You would be surprised at how much shit I get from some of my closest friends about being in a sorority…actually, you probably wouldn’t. With all the portrayals we see in the media — “The House Bunny”, “Legally Blonde”, “Greek” — it’s no wonder we get such a bad rep. In reality, though, there is more to sorority life than drinking, having rampant sex with fraternity brothers and being ditsy empty-headed dolls. The hardest part of convincing people of that is when recruitment comes along, and all the Potential New Members (PNMs) and their families know about Greek life is what they have seen on TV, in a movie, or what they have heard from their friends at huge state schools.
If I only had a nickel for every time I have to tell someone: “At Oglethorpe, things are different.”
This past Friday was the second of two summer orientation events at Oglethorpe that we call Passport. The incoming freshmen come to campus, have tours, meet others from their class, ask questions, register for classes…all that fun stuff. As newspaper editor and an admissions volunteer, I was there walking around, meeting people and generally trying to give these scared new students a friendly face they would know in the fall. With no letters on, it had not even occurred to me that there there were people from other sororities scoping out the new class, and trying to make a good first impression for their sorority. From what I saw, however, they were doing a pretty bad job of it.
Personally, I wasn’t there for Greek stuff, so it was out of my mind. Yeah, I ran up and hugged my sisters whom I hadn’t seen all summer. I commented on peoples’ cute summer haircuts and those upper class-men I spent the most time with during the day, just so happen to also e my sisters. It didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary until a few of the incoming freshmen I had been sitting with at lunch asked me if the all the sororities here were as bitchy and judgmental as the ones on TV.
“Of course not,” I replied. “At Oglethorpe, things work a little bit differently.” That was when they pointed out to me a group of members of a certain campus sorority standing around together in a corner of the room pointing and talking about PNMs rather than mingling and meeting them. As they pranced round from one activity to another, doing the exact same thing, while all in T-shirts with their letters embroidered on the fronts, I was a little embarrassed. That feeling of humiliation, however, wore off when I realized that their behavior was just them being honestly who they were. And that meant that no matter how uncool, or dorky, or ugly people might think members of my sorority are, we still have one PR advantage that the others don’t—we care about people.
We are sisters in the best sense of the word. Yes, we may fight and argue sometimes, but who doesn’t. We are always there when someone needs us. We will do anything in our power to help a sister out. We do other activities besides our sorority, and therefore can go about what we would normally do without the forced conformity of walking around in a pack, wearing the same outfit and refusing to speak to anyone else. We are people first, and Sigmas second.
We are as diverse as any group on campus could be. We have singers, dancers, actresses, politicians, artists, travelers, aspiring-doctors, athletes, blacks, whites, asians, gays, bisexuals, heterosexuals…the list goes on and on. We are one of the only sororities in the country with official policies allowing transsexual women to join and for sisters to openly date each other. We accept each other, not by wanting to change each other, but by truly loving and caring for one another.
We all have our ups and downs in relationships of any kind, but sitting in the gym with those four new members of our community made me realize that I am a part of a culture that I am proud to say is not as bitchy and judgmental as you see on TV or in the movies.
So, when it comes to recruitment, or just talking to an old friend from high school about being a Sigma, I can honestly say, “Things are a little different here at Oglethorpe.” At least as far as Tri-Sigma is concerned.
