Pledged (3 page)

Much of sorority life espouses noble purpose, and the friendships and philanthropy encouraged by these organizations can enhance a girl’s college experience, boost her self-esteem, and better her character. But the prevalence of the aforementioned litany, which still occurs on several campuses nationwide in the name of tradition, speaks volumes about larger issues concerning women, higher education, and female group dynamics. Even halfway into the year, I was plagued by questions. Why are twenty-first-century women still so eager to participate in such seemingly outdated, ritualistic groups and activities? What is the purpose of sororities and what does membership truly require of the sisters? How does a sisterhood change the way a girl thinks about herself? Do sororities cause women to fall further behind in the gender wars or are they instead women’s secret weapon? My challenge, then, in writing
Pledged
, was how to reconcile the unexpected discovery of a dark side to sorority life with the observation that many of the girls who participate in it and continue to join it in droves are “normal” girls, girls who are sweet, smart, successful, and kind both before and after they join. Girls—and this puzzled me—who by year’s end no longer intimidated me. Girls who would be surprised to read how their sororities appear from an outsider’s point of view.

AUGUST

The sorority becomes one of life’s great forces in teaching the beauty of self-sacrifice. Leadership under the spell of this great power must be magnetic. Self-confidence, then, is creative, self-control restrictive, self-sacrifice persuasive.

—The Sorority Handbook
, published in 1907

Manicured nails are of paramount importance for the finished look.

—Ready for Rush: The Must-Have Manual for Sorority Rushees!
published in 1999

AUGUST 17

VICKI’S INSTANT MESSENGER AWAY MESSAGE

missing my california crew. can i come home yet?

ON SORORITY ROW, SORORITY
girls stepped cheerily into their houses, many of them followed by fathers loaded up with boxes or, in the exceptionally good-looking cases, towing beefy undergrad boys just barely able to see over the duffel bags full of clothes and stuffed animals they dutifully hefted. As quickly as the men nailed extra shelves into the bedroom walls, the girls lined them with Michael Kors perfume, Juicy Couture tees, and rows of designer sunglasses. (One sister dissolved into peals of loud laughter because she’d lost the case to her Gucci sunglasses and as a result had stored them in a Calvin Klein case instead.)

At State U, it wasn’t too difficult to distinguish which girls belonged to which of the eighteen houses. Sisters of the largest house on campus were tall and brunette, seemingly all of them slender with dancers’ grace. Members of the most obnoxious sorority were almost uniformly dressed in white tank tops, or as they called them, “wife beaters,” slim black sweatpants, and either white socks and sneakers or black platform flip-flops. The Alpha Rhos, whose girls were known as laid back but also, as some put it, “sexually relaxed,” were slightly more haphazard in tanks, jeans, flip-flops, and bandannas. A few sisters of Beta Pi, Alpha Rho’s biggest rival and a group considered to be princesses, trotted back and forth with their boyfriends across the Row in short shorts, tight tees, and platform shoes.

When the silver Lexus, its gleam wavering in the August humidity, pulled in front of the Beta Pi house, the Beta Pis watched with interest as a deeply bronzed leg cautiously stepped from the back door. Their boyfriends’ eyes traveled up the length of the slender limb to where the natural tan, unfaded, met a pair of chic but modest designer shorts. The Beta Pis instinctively glanced downward, raising eyebrows when they noticed unpainted toenails curled in flat flip-flops. When a summer-blond head finally appeared, large green cat eyes fixed on the curb, the Beta Pis recognized the girl as “the one with potential” who had so far disappointed them. The sisters had invited the naturally pretty sophomore to join Beta Pi in the spring of her freshman year, thinking that with her dot-com-millionaire parents and her West Coast upbringing, she was a savvy California surfer girl who would fit right into the sisterhood. But so far, Vicki had turned out to be a dud. She was a painfully quiet small-town girl less interested in partying with new friends than spending hours on the phone with old ones from back home. The Beta Pis and their boyfriends shrugged and continued across the Row.

Vicki took a deep breath and reluctantly followed her parents inside Beta Pi. One of the most impressive homes on the Row, Beta Pi was a four-story white frame Victorian mansion with a classic wraparound porch, a rolling back lawn, and a spacious veranda spiked by long white columns. Inside, a massive fresh flower arrangement graced a polished oak table at the foot of the broad front staircase. To the right of the entry hall, Vicki could see women in white uniforms setting up a spread of cold cuts, chips, and petite cakes for the sisters and their families.

“Hi Vicki!” The president, thin and blond like most of the Beta Pis, smiled widely and effusively greeted Vicki’s parents, who immediately tried to prod their daughter into a conversation.

