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Why CAN'T it be based on your campus? Writers write better when they're really familiar with the subject matter.
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Good question. In a lot of ways, the campus will be quite similar to mine, because that's what I know. I'm not someone from (for instance) a small New England liberal arts college setting my book in the SEC. But, in a lot of ways my own college was very...different, and I don't think a lot of it would translate into a more "normal" college/sorority experience. Furthermore, I don't want the college in the book to be correlated with my own school, and I particularly don't want people thinking "I bet XYZ sorority in the book are ABC at [college]." For the same reason people on GC don't reveal their college or code on recruitment stories, I don't want my novel to be obviously about [college]. I am explicitly making up a University and sororities, and with that comes some traditions that I never experienced (for instance our Homecoming Weekend is NOTHING like any other I've ever heard or read about, and we have several traditions--that very much shaped the way we recruited and socialized, that are completely unique to the school. I'd probably need to replace these events with something more "traditional" like Greek Week). Am I over explaining?
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Maybe it's just me but I don't think these 2 sentences mesh well together.
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Valid concern, and one I've put a lot of thought into. If anything causes me to scrap the book and start over, it'll probably be this. Right now, the plan is that the first "suspect"--the one the police never give up on, and what causes our heroine to start investigating on her own--is the sorority. The death is assumed to be hazing related, and the sorority is on the verge of getting shut down. Other suspects will be the rival sorority, "bitter" girl who didn't get a bid (or possibly dropped during pledging), etc., but in fact the villain is someone outside the system with their own agenda. I do think it could be problematic, but hopefully I can handle it with finesse and take a hard look at how people inside and outside the system see each other.
Sorry about the huge wall of text. All of these questions/concerns are definitely valid and are helping me think through the book's concept and execution, so thank you.
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