DOES INEQUALITY BEGIN ON GREEK ROW?

By

Jeanette Ohman

A thesis presented to the

FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

In Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree

MASTER OF ARTS

(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)

May 2014

Copyright 2013 Jeanette Marie Ohman

Table of Contents
Abstract......................................................................................................................................... ii
Does Inequality Begin on Greek Row? ....................................................................................... 1
Citations ....................................................................................................................................... 18
Abstract

Moving from Finland to the U.S. I stumbled over several newspaper articles about sexism in

Greek life. Being a feminist I decided to examine this phenomena. This paper is a personal essay

about feminism and sororities at USC. The text is based on literature, interviews with both

current and former sorority members as well as on my personal observations and thoughts.

ii
Does Inequality Begin on Greek Row?

I cannot remember the exact moment I started calling myself a feminist, but I know it was some

time in elementary school when I realized that there are different rules for boys and girls. When

the boys ran around the classroom shouting and laughing, my teacher sighed and told us, “Boys

will be boys.” When I did the same, my parents got a call from school.”

I talked about this with my grandmother and she told me women can be wild and strong.

She said that during Finland’s Winter War with Russia, she, her sisters, and their friends became

members of Lotta Svärd (a voluntary Finnish civil guard organization). It did not matter that they

were women; they were a part of the Finnish defense. My grandmother told me she used to ski to

the tallest tower in her village to be a lookout for Russian enemy planes. Even though I was just

a little girl, I could feel how proud she was. My grandmother was part of a generation during

whose prime strong female characters were built. Finnish women were the first in the world to

obtain the right to vote and to elect female parliamentary members…only six years before she

was born in 1913.

I did not know much about gender issues in the US before moving here in July of last

year, but I assumed gender equality would not be as established as in the Nordic countries. Few

places in the world use as much tax money on family-related matters as northern Europe. Our

welfare state model encourages mothers and fathers to split parental leave, and we have

sponsored daycare and free education. It is easier to be equal with state support. The US ranked

twenty-third last year in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report. Finland came

second.

The first day I set foot on campus at the University of Southern California, I felt like I

was stepping onto the set of a Hollywood movie. The buildings, the fountains, and the students

1
all looked familiar. I had seen them before in American college movies. It did not take long until

I found Greek Row, the street where the sorority and fraternity houses stand side by side with

large Greek letters on the front. I couldn’t help thinking of Legally Blonde, a romantic comedy

from 2001 with Reese Witherspoon as the protagonist. I think it is safe to say I knew very little

of the world of Greek life.

Greek Row looked exactly as it did in the Hollywood films. From a Finnish perspective,

it did not look very gender-neutral. Let’s just say that the sorority girls shared very few qualities

with my grandmother. Most of the girls I saw actually looked like the stereotype of Scandinavian

girls; they were blond, skinny, and pretty. What separated these young women from

Scandinavian women was that their clothes revealed more than they covered and that their body

language appeared to be directed at pleasing the boys in the fraternities rather than at their own

sisters. I guess the Finnish climate makes it hard for Finnish women to dress in short skirts and

high heels. It is hard to be sexy when it’s snowing and your nose is running. I told myself, “I

should not be stereotyping women based on their looks; you can be blond, skinny, and wear little

clothes and still be a feminist.”

In The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir, the French writer and feminist points out that

men stereotype women and use stereotyping as an excuse to organize society into a patriarchy.

De Beauvoir writes that women need to form their own organizations to reach equality. Is this

not exactly what American women are doing when they go to college and join a sorority? If de

Beauvoir is right, gender-specific organizations like sororities should be a great way for women

to fight patriarchy.

I was never a member of any student organization in Finland and the ones we have are

not gender specific. However, Finland has a very strong drinking culture and most parties

2
arranged by student organizations revolve around alcohol, and it seems that we share this with

the fraternity/sorority culture. While searching the Internet for more information on Greek life, I

stumble upon several alarming texts about party culture, cruel hazing, and sexual assaults. All of

them included extensive consumption of alcohol.

The first example I found took place at Yale University; according to Yale Daily News, a

group of fraternity men walked around campus shouting that women are “f—king sluts!”

followed by “No means yes! Yes means anal!” Another fraternity, this time in Michigan, sent out

both racist and sexist invitations to a party: “World Star Hip Hop Presents: Hood Ratche

Thursday. Bad bitches, white girls, basketball players, thugs, gangsters and ratchet pussy” were

all invited. In 2013, a Georgia Tech fraternity member sent out an email instructing his brothers

in “luring rape bait.” In the email, he tells his fraternity brothers how to get a girl into bed in

detail. Several websites list suggested themes for Greek parties: “King Tuts & Egyptian Sluts,”

“Lawyer Bros & Prison Hoes,” “Colonial Bros & NavaHos,” “Golf Pros & Tennis Hoes”; and

the list goes on.

