If you told my freshman self that I would be joining a sorority, let alone starting a new colony I would’ve committed you to the nearest psychiatric hospital. My freshman year when all of my friends were rushing sororities and fraternities, I decided it wasn’t for me without really knowing the different aspects of Greek life. I always saw how the world sees greek life: college kids partying and getting too drunk, plagued with sexual assault and above all, hazing.
After a few semesters, I saw how greek life positively affected my friends. So in the fall semester of my sophomore year, I decided it was time to try it out because I always try something before I say I don’t like it. I then found out that a new sorority would be coming to Adelphi. I thought that this would be a great opportunity to join a sorority. There were a couple of things drew me to join my sorority;
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They had a strict no hazing policy
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I would be a Charter member (members who start a new chapter)
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Their philanthropy was the Children’s Miracle Network Hospital (I want to be a pediatric nurse)
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Their colors are my favorite color. (I LOVE pink)
So in the spring semester, I decided to go through the recruitment process for the sorority. This included going through a series of rounds that included going to events and attending interviews to see if you are a right fit. After going through these rounds I was given a bid (an invitation to join the sorority) and invited to attend bid day. The following weeks were pretty overwhelming because there was a lot of new information and a lot of new faces to meet. We are a very diverse chapter with girls from different majors, races, and interests from all over the country.
In the following months, once a week we attended new member education meetings where we learned about the history of our sorority and bonded by hanging out and getting to know everyone. After a few weeks, we had our twin reveal where we get paired up with a sister with whom we bonded the most with. Normally there are bigs and littles but because we all joined at the same time, some got triplets and some got twins. I am in a triplet with my friends that I love.
There were times in the semester where I questioned if I wanted to continue being in my sorority but after hanging out with some of the girls, I was sure that this was the right choice for me.
But by the time the semester was done I felt closer to the 70 something girls who I’ve never met before, and for someone who didn’t know ANYTHING about greek life, I was grateful for the experience.
This semester we are still going through the process of building our chapter and growing our bond. To anyone thinking about joining Greek life or to anyone who writes it off as something they would never do, I would say try it out whether it’s an organization that’s apart of the National Panhellenic Conference of the National Panhellenic Council or any other Greek organization; because it doesn’t make sense to say “I would never do that.” Or “It’s stupid, I don’t know why anyone would ever do that.” I am glad that I stuck through the whole process and realized it was something that was right for me and a semester later I came out on the other side without being hazed or pressured into doing ANYTHING that I wasn’t comfortable with.