Pledged (13 page)

“As much of a reputation as I have among the sororities, a big part of me wishes I didn’t have it, because it bites me in the butt,” Taylor said. “I wanted to go with you because you’re a cool person. You’re intelligent, attractive, funny, athletic, and I’m interested in you. So I thought we’d have a good time.”

“Okay,” Caitlin replied—but she had one more thing she wanted to get off her chest. “Look, the next person I get involved with, he’s going to have to work really hard because I’m not going to settle. I’m going to be swept away.”

“Check please!” Taylor said. “Just kidding. Maybe we’ll pursue something more, but we’ll see.” Caitlin felt better. After that conversation, there would be no way Taylor could possibly accuse her of leading him on.

On the bus to the bar, Amy and Jake happened to sit in front of Spencer and his date, a Beta Pi. Because the seats were staggered, whenever Amy wanted to turn around to talk to Caitlin, she had to look right past Spencer. As she was chatting with Caitlin, Amy saw Spencer’s date pull Spencer toward her and pucker her lips. Spencer didn’t kiss her. Amy turned around and shared some of her Alpha Rho thermos full of vodka with Jake.

“You’re going to outdrink me tonight, aren’t you?” Jake said, giving her a sympathetic look. Amy glanced at Spencer, who was still squirming out of his date’s grasp. Spencer caught her eye but didn’t change his expression.

Amy turned back around. “You know it.” Then she lit up. “I don’t want to deal with any more guy stress. Will you go with me to next week’s Alpha Rho Date Party?” When Jake agreed, Amy was relieved. One less date to line up.

Caitlin and Amy started off the night with Kamikaze shots before Amy and Jake started freaking on the dance floor (“freaking” is the 2000s version of dirty dancing, but with more graphic sex simulation). Every time an “ass song” played, Amy playfully backed up into the brothers, who affectionately referred to her behind as “ghetto booty.” Taylor and Caitlin, who by now had joined Amy on the dance floor, started a pool to guess how long it would take for Amy’s breasts to pop out of her shirt.

Caitlin had loosened up and was having a good time with Taylor. She let him put his arm around her and even took his hand as they walked around, although she took it partly for balance. When they danced closely, slow dancing in the middle of a crowd of people bopping to a techno song, she purposely turned her head so he couldn’t try to kiss her, but he didn’t object. After a while, she gravitated toward Amy, who was upset about Spencer. They spent the rest of the night making fun of Spencer’s date, who was putting on her best eye-batting, lip-plumping “I want you” look and hanging all over Spencer, who seemed embarrassed.

On the bus ride home, Amy and Jake ended up sitting across from Spencer and his date. Amy watched her try to pull Spencer into an embrace, attempting the same seductive look she’d been giving him all night—and smiled as Spencer fell asleep. Amy sighed, wondering what it was about her that was so horrible that she drove straight guys away. The bus was quiet, with couples either making out or sleeping. “Hey Amy, you still alive?” a drunken Caitlin yelled from somewhere in the back of the bus. Amy giggled as brothers shushed Caitlin.

About three seconds after Amy removed her away message that night, Nathan, the irrepressible date rapist, IMed her. “I thought you were going home with Jake!”

“Now why would you think that?”

“Because you guys were really working it on the dance floor.”

Amy, feeling the half-dozen mixed drinks and beers she’d consumed at the party, laughed so hard she fell off her chair.

“I danced with most of the MuNu guys tonight.”

“How come you didn’t dance with me?”

“Because they came up to me and just started dancing.”

“I can’t believe I missed my chance! If I wasn’t so tired, I’d come over now.”

Amy raised an eyebrow and decided to tease him.

“Well, if you’re not going to come over and play, then I’m going to sleep.”

“Wait, you’d actually let me come over?”

“Good night, Nathan.” Amy put up her bedtime away message.

Nathan was still typing. “Wait! Come back! Wait!”

The next morning, another MuNu brother asked Amy what
was going on with her and Jake. Amy called Jake, laughing, to tell him. “Everyone thinks something happened between us last night!”