“Um, hi,” Vicki practically whispered in her childlike voice. She hunched her tall frame so she seemed closer to the president’s height. “I’m, like, going to go unpack?” The president nodded and chattered at Vicki’s father while he headed outside to unload the car.

Vicki heard her mother clamoring over the welcome banners festooned across the entry hall but tuned out the comments as she lost herself in her bewildered second thoughts. Compared to the noise of the street, the house was much quieter; Vicki could hear their footfalls echoing up the stairwell. When the rest of the girls streamed in later in the afternoon, the mansion would be a madhouse, with girls screeching and hugging after a summer of scattered sisterhood. Cringing, she could hear them already—“I haven’t seen you in fo’-EVA!”—squealing the way seventh graders sign yearbooks. And now, as she passed bedroom doors decorated with handmade, gold-glittered names she barely recognized, it finally hit her that she was moving into a sorority house, that she was part of a sorority, and yet she had no idea what that meant.

Over the summer, Vicki hadn’t thought about most of the girls in her pledge class, the group with whom she had rushed and been initiated, and now it was difficult to imagine actually living, eating, sleeping, studying, and partying with them. Instead, she had spent her summer doing what she had done every year since she could remember: watching television, listening to music, and eating takeout with her two best friends and her boyfriend, a caring boy who wanted to marry her. The only difference this year was that none of the other three could stop talking about how ridiculous it was that Vicki had joined a sorority in the spring. Vicki explained that she forced herself through the rush process to be part of a more intimate community within State U, to make a large university seem smaller. She had tried so hard to fake a sorority attitude during rush that she had painted her fingernails with clear polish so she wouldn’t chew them. When she received her invitation, she was shocked and proud. But her girlfriends, who attended the local community college back home, didn’t understand the point of being Greek, and her boyfriend, who had followed her to State U, worried that sorority life would mean they would have less time together. Now that she was back on campus, these Beta Pis were going to be her new best friends—they had to be, she had no choice—and she didn’t really know them.

On the fourth floor, the sophomores’ floor, Vicki headed to the tiny room she would be sharing with three roommates from her pledge class: loud Olivia; gorgeous Morgan, who resembled a Barbie doll; and Laura-Ann, who, with her springy red hair, seemed even more of an outsider than Vicki. Wary of the other, unfamiliar sisters, Vicki planned to stick closely to her roommates whenever she was in the house, particularly to Olivia. Olivia, a party girl who wore coats of thick black eyeliner and a spicy perfume, was an unlikely companion, but she had taken Vicki under her wing when they pledged Beta Pi together. Vicki had warmed to her when Olivia admitted that she had bleached her dark hair blond before rush so she would look like a Beta Pi.

“This is fantastic! Every student should live like this,” her mother exclaimed as she drew out the standard Beta Pi burgundy-and-cream curtains and plunked a suitcase on one of the room’s two bunk beds. The room was small, but it had sparkling hardwood floors and large, open windows. “Two cleaning ladies, a House Mom, a cook, and—oh, feel that air-conditioning—Vicki, this is great!”

Vicki grunted in response. She was close to her parents, but she wished they would stop trying to coax enthusiasm out of her. Vicki’s parents had been surprised when Vicki had announced that she was joining Beta Pi, but they were thrilled that their daughter was branching out. They knew Vicki wasn’t quiet when she was with her family or her friends back home; the difficult step for her was reaching that comfort level within a new group. When Vicki was a freshman, days, sometimes weeks, would go by between her social events. She hadn’t gotten to know many people because she hadn’t felt the need to; she was one of the few girls on her hall with a steady boyfriend. But now, because of the sorority, she would constantly be meeting people and, theoretically, had an automatic houseful of friends. The spring had been a whirlwind of pledging and social events involving frequent but fleeting visits to the house. This year would be different, it slowly dawned on Vicki as she helped her mother unpack the designer dresses, sleek tops, and accessories she had purchased specifically for sorority functions. Living in the house would be an entirely new level of commitment.

When her parents left in the evening, Vicki was relieved at the chance to catch her breath. All day it had been, “Vicki, we need to get you your books!” “Vicki, we should get shelf liner!” in a flurry of back-to-school errands and last-minute rearranging when Vicki was already overwhelmed by the house and the steady flow of female strangers flooding inside. Under the pretense of “getting settled,” while her eighty-six new housemates mingled in the mess-hall-like dining room in the basement, Vicki stayed in the safe corner of her room, feeling disoriented and faintly claustrophobic, wondering why she had agreed to live in a house that seemed as if it would never feel like home.