Parties, drinking, and objectifying women do occur in Finland. However, such behavior

is looked on more critically there. Women do not accept being portrayed as just passive beautiful

things or as prostitutes. Many years ago, on my way home from a student party in Helsinki, a

male student wanted me to stay at the party and shouted, “Hey, fashion whore, why are you

leaving? Stay!” At the moment, I was too offended to react, but the next day in class, I

confronted him in front of our classmates and forced him to apologize. I also made him promise

never to call a woman a whore again. I do not know if it made much of a difference, but I felt

better.

3
 I left my online research for a while and began talking with people in real life. My first

interview was with a first-year student at USC, Jenny Smith (she did not want me to use her real

name; only the president of her sorority is allowed to talk about Greek life with journalists).

Smith told me that Greek life is chauvinistic and often objectifies women. She is a member of

one of the top three sororities at USC and she said she is concerned about the emphasis her

sisters put on looking good for the fraternity guys on Greek Row. She says the competition for

the male gaze makes her uncomfortable on a daily basis.

Before college, Smith went to an all-girl school and was active in beauty pageants. She

thought sorority life would be similar. In the pageant world, she said, girls support each other,

but at university, young women always seem to be competing for the attention of fraternity men.

“Without the fraternities, I think sorority life would be completely different. During one

week last semester, the fraternities were occupied with organizing a rush and the sorority girls

were on their own. This was the best week ever! We did things together and there was no

competition, only friendship,” she said.

Jenny Smith said the synergy of her sorority house changed without the guys. There was

less focus on looks and more on activities.

Appearances seem to be a well-integrated part of Greek life. In an article titled “In the

fraternal sisterhood: Sororities as gender strategy,” social psychologist Lisa Handler says

fraternity men use sorority women as currency to establish prestige among brothers. The best-

looking girls are generally valued the most.1 Jenny Smith agrees. She said the houses on Greek

row have a clear hierarchy and the men in the top fraternity houses are all aiming to date from

the top sorority houses.

1
Lisa Handler, “In the Fraternal Sisterhood: Sororities as gender strategy” (Sage Publications Inc., 1995),
246.
2
Margaret Hartman, “Frat Email Explains Women are Targets, Not Actual People,” Jezebel, last
4
 “A guy’s social status can depend on which house the girl he goes out with belong to.

The most popular houses consist of almost solely pretty, skinny, and white girls. There are only

two black girls out of almost two hundred in my fraternity,” Smith said.

Just before we ended the interview, she added that not many of these girls are interested

in feminist values.

I wondered if Smith was typical, so I sought out a couple of other female students at

USC. At the Journalism School, I found three sorority dropouts who agreed to discuss Greek life

with me on one condition: they too wanted to be anonymous. They did not want to state their

names because they, like many former sorority members, fear that some of their former sisters

might have influential positions in the future. You do not want to get on these girls’ bad sides.

The young women all dropped out of their sororities after less than one semester. They told me it

was mostly the inequality that bothered them.

“It’s not only about the gender inequality; it’s about equality in all aspects. A beautiful

girl with famous or wealthy parents will have no problem getting into the most popular sorority

houses. For others, the competition can be harsh. There is a very clear pecking order,” one of the

young women said.

The second woman summed up her experience of Greek life at USC by saying that

sororities can be feminist, but the Greek culture itself is misogynistic. Her theory was that the

misogyny drips down from popular culture.

“Many Hollywood directors are men that have been students at USC. They imitate their

own fraternity life and spice it up. Then fraternity and sorority members imitate what they see in

the movies,” she said.

5
 The “real life feeding fiction feeding real life” cycle fascinated me, so I decided to re-

watch Legally Blonde and, while I was at it, to also watch two other movies about American

student culture, The House Bunny and Old School. According to these films, the typical sorority

girl is a blond, skinny, rich, young woman in her early twenties. She likes to party; her sorority

sisters are her best friends but also her worst competitors; she is shallow and will eventually end

up marrying a fraternity guy she meets at a party. She does not care much about feminism.

According to most motion pictures, Greek life is mostly about getting drunk and hooking up.