“What the hell? Can’t we just be friends?”

Amy updated him on the evening.

“Oooh, I can’t believe Nathan thinks he can get with you again.”

“I’m done with Spencer.”

“You should be,” Jake said.

“Sweetie, if he starts dating this girl, I’m going to stop talking to him. He told me he wasn’t ready for a relationship.”

“You’re right.”

“And I’m so much cuter!” Amy said, but wondered.

“I know!”

Juggling

BETWEEN MEETINGS AND ACTIVITIES, FUND-RAISING AND
date-finding, sorority membership can be as much of a commitment as a part-time job. Even attending a party can require more time than a girl might be willing to spend. At many schools, when a sorority rents out a bar or club and a bus to get there, every sister who attends must remain at the party for its entire duration, usually from about 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Sabrina often bowed out of these mixers, which occurred on weeknights because the sorority couldn’t afford the weekend rental rates. Sabrina couldn’t rationalize partying for five hours on a weeknight when she had so much work to do—in addition to her waitressing job and a search for a summer internship.

What saddened her about missing not only these activities but also frequent casual outings with the sisters was that every night she couldn’t afford to spend with her sisters added to the distance between them. “That’s when people bond the most—through their experiences. Going out builds a sisterhood,” Sabrina told me. “If I had been able to go out more, I definitely think I’d be more comfortable with more people in my house.”

Because she was so busy—and was content with her few close friends in the house—Sabrina wasn’t terribly upset that she had to miss some Alpha Rho events. It was her choice. In order to be allowed into an Alpha Rho social function, sisters had to accumulate “merit points” by attending at least 70 percent of Alpha Rho activities. (Many sororities use this merit or “loyalty” points system.) Sabrina was careful to go to as many of the shorter events as possible. “Speaker Events,” which the State U Greek system held every few weeks, featured educational speakers who lectured for about forty-five minutes on topics such as drunk driving and eating disorders. Sabrina considered those to be easy points.

But it infuriated Sabrina when she learned that one of her sisters was prohibited from attending Alpha Rho’s Date Party because, like Sabrina, she had to work a part-time job to pay her dues. “She’s here in the house because she wants to be here, but she can’t stay in the house if she can’t pay her dues,” Sabrina fumed to me soon after she heard that her sister didn’t make the 70 percent cutoff. “To pay her dues, she has to work, like me. A lot of the executive board members don’t accept that not everyone is Daddy’s little girl and can have their parents pay for everything.” Sabrina despised the sorority Catch-22, which applied only to the less privileged sisters: if a sister had to miss events in order to work to pay her dues, then she wasn’t allowed to go to social functions, which were a main reason to pay the dues in the first place.

Over the course of hundreds of interviews, I heard several stories about sisters who missed important events because they either were told to or believed they had to attend sorority functions instead. Brooke, the Texan redhead, missed her sister’s debutante ball to go to an Eta Gamma philanthropy function that she had signed up for to fulfill her philanthropy requirement. She told me she could have asked the president for permission to skip the event, but because she was only a sophomore and wanted to be, as she put it, “the perfect little EtaGam,” she attended the philanthropy event without complaint. During initiation activities at Brooke’s house, sisters were told outright that they could not miss sorority functions for any reason whatsoever. A sister at another sorority canceled a meeting with a sorority adviser on her birthday because she wanted to spend the day with her family. The adviser, who had missed her five-year wedding anniversary to attend a sorority meeting, responded, “Birthdays come and go; where do your sisters stand in all of this? I think you have your priorities out of order.”

Several girls complained about the enormous time commitment of sorority life and its often seemingly contradictory expectations. Sororities expect their sisters to prioritize their sorority membership above other aspects of their lives. This leads many sisters to wonder how they are supposed to be able to afford acceptable sorority attire or tickets to Greek events when to do so means having to work at a job that will take their time away from the sorority. They are also supposed to maintain the sorority’s minimum grade point average even as they must spend so much of their time doing sorority activities rather than studying. Most sororities, including those at State U, have grade requirements, both to get in and to stay in. The minimum GPA usually ranges from 2.0 to 3.2 on a 4.0 scale.

