My senior year of college, I created a bit of drama with an opinion I wrote for my college newspaper. It stated both opinions and facts explaining how our university’s homecoming king and queen elections were little more than a popularity contest for Greek life, the rest of the student population did not care, and more productive things could be done with the time and money that was spent promoting the elections. The article was posted both in print and online, and received more comments than anything else that year. As a section editor, my editor-in-chief and co-workers supported me as it blew up on our website and social media, with more than a couple of commenters attacking me as a person, and not a journalist. I’m not sure why it took me by surprise since it wasn’t the first time I had been mentally and emotionally attacked by groups who stand behind “sisterhood” and other cliché terms associated with the supposed benefits of going Greek.
I transferred to the second-largest university in the state as a sophomore. I completed my first year of college at a private, liberal arts school in my hometown. My freshman class helped create the largest population in the college’s history at just over 1,000 students. I started there because I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t proud or excited, but I had nothing pulling me to go anywhere else. My best friend was going there. My boyfriend at the time went there. I had intentions of transferring when I began, I was just confused and unsure of what that next step would be.
This first college was just like high school. There were only a few reasons to go there. One was for kids like me, who were from the area and it was the most convenient, others never wanted to leave their hometown, and the rest were athletes that came there on full rides.
Obviously, I already knew every other student there who was also from my hometown of 13,000 people. Yet I yearned to make more friends and make the most of my time there. More importantly, I was an 18-year-old girl who just wanted to feel important. A friend of a friend was in one of the two sororities on campus. That and the one fraternity made up our Greek life. The sorority I joined was not nationally recognized. It lost its charter several years before I got there. I don’t remember what the reason was, and at the time I didn’t care. Learning that it was an unaffiliated sorority was a bonus for me because that meant it was cheaper. I paid $150 my pledge semester versus friends at large university paying upwards of $1,000. So, whatever. I had a job, so $150 was a minimal risk for a chance to have something to be involved in on campus, and meet some people that I otherwise probably would never have spoken to. I never was the sorority type, but I thought that was kind of the point. The girls that were in it that I also went to high school with were girls that I had just never gotten to know. I never had a reason to not be friends with them. I had nothing against them. Who was to say we couldn’t be friends now? College was different. I had everything in front of me. And I was desperately looking for anything that helped me get to know myself better.
The first semester was harmless enough. It consisted of meetings, classes, and small parties. Toward the end of the semester, we went on our sisterhood retreat. We stayed at a cabin in Gatlinburg for the weekend and shopped. The pledges were required to buy our “bigs” presents and put on some kind of silly performance for them. It was all easy and in good fun.
The end of the semester was almost here, drama-free.
Not long after the sisterhood retreat was initiation – the event where pledges become active members. Beforehand, we were tested over everything we had learned in our classes over the semester. We were eventually given more information about initiation. It was very secretive, but we knew it was to be an overnight event. The week before, we were given a list of rules. We were not to speak to anyone in our sorority for a number of days leading up to initiation. We were to arrive at one of the active’s house at a certain time. We were not to wear any makeup whatsoever. We had a list of things to bring, most of which I can’t remember. The one thing I do remember is it saying that we needed to bring black underwear. Um, what did we need that for? (Come to find out later that that was just a “trick” to throw us off.)
The day of initiation was in the dead of winter. It was bitter cold, and the sun had completely set by 5:30. When we got to the designated active’s house we had to change into these ridiculous outfits they picked for us. Most of them were silly tutus and bodysuits with rhinestones on them. They put me in a prairie girl dress because they knew I’d think walking around in a tutu in public was fun, which was annoying. We were also given an egg – just a plain, round egg. We had to hold the egg for the entire night. This egg represented our “sisters” and how we must take care of them. Again, kind of dumb and annoying but I’m still game. Then we were off to the closest city that boasted real civilization, or at least had a Chili’s. I missed the memo about having to actually physically hold the egg the entire time versus just protecting it, so I got mine taken away at the beginning of dinner when I made it a little chair of napkins on the table.
After dinner was when the silly, nonsensical excitement came to an abrupt end. None of the pledges had been allowed to drive, so we got in the car and they took us to an empty parking lot of a shopping center not far from Chili’s. We were instructed to get out in the freezing cold, and stand in a line. The actives’ moods changed drastically. They came around with tissues and wiped our faces to make sure we followed the rule about not wearing makeup. A few of us got yelled at. We were then blindfolded and put back into the cars, and there was a very strict “no talking” rule. I found out later that some of the cars blared incredibly loud and obnoxious music (think Alvin and the Chipmunks), as if our heads weren’t being fucked with enough.
