Panhellenic gets it all wrong. The governing body for Whitman’s sororities is considering adding a new sorority to the three already on campus, without seeking campus-wide input. Perhaps out of chicanery or a sincere lack of judgment, Panhell believes that they can drastically alter our school’s social dynamic without consulting the roughly 70 percent of students who are not part of a sorority.
Panhell should hold a binding, campus-wide vote, rather than incestuously decide whether to add a new sorority. Taking a cue from ASWC, Panhell could conduct this vote electronically such that all students (including those abroad) could participate in this consequential decision. If the student body wants a new sorority, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s great too. But it shouldn’t be up to Panhell to dictate the decisions that do and do not affect the greater student body.
Maybe that’s what they don’t get: how their decisions affect the rest of us.
Let’s do some math, shall we: According to the feeble statistics on their Web site, Panhell alleges that “approximately 30-35 percent of the female student body is involved with one of the three national sorority chapters.” Whitman claims that 55 percent of the student body, which totals 1434, are women. Therefore, about 276 women on campus are part of a sorority and there are roughly 92 members in each sorority. Though I’m assuming ideal conditions and not taking into account any confounding variables, the addition of a new sorority at Whitman would drastically increase the overall percentage of women in sororities to around 47 percent. Nearly half of all the women on campus would be in a sorority.
One of the most deleterious effects of sorority life with respect to the student body is its exclusivity. While sorority members are “encouraged to maintain a diversity of friendships,” they rarely do out of a lack of time to spend on non-greek activities besides, of course, school or the occasional club. It’s even more difficult to imagine maintaining friendships with women in sororities if their constituency were to approach 50 percent: more exclusive sorority-fraternity dances, more chapter meetings and the like.
Sororities are as exclusive as they are homogenizing. Women in sororities are required to attend a multiplicity of events that gravely limit their social interactions with people outside of the group that attend these events. Of course, I hang out with a similar group of people all the time, but it is my decision to do so, not that of a socially limiting hierarchical structure whose implementation I pay for. The more sororities we have on campus, the more homogenized the campus will be.
The addition of another sorority would inherently put pressure on its leaders to recruit heavily in order to not repeat the shortcomings of the last sorority to go under back in 2005.
A heavy recruitment campaign could convince women who would have otherwise opted for an independent lifestyle to join a sorority out of a perceived need to instantly and effortlessly find a group of friends. Proselytizing, greek style.
Sororities reinforce the very heteronormativity: yeah, I said it: that many of us came to college to deconstruct. I’m not saying that sororities don’t accept women who identify as queer or don’t identify with a gender at all, because I’d hope that they do. But, as a friend told me, the palpable implications that come with attending frat parties and sorority-fraternity socials are that you attend them with the ultimate objective of hooking-up or meeting someone rather than merely developing friendships.
So, how about it Panhell? Do you believe in democracy? Do you want to demystify the non-greek perception of sororities on campus and give us a legitimate reason for why we should allow a new one?
What better way to establish a discourse with the student body than to afford us a binding vote on this pressing issue that will not only affect greek life and Panhell members, but the entire campus. Your sororities have already begun a cordial and productive relationship with the student body through worthwhile philanthropic activities such as Mr. Whitman and Cakes for CASA. Why can’t Panhell take this a step further and establish one as well?