At the end of the East Coast sorority’s executive board meeting I attended, the president reminded the girls that they had to bring their schedules and transcripts to the upcoming chapter meeting. This is a common sorority practice and one that illustrates how membership requires a tremendous sacrifice of privacy. Sisters’ grades are constantly monitored by the sorority and/or by the school’s Panhellenic Council, which often receives transcripts from the administration and distributes them to each sorority house adviser. (Rush candidates must sign a waiver that allows the administration to release their grades to these groups.) For the freshmen, this standard is based entirely on their first semester or high school grades, both of which can be marginal. When Brooke was a sophomore, one of her best friends rushed Eta Gamma. Brooke broke a rush rule by calling her friend to inquire about her GPA, which was a 2.6. Brooke then had to explain to her friend that she would automatically be cut, and there was nothing Brooke could do to change the rules.

At most sororities, if a sister’s GPA drops below the requirement, she is put on “academic probation,” which means she has to attend mandatory study hall sessions monitored by sisters throughout the semester, as well as, in some cases, to log every hour she spends studying. While sisters are taught that the sorority is their first priority, they also must figure out a way to reconcile that time crunch with the emphasis on grades. For this reason, I was told, many sororities give their members a little extra help. Scores of houses across the country expect each sister to contribute to their files the papers and exams they write for every class they take. As a result, the sororities have thorough “class files” for the exclusive use of their sisters. The files in Brooke’s house weren’t extensive, but the sisters were often able to persuade their boyfriends to bring them tests and papers from their fraternity’s files. “We always did much better on tests when we had access to the files,” Brooke said.

Laney, a former president of Alpha Sigma Alpha at a Nevada school, told me that her house has files that go back for years. “There was a fifty-fifty chance that you could find in those files exactly what you were looking for. It helped a lot, especially when one term my GPA was a 0.19,” she said. “Every sorority had them, and we never got caught. I never had the guts to take a paper. But I did use some tests.” Class files, a Greek system tradition, are often viewed as a deserved perk of sorority membership. “Test files are a part of the benefits of being Greek,” a Kappa Kappa Gamma at Texas Christian University has said. “After all, we pay to be Greek.”

NOVEMBER

Instead of being an undesirable thing as many pessimists would have us believe, the clique, as established by the sorority, is a most salutary arrangement for grouping college girls into congenial coteries. Promiscuous friendships, though democratic, are dangerous.

—The Sorority Handbook, 1907

What Sororities Girls Do in Their Spare Time: Watch soap operas, Go to happy hour . . . Go to the library to see people (not to study) . . . Shop for clothes, Bake their boyfriends cookies, Make presents for their big or lil sisters, Paint their nails.

    What They Don’t Do: Watch the news—it’s too depressing and boring, Read the newspaper—for the same reason . . . Do extra-credit projects, Do laundry—it goes to the cleaners.

—Rush: A Girl’s Guide to Sorority Success, 1985

NOVEMBER 1

CAITLIN’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

I think I’m old enough to know what I’m doing, thank you.

A FEW NIGHTS AFTER
Mu Zeta Nu’s Date Party, Taylor IMed Caitlin. “What are you doing this weekend?”

“Chapter meeting and working out,” she wrote back.

“Sounds like you’re pretty busy.”

“I tend to overcommit myself.”

“Maybe we could go to dinner or a movie,” Taylor offered.

Caitlin was taken aback. Two or three minutes went by. “Amy,” she yelled, “what do I say?”

Before Amy reached Caitlin’s room, Taylor wrote back. “Okay, well, I’m going to the gym. You can call me later.” He logged off.

