought they were safe, because they deliberately tried to plan a trip at a different destination from where most people on our campus were going that year. And they hadn't happened to bump into anyone they had recognized during the early part of their trip. (The wet t-shirt contest happened later in the trip, when they were running out of money.)

You have to give the guys of Theta Delta Chi some credit though - they could have come back and gossiped about it with their brothers (I'm sure they may have shared some details, but it never became a well known story), or they could have come back and tried to spread the gossip around our chapter. But they did a good job helping to keep it fairly discreet. I do think they occasionally joked to them about having "blackmail material," but it was all in good fun and not a real threat.