Duke University Sorority Article

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[QUOTE=Janerz222;1539242]
For a long time, I have sensed that many of our NPC chapters at prestigious universities consider themselves above our inter/national organizations, and therefore they ignore/do not fully participate in what the larger organization offers. There's a bit of embarrassment at being a sorority member. So to assuage that and to make themselves feel more justified that they haven't sold out, they convince themselves that "it's different at Duke/Princeton/Stanford". (Note, I'm not throwing stones at glass houses--this most certainly applies to my alma mater/college chapter and to myself to some extent during my own college days.)

Knowing a bit about this situation at the local level, I can say you are very right.

[bejazd]

Ms. McLaughlin's editorial just brings up so many interesting issues...thanks for sharing it, DukeDG! Two things that really stand out to me are expectations and a lack of understanding, on both sides.
But she did get an audience with her National President...how many collegians get a chance to sit and chat issues? not many. Still, neither seemed able to clearly articulate their ideas to the other and these ideas are important.

Now, what I'd like to see is Ms. McLaughlin gettting an invite to go spend a week at her National Headquarters shadowing the volunteers there, and then hitting the road for a few weeks with a traveling consultant, hopefully visiting chapters that are very different from Duke...and writing a story on that experience! It's so diificult to gain perspective beyond your own campus, and even your own region of the country, and see what an organization that has 125-150 or more "independent but affiliated" entities really is! That would make for some interesting reading!

[Munchkin03]

I found the Rolling Stone article hilarious as all get-out.

RE: chapters at prestigious schools looking down at their HQs, it's absolutely true. A lot of it, at least in the case of the two chapters I'm familiar with, is that our housing and academic requirements were much less stringent than the sorority's requirements, which we found to be a bit of a joke. Plus, there's a belief that an HQ will NEVER get rid of an Ivy/Stanford/MIT/Northwestern chapter; the members then pretty much do whatever they want. That's changing, but the pervasive attitude remains.