As much as she liked him, Caitlin didn’t want Taylor to keep asking her out, not when she was growing increasingly certain that she and Chris were meant to be together. Chris continued to sleep in Caitlin’s room and talked about spending Thanksgiving break with her family, though he still insisted they weren’t an item. Caitlin expected he would come around eventually, which was why she still agreed to have sex with him. That afternoon Chris even admitted to her that he wished they had never broken up.

“That sounds like a regret, and you pride yourself on not having regrets,” she said.

“This is an exception,” he said. Caitlin raised an eyebrow.

“No, seriously,” he added. “I regret kissing those other girls, but I also needed to kiss them to realize how important you are to me.”

Caitlin didn’t accept that excuse, but she let it go. Instead, because it seemed as good a time as any to bring it up, she told him she didn’t think it was appropriate to be having sex at this stage of their nonrelationship. “I know you’re not using me for sex, but I feel like you expect things to happen,” she said.

Chris scowled. “But I express things through the way I treat you physically.”

“I’m not trying to force you to make a decision,” Caitlin spoke cautiously, “but we’re acting like we’re together and we’re not, and while I’m waiting we can’t be this serious.”

“But I like the way everything’s going. Everything has to be running on all cylinders for us to get back together,” Chris said.

“If you love me,” Caitlin told him, “you need to show me through other ways. It’s not fair to me because I’m getting more involved in this again.”

“But sex is still more than just sex with you,” Chris insisted. “It’s not just a hookup.” Before long, they were yelling fiercely at each other the way they used to.

When their argument died down, Caitlin lay on top of Chris. “I hate it when we fight,” she said.

“I was out of line and I’m really sorry,” he said.

Caitlin was pleasantly surprised that Chris really did seem to be coming around. “Whoa, you never would have said that before,” she said. “You never would have admitted you were wrong.”

“Can we just act like we’re together?” Chris asked, drawing Caitlin closer with a tug on her ponytail.

“Act like it or be together?”

“Can we act like it and I’ll get back to you?” Chris asked. Caitlin decided this was his way of saying he wanted to ease back into the relationship.

“I want to be with you,” he said, “but I just need some time.”

Even though it wasn’t her designated time to call, Caitlin left a message on her mother’s cell phone to tell her that she and Chris were getting back together. She hoped that the news would put a halt to her mother’s constant threats of withholding tuition money unless Caitlin transferred to a New York school.

A few nights later, Chris and Caitlin were fooling around in Caitlin’s room when Taylor called and asked her to come downstairs. Chris went downstairs and left the house first, pretending he didn’t know Caitlin. Caitlin came down a few minutes later. When she let Taylor into the entry hall, Chris stood outside a window.

Taylor handed Caitlin a bouquet of tulips, the Alpha Rho flower. “This is to thank you for a really great time at my Date Party. I didn’t want to bring you roses because I didn’t know how you’d react.”

Caitlin blushed through her freckles.

“Regardless of what happens, I thought you should have this because you deserve it,” said Taylor.

Caitlin explained that she and Chris were possibly back together. “I don’t deserve this,” she said.

“Caitlin, you deserve a really great guy and someone who will treat you right, whether it’s me or someone else,” Taylor said. “I just hope you don’t end up with an asshole. I want you to know you’re worth it.”

Caitlin blinked hard. She couldn’t remember the last time a guy had said such nice things to her. She didn’t know what to say. “In another time and place I’d definitely want to date you,” she tried. During the conversation, she hugged Taylor several times.

Chris stood outside the window, watching intently.

After Taylor left, Chris came back up to Caitlin’s room. “Who wants a tulip?” he said disgustedly to the sisters who were around.

“Cut it out,” Caitlin warned.

“I’m a wickit dirty Yankee out to capsha yah haht,” Chris poorly mimicked Taylor’s Boston accent.

“Hey, I really don’t appreciate that,” Caitlin said. “You aren’t being sensitive at all that it was a bad situation for me.”

“Why is this hard for
you
?” Chris sneered.

“Because here’s a guy going out of his way to do nice things for me and I’m with a guy who can’t even decide if he loves me or not.”

“Fine, don’t be with me then, if you think you’re getting shortchanged.”