One week later, Vicki was still in culture shock. There were so many girls everywhere—the house appeared to be infested with them, draped over the couches in the living room, huddling over magazines in the “gentleman’s parlor” on the main floor, blow-drying their hair in the bathroom, gossiping in the halls—that Vicki felt like she was in a nursery rhyme. She had suddenly become diffident to an extreme and was uncomfortable leaving her room when her roommates couldn’t accompany her. Occasionally she’d peek into the dining room, spot dozens of sisters chattering over their food, and duck back out before anyone saw her. Rather than sit with them over dinner and forced conversation, Vicki would either take a tray from the kitchen back to her room to eat alone or escape the house to lounge with her boyfriend in his dorm, their usual social activity. She couldn’t even bring herself to join the sisters to watch
American Idol
unless Olivia agreed to go with her. In fact, she rarely ventured into the television room at all, even though it was the gathering spot where sisters socialized with each other. This didn’t feel like a horizon-broadening college experience. It felt like junior high.

Even when the sisters in the house went out together on their frequent field trips to one of the campus bars, Vicki sensed a chasm. Her fake ID, purchased in anticipation of these regular inebriated bonding sessions, was enough to get her in the door. But once inside, the sisters, clotted in a corner, checked out the fraternity brothers in the room and plotted to set each other up at parties while Vicki sat quietly, feeling too guilty about her boyfriend to participate in the ogling and ignored by the sisters because they knew she had no interest in being set up. Eventually the sisters would meet back at the house for their post-hookup gossip sessions in the television room. At one of these sessions, a Beta Pi noticed Vicki sitting silently on the outskirts of the room. “You know, Vicki,” she said coyly, “it would be so much more fun for us if you’d just break up with him.”

“I-I couldn’t,” Vicki stammered. She blew her wispy too-long bangs out of her eyes.

The sisters nearby jumped into the conversation, their faces lit up. “It’s so true! College is the only place where you’re going to be with so many cute guys your age,” they insisted. “It’s not like you guys are going to get married, so it’s better to break up with him now and have fun instead of waiting four whole years and missing out.”

“Oh my God, you’ve been together since seventh grade!” Olivia exclaimed. “You’ve never been a single woman.”

Vicki politely demurred. She wouldn’t dream of breaking up with her boyfriend. They were one of those generally tolerated college couples who were in love but careful not to flaunt their distance from singledom with gooey-happy displays. Although he had no interest in the Greek system, he had stuck by Vicki and supported her even through the hectic eight-week pledge process, a period usually incomprehensible to outsiders. Despite her sisters’ shared opinion, she could comfortably see herself with him for the long term and had no intention of jeopardizing that possibility.

But as she continued to spend her days with her boyfriend instead of at the house, the nagging sense of being out of a loop that was moving on without her grew into a serious worry. One night she came back from dinner with him to find Olivia, Laura-Ann, and Morgan in the middle of a screeching fight. Laura-Ann was yelling about how upset she was that the roommates weren’t spending much time together as a unit and accused Olivia and Morgan of shooting her dirty looks whenever they came into the room. Eventually, they managed to mollify Laura-Ann by promising to spend more time with her. But Vicki couldn’t help thinking that she was away from the house more than anybody because she had a boyfriend.

A few nights later, on a sorority outing at a nearby club, Olivia and a few other sisters introduced Vicki to William, the extremely attractive and well-liked president of Iota, Beta Pi’s favorite fraternity. Olivia had slept with William a few times in the spring and thought he and Vicki would get along well. Vicki was shy at first, despite her inebriation, which was due to her habit of sharing an entire bottle of Grey Goose vodka with her three roommates before every Greek social function, as well as a water bottle full of gin and tonic on the cab ride over. But when she saw beautiful Morgan draping her Barbie body over William on the dance floor, Vicki approached him, inspired by jealousy. As they danced for the rest of the night, Vicki’s cornsilk hair nestled just under William’s chin, Vicki wrestled with her conflicting feelings. In her drunken haze she could tell she liked him and she was struck by a conquering feeling when she realized he was interested in her. But she felt guilty about even entertaining the idea.

Nonetheless, she had apparently made an impression. At dinner in the house the following day, a horde of sisters joined Vicki and her roommates for dinner. They told her that William had just announced to several Beta Pis that he was mesmerized by Vicki. Within minutes, the sisters were circling Vicki; suddenly, everyone seemed to know who she was, especially now that a boy who met with the sisters’ approval—the president of Iota!—had taken an interest in her.