“I was often afraid of being raped when we were invited to parties at the fraternity

houses, but I never refused to go. There was a social pressure to keep up with drinking alcohol

and meeting boys in their frat houses,” said one of the sorority dropouts. She looked little bit

tired and played with her ponytail.

Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe I’m just Finnish, but going to parties and constantly

being afraid of sexual assault sounds horrific and hardly acceptable. I asked my Finnish friends

on Facebook whether they felt the same, being students, but no one recognized that kind of rape

culture. One of them wrote, “A majority of my male university friends are intellectuals and

thereby feminists. Feminists don’t rape each other.” I know this sounds too good to be true, and

it is; not all Finnish men are feminists. Still, I cannot find one single article about sexual assault

at student societies in Finland.

Whether people care about feminism or not, statistics indicate a serious problem of sexual

assault at USC. According to the Los Angeles Times, USC officials admitted that they failed to

report thirteen accounts of sexual assaults to federal officials between 2010 and 2011; there were

a total of thirty-nine cases over that two-year period (Song & Felch, 2013). The reputation of

USC campus life, and specifically Greek life, did not improve when the online newspaper

6
Jezebel, in March 2011, published an email written by a member of USC’s chapter of the Kappa

Sigma fraternity in which he offers a treatise on how to be an effective “cocksman.” In the email,

he refers to women as “filth,” tells his fraternity brothers “non-consent and rape are two different

things,” and expresses the opinion that women “aren’t actual people like us men.”2

Frat guys at Yale promoting rape, Hollywood showing us a sexist student culture,

sorority girls being called non-people and worrying about getting raped at parties, and the Kappa

Sigma email—all are clearly indications of a fraternity culture that encourages misogyny. In this

culture, women are not considered equals but, rather, extras in a movie in which all the

protagonists are men. Are the fictitious movies imitating real life or is it the opposite?

“My impression of sororities at USC is that they to a large extent resemble the popular

culture image of Greek life. Sorority life here is more or less what we see in the movies. The

girls are white, beautiful, and thin. Exactly like in the movies,” said Nyri Achadjian.

Last semester, Achadjian transferred from the University of California, Berkeley, to

USC. She has long dark hair and is both confident and well-spoken. She says she always

dreamed about being a student at USC, but before moving to southern California, she spent one

semester at Berkeley, where she was a member of the sorority Alpha Gamma.

“I know for a fact that looks are very important at Greek Row. While at Berkeley there

actually is an ugly girls sorority, I’m sure something similar would never work at USC,”

Achadjian told me.

Achadjian was curious about Greek life and joined Alpha Gamma. Most of the other

sorority girls had mothers, grandmothers, or sisters who had been members of this particular

2
Margaret Hartman, “Frat Email Explains Women are Targets, Not Actual People,” Jezebel, last
modified March 8, 2011, jezebel.com/5779905/usc-frat-guys-email-explains-women-are-targets-not-
actual-people-like-us-men.

7
sorority. For these young women, it was a natural choice to join the same sorority as their female

family members.

“I didn’t have any relatives that urged me to apply to a certain sorority, but I was curious

what Greek life was all about. Since one of my best friends was an Alpha Gamma sister, I

decided to join this particular sorority. It was an experiment and I guess I was a little bit more

critical of the culture than most of the other girls joining.”

Greek life is structured around rules, but not all of them are unbreakable. Achadjian

became a sorority sister late in the semester and did not have to do any formal interviews. It was

enough that she had a good friend inside the house. Yet, she felt that she did not fit in. This was

partly because she already had a boyfriend and, according to her, a large part of the Greek

culture is about meeting someone of the opposite gender.

Achadjian’s reflection rings true. In her article “Sororities as Gender Structure,” Handler

says that in Greek life there is an awareness of the sorority as a “romantic marketplace” and that

sorority women’s romantic relations serve to undermine the ideals of sisterhood.3

Nyri Achadjian dropped out of the sorority after a few months. She transferred to USC

and even though she did not join a sorority at her new university, she observed Greek life and

came to the conclusion that it can be very different at different universities. According to

Achadjian, sorority life at Berkeley had much more diversity than sorority life at USC. She does

not see the same variety of ethnicities at the University of Southern California.

Is there really no diversity on Greek Row? I needed to talk to more sorority women.

Christine Bancroft is a member of Sigma Delta Tau. Bancroft wears jeans and loose

sweatshirts. No makeup. She is a senior at USC and she does not believe all sororities are

3
Handler, “In the Fraternal Sisterhood.”

8
heteronormative, exclusive, and elitist. She told me that there is not one sorority that is exactly

like another and that sorority life is much more diverse and complex than the pop culture cliché.