Caitlin clenched her jaw. “I want the fairy tale! I want someone who makes sure that I know I’m an important part of his life.” For a moment, Caitlin considered ending the relationship for good. “Look, I’m not trying to force you to make a decision to be with me or not. This just makes me realize I want something more.”

Later, Caitlin told a few sisters that she had gotten angry with him and picked a fight on purpose because he wasn’t getting enough hints about their relationship. “We fight passionately and we love passionately,” Caitlin told them. “That’s just how we are.”

Caitlin knew her sisters didn’t approve of the way she was letting Chris back into her life. She saw them give Chris what she considered to be evil looks when they thought she wasn’t watching. Even Amy, who had known Chris back when he was “sweet as pie” in the beginning of the relationship, wasn’t supportive enough for Caitlin’s tastes. When Caitlin told Amy she wanted to take Chris to Alpha Rho’s Date Party, Amy looked startled.

“What,” Caitlin said expectantly.

“I just . . . am a bit surprised,” Amy said. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Amy’s brow furrowed. “I’m not delighted about your giving him a second chance, but I’ll support you, whatever you decide, as your friend.”

“Don’t worry, if he hurts me again, I won’t cry to you,” Caitlin said.

“No, sweetie, I’m saying you
can
come to me—I’m your friend no matter what. I just don’t think he’s worth your time. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Look, I know you don’t always agree with what I do, but as my friend you’re supposed to support me.”

“I can do that.”

But the next day, when Chris came into their suite, Caitlin heard Amy mutter to another sister, “Why is
he
here?”

Chris heard it, too. “You should tell her it’s none of her business instead of creeping into a corner and letting her scold you,” he said.

Caitlin was well aware that Chris loathed the way her sisters had gotten involved when he broke up with Caitlin in August. He accused her of paying for her friends—friends whom he suspected wouldn’t support her if she got into some sort of trouble. In one sense Caitlin agreed with Chris that their issues weren’t her sisters’ concern. But her sisters had also been there to support her, whether or not she asked for their help. Besides, Caitlin thought, it was true that when Caitlin and Chris were together, they often picked on each other. These fights were the part of the relationship that her sisters saw most frequently; they didn’t grasp that beyond the belligerence, which Caitlin merely attributed to opposite backgrounds, Chris could be a caring boyfriend. He was the kind of person who constantly made small, loving gestures, like slipping her love notes for no reason or surprising her with tickets to athletic events. He was the only person who went to every one of her lacrosse games. When Caitlin was feeling depressed in the aftermath of the rape, Chris once showed up at her door with a puppy he had borrowed from a friend to cheer her up. She had no doubt he loved her. Nevertheless, Caitlin was careful not to invest too much in the relationship this time around. She would protect herself this time, she was sure. She just wished her sisters would trust that she knew what she was doing.

Saving Privacy

NOVEMBER 2

VICKI’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

absolutely miserable

BY NOVEMBER, VICKI HAD BEGUN TO DISTINGUISH WHICH
girls she c
ould be comfortable with and which girls she was better off avoiding; the problem was that one of the girls she was learning to dodge happened to be one of her roommates. She was still too shy, however, to wander into the television room to catch up with the sisters who lounged there. When she walked into the Beta Pi dining room, Vicki wouldn’t sit with the older girls, who continued to intimidate her, but she was secure enough to eat alone rather than do what seemed like the loser takeout—scurrying away to her room with her food. The more Vicki went out to bars and parties with her sisters, the more her confidence within the group grew. In settings outside the house, the sisters seemed to feel more protective of each other—it was sorority versus sorority, us versus them, rather than the sisters against sisters controversies and cliques that often split the house. At Louie’s, the Greeks’ bar of choice, each sorority usually gathered in a different corner, where they eyed and gossiped about the other sororities across the room. Even though the comments were usually catty, those nights were the times when Vicki most felt like she belonged in Beta Pi, as if she were on a par with her sisters. Not to mention that the girls tended to be much friendlier to each other when they were drunk.

