Whether you’re a freshman or a returning student, joining a Greek organization on campus is always an option as an extra-curricular activity with relative job experience.
When you go through recruitment, you hear the same thing: becoming a part of one of these sororities at Winthrop could change your life for the better, leaving you with a whole new group of people that love and support you. While this is true, there are some downsides to joining a sorority on campus.
So if you’re thinking about recruitment, check out these pros & cons of Winthrop’s sororities from an ex-member’s perspective.
Pro: You Find a Group of People with the Same Values as You
Each sorority on campus values certain aspects to a higher standard over others. Though each sorority holds similar values, you may find yourself in an organization that dedicates their time towards their grades, their philanthropy, or their companionship.
Con: You Face Being Stereotyped by Your Peers
As soon as you put letters on your chest, you become that organizations walking, talking stereotype. People automatically begin to assume certain things about your personality and about what you value based on what sorority you fell into.
Pro: You Automatically Gain a Network of People to Turn to
For some wonderful reason, when you join a Greek org, every member becomes your new best friend. You’re automatically equipped with 50+ new phone numbers and a friend for every meal, class and event.
Con: The Sorority Can Become Clique-y
While you automatically gain a large support system from the get go, the relationships might start to become very superficial if you don’t assimilate into one of the mini cliques in the sorority. You start to find yourself hanging out with 2 girls every day, seeing maybe 10 in classes and possibly not even talking to the rest until chapter on Sunday.
Pro: You Gain Real Life Experience
Greek orgs offer internships, executive positions and matriculation into careers after graduation. It’s also a wonderful tool for networking, as Greek members enjoy working with other members of Greek organizations.
Con: It Could Turn into a Popularity Contest
You might find that the same people are usually the faces of their sorority. Depending on how each organization’s voting system is done, it usually ends up with the same faces representing it, leaving the other 2/3 of the chapter as just forever honorary members with no chance at those extra perks.
Pro: You Gain a Sense of Pride
You get to wear the same letters that so many women before you did. Not only that, but those women also did wonderful and amazing things in order to get your organization where it is today, and it gives you pride knowing you’re not only carrying on their legacy, but contributing to it as well.
Con: It Becomes a Competition
Even though everyone should be proud of their own organizations strengths, sororities at Winthrop tend to focus more on being better than the others. Instead of becoming better than you used to be, this really makes it feel like you’re trying to prove you are a better person than everyone else.
Pro: You Gain Life-Long Friends
Being in an organization like this could help you meet those people that you just click with. You spend so much time with your sisters as soon as you join that you’re bound to find someone who just gets you!
Con: Old Friends Become Strangers
Remember the girl you hung out with every night your first semester at Winthrop? Well if you both get into different chapters, you might as well kiss that friendship goodbye. No matter how close y’all were, your organizations will always be a wedge between the two of you.
Pro: You Gain Fun Secrets
This one is honestly one of the coolest in my opinion. Joining your organization means becoming equipped with all of their ritual secrets. It’s fun to know what your chapter meant to the women who began it so long ago, and what it should mean to women everywhere now!
Con: They Might Try to Change Your Beliefs
When I joined, I was a skeptical person with not much belief in religion. Joining a sorority in the south was chaos for me, because I was forced to accept something that I wasn’t totally convinced of. Being manipulated to change your beliefs rather than being accepted as who you are is detrimental. And this can go for religion, how you like to have fun, who you hang out with and even what you put on social media.
Pro: You Might Find the Perfect Sorority
You might walk into a party during recruitment on the first day and fall in love. It might be a one-time stop before you realize where you belong and what girls you want to run home to on the last night of recruitment.
Con: You Might Not Fit In
But what if you don’t? What if you don’t get that ‘finally home’ feeling when you walk into any of the parties, or you don’t click with any of the girls that you talked to? It can happen, and it could mean that you don’t fit in with these particular organizations. Unlike larger schools, we only have 5 CPC sororities, which makes it harder to make these organizations more diverse.