“Of course there are a few sororities that are similar to media’s stereotype, but all of them

are much more than that. Besides the skinny, pretty, and white preconception, people think that

sorority girls are Christian and upper-class. This, of course, is not the whole truth. For example,

my sorority, Sigma Delta Tau, is very different from the stereotype,” she said.

I felt a little bit stupid for believing all sororities fit the Legally Blonde mold. Bancroft is

a big fan of the television series Doctor Who; she does not drink alcohol and avoids hard

partying. She said that joining a sorority was a good way for her to get out of her dorm. Since she

is not a very social person by nature, without the sorority, she would probably have gotten stuck

in her room watching television.

I learned that many members of her sorority, Sigma Delta Tau, are girls who never

thought they would join a sorority. Bancroft said they do not feel any pressure to conform to a

traditional Greek life. Her sorority sisters live more of a “geek life” than a “Greek life.”

She said, “We like science fiction, feminism, and we don’t party much. We are very

individualistic and we have a huge Star Trek fan base. There are not many sororities like ours,

but even though the rest might be more like the stereotype, I believe all women, no matter what

sorority they belong to, are much more than the cliché image of them.”

For Bancroft, her sorority is also a safe space. With her sisters, she can be herself; and

she can always trust them to help her when she is in need. She said Sigma Delta Tau is “very

feminist and enlightened.”

“In many sororities, there is a huge misconception about feminism. People think that

feminists aren’t allowed to wear short dresses or party. In Sigma Delta Tau, we agree that

9
everyone should be able to dress and do as they want without being harassed or bullied,” she told

me.

Bancroft said that the most fundamental pillar of Sigma Delta Tau is the desire to include

everyone. There is little or no competition in her sorority. She tells me about a sorority sister

who was told by her mother not to do the formal recruitment because stereotypical sororities do

not like black girls. Bancroft says her sorority accepts anyone, no matter her color, ethnicity, or

sexual orientation.

“You don’t have to be white, Christian, or upper-class, but you can be,” she concluded.

Christine Bancroft’s sorority has a lot in common with some of the first sororities, which

were founded more than two hundred years ago. These gender-specific clubs were originally

created to promote equality. The first modern Greek academic society, Phi Beta Kappa, was

founded in 1762 at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. A few years later,

female students organized themselves into what were first called “female fraternities” but that

later took the name sororities from the Latin word soror, which means “sister.” Sororities were

founded because female students felt isolated; at the time, women were largely considered

unsuited to higher education, so those who did attend university were vastly outnumbered by

males. Sororities began as a way for women to find intellectual and social companionship with

one another.4

Sorority sisterhood apparently has several meanings. Social psychologist Lisa Handler

writes that women join sororities because they want to belong to a sisterhood. Yet, most

American sororities are not feminist sisterhoods, but instead promote stereotypical ideas about

women’s roles. Women need each other, but, at the same time, do not trust each other,

4
Michael J. Lombardi, “Phi Beta Kappa,” Colonial Williamsburg,
http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/winter12/phi_beta_kappa.cfm.

10
particularly in dealing with gender relationships. Handler also points out that Greek life is a very

heterosexual culture. The sorority promotes and structures traditional relationships between

women and men.5

However, not everyone wants to conform to conservative gender roles. In fact, some

women are so put off by the Greek culture that they prefer to organize themselves into female

fraternities. According to Stephanie Martinez, a graduate student at USC, she was a member of

the all-girl fraternity Sigma Alpha Iota. Sigma Alpha Iota calls itself a “women’s fraternity”

because it does not want to be associated with sororities.

“The stereotype of a sorority girl is the opposite of what we want to be. We don’t

prioritize blond hair color, looks, skinniness, or money and we focus on music, not guys,”

Martinez said.

Appearance seems to be one of the first things a future sorority sister has to focus on.

Kimberly Barnhill looks like a future CEO in straight white trousers and a navy blue shirt. She is

a member of Alpha Chi Omega. During rush week, the girls are told to look as beautiful as

possible and to put on nice clothes. Since it can be difficult to get into sororities at USC,

everyone tries her best to look good and be friendly. Nyri Achadjian described it as “a weird kind

of job interview.” A sorority can turn down a girl if she is not pretty enough. Social scientists

Alan D. Desaintis writes about this phenomenon in Inside Greek U.: Fraternities, Sororities, and

the Pursuit of Pleasure, Power, and Prestige. He argues that nobody who is overweight,

unattractive, or otherwise less than physically perfect need bother going through the rush.

