Well, as long as the
nodeshell is here...I agree heartily.
On my campus, the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
fraternities are strong. We're generally a
hearty bunch, and any
infighting that happens stays within the walls of the
fraternity house.
Rushing is extremely informal; we can pretty much give a
bid to any
male member of the
planet whenever we want to.
The
sororities, on the other hand, are hindered by an absolutely horrible ultra-
formal rush system that makes its
prospective members march from house to house in their best dresses (it's a sight to see, packs of 200
freshman girls in black
gowns walking down the street looking totally lost in the middle of
September). The
girls then go through a complicated system of
hoops to narrow down their list of "
preferred" houses eventually down to three. From there, your house is decided upon by the
Panhellenic Council after your preference and the houses' preferences are tabulated.
That's
strike number one, and a
major strike indeed. It takes the ultimate power of
choice out of the hands of the
individual and the house and invests it into a
third party, thereby ensuring that no one will be totally happy. This is a decision you're supposed to be making that affects the rest of your
LIFE! That decision should be left up to you and the house you want to join, for them to decide they like you enough to give you a bid and for you to either accept or deny.
So now that a group of
pledges who don't know each other have joined a
sorority whose members have probably met them no more than twice--and have been strictly
prohibited from making contact with them personally up until this time--everyone's supposed to bond and become a
cohesive unit.
Logic says it won't happen, and it usually doesn't. The
sorority houses are so big (usually in excess of 150 members) that cliques form within the
pledge class right off the bat. These last well into
sisterhood, and after about a year (after all that "sisterhood" and "togetherness" indoctronation crap caused by ineffectual
hazing led by girls wears off) all you're left with is are multiple groups of five to ten
friends that happen to live in the same place as everyone else in the sorority but rarely, if ever, associate with them at all--if not downright hate them all.
You say sorority, we say big
cathouse there for the taking. That's the
reputation they have, and deservedly so. Usually the first thing a
freshman girl who'd be inclined to join a sorority does is throw themselves in the direction of the nearest
warm body to seek out a
boyfriend, and we're waiting there to catch them. It ain't pretty, but it's the
truth.