newbie

[mello_yello_16]

Hi, my name is Leslie, and I have been lurking on the boards for about a week...I've learned a good bit from what I've read so far, and I wanted to ask for some advice.
I will going to a small southern school in the fall and would love to go through Rush, but my mother is the everyday sterotype, and is set against it. I will be the first of my family to ever go to college. I have a very good friend who is in a sorority at the school I will be attending, which is what got me interested in Greek life in the first place.
I know that there are many other threads on this exact same subject, but that I would like people's input on my mother's objections, all in one handy little thread. So I can pull it up when she wants to argue with me about joining. Her objections start with money, that by joining a sorority that I will be paying for friends and she don't understand what the montly dues go for. Second, being what are the benefits that you will be getting back from it. And lastly, she thinks all they do is go out get drunk 24/7, are nothing but sluts, and the only kind of girls that join a sorority are idiots. She wants me to give her a concrete REASON why I want to go through.
I am going to attend the sorority tea for incoming freshmen on Sunday, which is where incoming freshmen and their mothers are invited to get to know more about the sororites before its time to go through Rush. My mother says that if they don't give some concrete answers, that she won't help me to rush. I don't know exactly how much concrete information they'll be allowed to give out about finances and stuff, since they're supposed to hide their affiliations and can't very well say, "well, in MY sorority, we do THIS." I'd like for some ways to defend against her totally vehement objections...I even directed her to a couple of the sororites' National websites for the parents and she said it was a load of crap.
I would appreciate anyone's input, because with what you all can tell me, and what I should get out of the Panhellenic tea Sunday, I hope to get enough information to convince even the most hardcore skeptic, aka, my mother. Thanks!