During the formal recruitment week at USC, more than one thousand young women

wander from sorority house to sorority house. The first week of school can be very stressful. The

5
Handler, “In the Fraternal Sisterhood.”

11
young women are trying to sell themselves to the sororities while the sorority houses try to

attract the right kind of members. It is like a huge marketplace where everybody is both selling

and buying.

“It can be quite hurtful to get rejected. You might think that you clicked with a certain

house, but then they don’t get back to you and you realize that the feeling was not mutual. The

formal recruitment week can be very superficial,” said Barnhill. She explained how the

presidents of the sorority houses teach the girls how to talk to prospective members.

They use a special interview technique to find out which girls are most suitable for a

particular house.

“We don’t take into account what the girls look like, but how they present themselves.

When I was rushing I was told to dress up like I was meeting my boyfriend’s parents for the first

time,” Barnhill said.

She admitted that the rush at USC can be quite challenging and said she knows girls who

have hired pricy consultants to help them with what to wear and how to present themselves.

“Many young women take sorority life very seriously,” Barnhill said.

In her book the feminist academic, Susan J. Douglas says that the hierarchical standards

of femininity and hotness make girls monitor themselves and punish those who fail to live up to

specific criteria. If a girl refuses to stay within the norm—for example, if she does not use

makeup, lets herself become overweight, or dresses in an unconventional way, she is ranked

lowly in femininity and therefore within a sorority.6

All the focus on being attractive did not sound very feminist to me, but Barnhill insisted

that her sisters in Alpha Chi Omega often talk about feminism and gender equality and that it is

6
Susan J. Douglas, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls
Gone Wild (New York: Henry Holt, 2010), 236-237.

12
an important part of the sorority. She said most of the girls who are entering Greek life become

feminists.

“It’s logical; sorority life is about sisterhood, helping one another, and Alpha Chi

Omega’s motto is actually ‘Real Strong Women,’” Barnhill said.

I decided not to tell her that I believe all women are real women. She explained that any

one of the sorority activities might seem superficial, but there is a depth and a belief in sisterhood

that make sorority life feminist. She blames Hollywood for the public’s impressions of sororities

and said she and her sisters are constantly battling the stereotypes of sorority girls.

No matter how much sororities fight stereotypes, the young men in the fraternities on the

other side of Greek Row make it extremely difficult. Traditional gender roles, misogyny, and

rape culture appear to be an entrenched part of Greek life. Barnhill acknowledged that sexual

assaults are not unfamiliar at Greek life parties.

Almost every week, the sorority women and the fraternity men meet up at a mixer with a

special theme. When I asked Barnhill about the parties with themes such as “Yoga Hoes &

Workout Bros” or “GI Joes & Army Hoes,” Barnhill said she only knows of parties with more

gender neutral themes.

“Sometimes we dress up as hippies; other times we have an ’80s party. One of my

favorite ones had the theme ‘zoo animals,’” Barnhill said.

While many of the girls may end up marrying guys they meet at one of the many Greek

life events, fraternity culture seems to be more about getting laid than finding a future wife.

Jenny Smith said that she is disappointed in her sorority sisters for focusing so much on partying

and dating fraternity guys compared to, for example, the philanthropic work the sorority does.

13
 “I only go to fraternity houses where I have friends and I really know the guys. I would

be scared to party at any other house. I’ve heard of guys videotaping the girls that come to their

houses,” Smith said.

Nyri Achadjian agreed that many sorority girls plan to find their future husbands in a

fraternity. This is nothing unique to USC; the same thing was going on at Berkeley. She said

finding a future husband is something the young women talk about often.

Despite what some of her classmates have said, Achadjian does not believe that the

sorority girls at USC talk much about feminism or gender equality. She said sorority culture here

is mostly about partying, which the young women take very seriously. In her experience, sorority

girls do not talk much about date rape either. “People are afraid of talking about it. It’s easier to

pretend it does not exist at all.”

For the defenders of Greek life, sorority life is much more than a dating service. Barnhill

said it has given her leadership skills, a lifelong network, and self-esteem. She also told me about

the philanthropic work she does with her sorority sisters. Alpha Chi Omega works for domestic

violence awareness and provides support to those who are victim to it.