There were six juniors in particular whom Vicki had learned to steer clear of. The six rarely deigned to talk to the sophomores. Only when the seniors were watching did the juniors suddenly ooze kindness and cordiality to younger sisters. Once in a campus quad, Olivia had run into one of these juniors, who stopped to chat with her for fifteen minutes. But the next day, when Olivia and Vicki saw her in the kitchen, the girl didn’t say a word to them. Vicki’s strategy was simply to be as “sweet and cute” as possible to the juniors who openly snubbed her pledge class, so that even if they didn’t like her, at least they wouldn’t drastically turn against her and spark a new house drama.

For Vicki, the patterns of tension had flip-flopped since the beginning of the year. Now Vicki dreaded returning to her room in the house, while before it had been the closest thing she had to a sanctuary. She had started to notice that Laura-Ann, a legacy, was acting strangely (a legacy is a daughter, granddaughter, or sister of a sorority member). Laura-Ann constantly talked about how pretty the older sisters were. She had been telling the older sisters that she was a twin—but she wasn’t. She had even managed to convince half the house that she had diabetes—but she didn’t. And she was constantly snapping at her sisters. One night in the bathroom, Laura-Ann was rubbing lotion on her legs, and Vicki said sweetly, “Laura-Ann, that smells really good.” Laura-Ann turned and gave her a nasty look, shook her red curls, and continued to rub in silence. Five minutes later, Laura-Ann huffed, “Thanks,” as if she were furious at Vicki. Vicki couldn’t understand her roommate’s mood swings, which came without warning or apology. When Olivia was in a bad mood, by contrast, she would inform her sisters loudly, “I’m in a bad mood today, so if I’m bitchy, I’m sorry and I warned you.”

The next night, when Vicki went to take a shower, she couldn’t find her new bath towel. About half the sisters in the house—including Vicki, Olivia, and Morgan—had ordered extra-long, extra-fluffy, luxurious designer bath towels with the Beta Pi monogram. On warm days, the girls planned to take them out to the hill behind their house to sunbathe. But Vicki’s was no longer hanging on the hook in her closet where she had left it.

“Um, this is so weird,” Vicki whispered to Olivia and Morgan, who were giving each other French manicures on Morgan’s bed. “My towel is gone.”

The girls immediately glanced at Laura-Ann’s empty bed. She had gone home for the weekend.

“What if Laura-Ann took my towel?”

“Oh my God,” Olivia said, “she did say she was taking her towel home with her this weekend. She said she wanted to get it monogrammed at a less expensive store.”

The next night, when Laura-Ann was back and all the girls were in bed, Vicki asked no one in particular, “Did something happen to my Beta Pi towel? Because, I mean, I can’t find mine?”

“Geez, why would you think that?” Laura-Ann immediately sniped. Vicki didn’t have a tactful answer, so she didn’t say anything further.

Not long afterward, Olivia and Vicki decided to try to switch to a double room for the spring semester. There were simply too many girls around. When one roommate was trying to nap, everyone else had to be quiet. When one wanted to be alone with a guy, she had to go to his place. And there was no way to get any studying done in that room. Vicki ached for a place of privacy, beyond the prying sisters who asked her things she didn’t want to tell anybody about besides Olivia. To be part of a sorority, Vicki was learning, meant that sisters were constantly in her business. On the occasions when she managed to muster the courage to venture downstairs to the television room, she would get annoyed by the immediate inundation of inquiries from girls who asked her questions not because they cared but because they just wanted to know. She would be sitting in the den talking to a friend when a herd of sisters would rumble in, bellowing things like “Who are you talking about? Who, who, who?” “Is this about William?” “Does he know about Dan?” “Oh, are you still seeing Dan?” All Vicki wanted to tell them was “Shut up and go away,” but she couldn’t openly snub sisters like that, just as she couldn’t say anything rude to the strange sister who seemed to live in the television room, where she would wait on the periphery for sisters to start conversing and then quietly repeat everything they said.