We’re not stereotypes
I didn’t always plan on rushing a sorority. Yes, my mom was in one and so was my older sister, but it just didn’t feel like the “lifestyle” for me. At least not the rhetoric that was being spewed to me about what being in a sorority meant.
Sorority girls are dumb. All sorority girls do is party. Sorority girls have zero inhibitions. All of these lines were things I’d heard more than once or twice in my high school years.
And of course, based on only those words, I didn’t want to partake in Greek life. That was until about a year ago, when I finally realized that (shocker!) social media can be really fake. What I was hearing and what my friends were hearing about Greek life really wasn’t true. A lot of it was stereotypes being fed from the past. I honestly felt that within this past year, more and more girls have wanted to rush a sorority, at least those around me. Not because of stereotypes or anything like that, but because they wanted a community. I know I did.
The hope for me was that the stigma behind sororities had begun to dwindle. UW-Madison fall primary recruitment had a record number of girls registered this year, which seemed promising.
I was super excited to finally be going through recruitment, but I definitely was nervous. I needed so much moral support from my friends, especially my best friend from back home, who had by that point already been through rush at her SEC school. My friends and roommate were super nice and supportive, and when I ran home on bid day, I couldn’t have been happier.
One of my best friends in my dorm had also gone through recruitment, but she ended up dropping the process. She was in my room one day getting ready with my roommate and I to go to dinner and was talking about her choice to drop—completely fine and totally her choice. Then my roommate—who, mind you, did not go through recruitment—decides to chime in to tell her that sorority girls are stupid, not career driven and that being in a sorority does nothing for you. Yeah, that was definitely fun for me to hear!
That conversation reminded me of how unfair it is to assume these horrible things about girls in sororities. In my experience, the majority of the time girls just want a community and a sorority is a great way to build that. If you still consider sororities to just be big excuses to party, you’re absolutely wrong and we have to start recognizing that to avoid these dangerous stigmas. It is simply another excuse to put down large groups of women who are trying to serve their community and build sisterhood.
Sororities were founded upon the purpose of serving one’s community and simultaneously building one around you. I’ve met so many beautiful, kind, deserving people within my sorority already and I’m barely a month in. It has opened up so many doors for me, both academically and philanthropically. We often forget to serve our community with all of the noise and chaos in the world and sororities make a pointed effort to cancel that out. That’s exactly why these stereotypes surrounding them are so damaging: sororities do so much good. When we reduce them to just a stereotype, we ignore the impact that each chapter is making on a given charity, a community, a family. You can roll your eyes, but the numbers simply don’t lie.
So poke fun all you want, but remember that sororities’ impact is no joke for millions of families and organizations. Know that being in a sorority could open up so many opportunities for you, your friends, your daughters and all the women that came before you. Sororities were one of the earliest outlets for women to join together and make a difference. And for that reason, we cannot diminish them.