I don’t know how long we drove around. Eventually we arrived at what I found out to be was one of the active’s grandparents’ house. The actives driving got out of the car and we were told to wait. And we kept waiting. I was starting to get fed up with it at this point and how stupid I thought the whole thing was. I was cold and tired from a hectic week of school and work. This night already had not been what I signed up for, but I just figured I’d make it through whatever bullshit they had planned and go from there. Eventually they came and got me and took my blindfold off. I was led to a barn where all the actives were standing around a fire pit in WHITE CLOAKS WTF. I had to sit down next to another pledge, and they drilled us with a bunch of questions, demanding answers in unusually authoritative tones. We had to light a match and recite the Greek alphabet before it burned out/to our fingers. When I got a question wrong or couldn’t say the alphabet fast enough, they demanded to know why the other girl had just did it and I couldn’t. I got more shit for letting go of my damn egg. I was accused of not caring enough, and it was hinted at that my actions could deem me unworthy to be a member of this sorority. I sat there, in the dark, in the cold, in a barn in the middle of nowhere while 15-20 of these girls I had spent a semester trying to get to know and impress humiliated me and berated me for not knowing the answers to a few questions. They told us only one of us would be initiated and led us back to separate cars, again, blindfolding us.
I was officially over it all. I was humiliated, frustrated and mad from spending my own money on pledge fees and gifts, and now they were just going to toss me aside. None of it had meant anything. I had just started to feel like I knew a few select girls in the group; the annoyingly high walls that stand between female friendships were coming down. And now this. I had never been treated this way before. I have sisters, actual blood sisters, and this paled to any fight we might have ever had. Humiliation and emotional abuse in the name of creating a stronger bond? This was absurd.
They put me in a car by myself, where I immediately started crying as I often do when I feel an extreme of any emotion. Not long after, another crying girl was put in the car with me. At this point, I recognized this for what it was – hazing. I vowed to turn them in, to say something to the college.
I knew I’d have negative consequences to deal with, but I am not the person to let someone wrong me and forget about it. The other opinion I wrote for my college paper was about a negative experience with the campus clinic, and it resulted in an apology straight from the director. I write reviews and tweet any time a restaurant fails to meet my expectations. Righting things that are wrong is something I do, and this would be no different.
They came and got us out of the cars and led us inside a house, still blinded, but this time we were greeted with warmth instead of more cold humiliation. We stood in a kitchen, completely dark save the candles the actives were holding. They asked us to remove our blindfolds, began talking and guess what? Surprise! We’re all being initiated as active members!
I was shocked.
“What the hell was all of that for then?” I wanted to scream.
But instead, I couldn’t say anything. I feigned excitement like all the other pledges. They then showed us our gifts – sweatshirts, blankets and other paraphernalia that screamed the letters of the sorority that had just made me cry in a dark car, feeling more alone then I had felt in recent memories. On top of the piles of goodies were handwritten letters from every single one of the actives telling me what made me special and why they were glad for me to be a part of their sorority. These physical letters were written by the same women who were moments before cutting an emotional wound that I would carry definitely the rest of the semester, and surprisingly longer than that.
Some of them pretended to apologize.
“Jane! Oh my gosh, you made it so hard!”
“I just wanted to hug you!”
“Jane, I’m so sorry! We had to! I didn’t mean it!”
They had to? I couldn’t grasp it. I couldn’t understand. So I said nothing. I did nothing. I said nothing to my mom, who had rolled her eyes when I mentioned joining a sorority. I said nothing to my boyfriend. I said nothing to my best friend, who intensely disapproved of my involvement. I couldn’t bear the embarrassment of being wrong coupled with the internal, emotional embarrassment these women had inflicted on me. It was too much. Even the other women in my pledge class never mentioned it to me, or I to them. So I still kept quiet. I carried out the next semester as an active member. I went to the meetings, to the parties. I did my duty. But I made little attempt to continue the friendships. I never hung out with my big. I never joined the non-sorority sponsored parties thrown by the other girls.
I still had plenty of my own friends. I have friends who I consider family, and I didn’t have to humiliate myself for their friendship. Friendships are often about sacrifice and pain – I get that. But there is a greater manipulative factor at play here.
What happened that night was hazing. Hazing is illegal. I knew it. Every single active knew it. Every single pledge knew it. And yet, this happened in a town of 13,000 people, where I couldn’t go to Wal-Mart without seeing my mom’s Sunday school teacher, where you can’t sneak out of the house and go to Applebee’s because someone will tell your parents. This happened at a 1,000-student college where you can’t get away with having a boy in your dorm past 9 p.m., and by every Monday morning, the entire campus knew who slept with who or who got arrested Saturday night. But not a single woman ever told. Not a whisper to a friend, or a concerned parent. Every year more than 20, college-educated women never tell of one of the most illegally taboo things to easily happen at that university. And if something like that is kept secret in a small town, who’s to say it’s not still kept secret everywhere? I believe it is. And it is not okay.
These women and this sorority have been taught that emotional abuse makes you further appreciate your relationships. By springing one night of tears and fear on me, it shocked me into keeping quiet. Since none of my sisters questioned it to me, I began to believe that I was just being a baby and blowing things out of proportion. And because they claimed that these rituals strengthened the bond of “sisterhood” and other positive things, I turned my head to the pure and simple wrongness of it.
Besides a few social media friends, I kept no ties with those “sisters” after I transferred to my new university. Friendships born out of manipulation are not true friends. I’m just sorry I had to learn that lesson the hard way.