While talking to these young women about the sisterhood, I remembered how many times I felt

lost and alone at my first workplaces. During a tough period at my job as the editor-in-chief of a

magazine back in Finland, I decided that I needed help from someone more experienced. I got a

mentor, and she is still helping me to navigate through my personal and professional lives. When

I told Bancroft about this, she said that there is a similar support structure in Greek life, known as

the Big Sister-Little Sister system. This is a part of Greek life that de Beauvoir would have

appreciated. Bancroft said the mentor system had been a big help in navigating university life as

well as adulthood. Every year, the older girls become mentors for the newest members of their

14
sorority. They are called “Bigs” and “Littles,” and it is not unusual for the friendships to last well

beyond school years.

“My first year in college, I didn’t know many people and to have a Big, a kind of mentor,

made my life easier and safer. This year I’m a Big myself and I always tell my Little that I will

pick her up in the middle of the night if she is out partying and wants to go home. I also try to

guide her in schoolwork and just be a really good friend and wise older sister,” said Bancroft.

The active sorority girls naturally want to point out the positive sides of Greek life. Both

Christine Bancroft and Kimberly Barnhill stressed that sororities offer great ways to be

supportive, create networks, do philanthropy, and make lifelong friends. Barnhill said that, even

though there will always be some competitiveness, sisterhood is still the most important part.

“Cattiness and competitiveness is simply how it is when you put a bunch of girls

together, but mostly it is great sisterhood,” she said.

Perhaps, I thought, the sexism I spotted in Greek life was just something going on during

college years. I decided to look for signs of networking among sorority women after graduation.

It was all too easy to find websites ranking the best fraternities for becoming a future

CEO—for example, an article in the business magazine Forbes about how fraternities

“manufacture” business leaders. Almost half of the presidents of the United States belonged to

fraternities, as have many US senators, congressional representatives, and Supreme Court

justices. I could not find a similar list of the CEOs, presidents, senators, congresswomen, and

Supreme Court justices produced by sororities. Ten years ago, in 2003, Forbes wrote that a

quarter of chief executives at the five hundred largest corporations in the United States were

15
once fraternity members and that after they had graduated, they could tap into a network of past

fraternity brothers to climb high in corporate America.7

Of course, Greek life is not the only factor in making a person successful in business and

politics; gender, race, class, family status, talent, and hard work are also important factors. But,

when you combine these with a good fraternity network, a person’s chances for a career are

good.

After graduation, most students clean up and become dedicated grown-ups. In Inside

Greek U: Fraternities, Sororities, and the Pursuit of Pleasure, Power, and Prestige, Alan D.

DeSantis writes that students enrolled in Greek life usually leave their heavy partying days

behind after finishing college and going on to find high-paying and prestigious jobs. In contrast,

many of the sorority women who work hard to obtain high scores in the classroom consider their

post-college responsibilities to be in the home as wives and mothers.8

Jenny Smith told me she constantly considers dropping out of her top sorority house, but

she first wants to succeed in university politics. Without the support of her sorority sisters, the

student government election would be much more demanding. Even though she does not like the

sorority system’s exclusiveness and focus on looks and fraternity men, she knows that it is better

to be a part of it than outside of it. Smith says she is a feminist.

In the end, talking with all these bright young women made me both happy and a bit

disheartened. On the one hand, sororities give them great possibilities to create networks and

sisterhoods and to organize themselves for adult life. On the other hand, the system that is

supporting them seems to be the same system that is holding them back and creating an

7
Davide Dukcevich, “Best Fraternities For Future CEOs,” Forbes, last modified January 31, 2003,
www.forbes.com/2003/01/31/cx_dd_0131frat.html.
8
Alan D. DeSantis, Inside Greek U.: Fraternities, Sororities, and the Pursuit of Pleasure, Power, and
Prestige (University Press of Kentucky, 2007).

16
accentuated miniature worlds of patriarchy. My grandmother would probably have liked the

thought of clubs for young women and I am sure she would appreciate the USC Trojan motto,

“Fight on!” And just as she protected the freedom of her peers by keeping a lookout for bombers

from the east, the young women of today have a lot to gain by looking out for each other. I can’t

help but think that if it were not for fraternities, sororities would be the perfect way for young

girls to support each other into adult life.

17
Citations

http://Collman, Ashley. “Georgia Tech fraternity brother who penned ‘rapebait’ meal issues

apology in student newspaper.” Daily Mail, last modified October 12, 2013.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2456858/Georgia-Tech-fraternity-brother-penned-rapebait

email-issues-apology-student-newspaper.html.

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