I am one of the huge number of women who, before they came to college, never considered she would ever become a “sorority girl.” I was so opposed to it that I even held—and still do, to a lesser degree—an aversion to the stereotypical sorority look and mindset. Kenyon is full of diverse, interesting people, none of whom conform to the archetype I had observed in movies like Legally Blonde. Years of consuming this generalized portrayal of Greek life had ingrained a rigid image into my head.
In so many ways, I was very, very wrong about Greek life. But in other ways, I was right.
On an unusually warm Sunday night, I found myself sitting in Rosse Hall with my friends, watching each of Kenyon’s Greek organizations compete for the first-years in front of them. In the space of a few minutes, every organization tried to convince the anxiously attentive crowd to pledge. After the first few presentations, I thought, Wait—I never thought this was for me…how did I even end up here?
The answer is as complicated and individualized as you’ll find in the mind of everyone who was in that auditorium. For me, it boiled down to joining a group where I felt like I belonged. I’m very involved in campus, but I’m also the kind of person who dreads ambiguity: I like neat, discrete descriptors of myself, and I thought a social organization could round out other activities activities I’ve already joined on campus.
As much as I hesitate to admit it, I was one of the people rushing to find a group of true friends beyond those I’d already made. Last semester, I experienced considerable fluctuation with my friend group, and it made me insecure about the friends that stuck around. I was so used to the friends I’d had in high school that the separation from them really threw me off—I wanted to reclaim that feeling of belonging, of a mutually understood loyalty that was, quite literally, permanently binding. I want to stress that I don’t think rushing results from exclusively petty or insecure reasons. My own reasons, I now know, are probably results of my insecurities. For example: I was lucky enough to become friends with a sophomore who vouched for the impact her organization had had on her time at Kenyon. She cited the constant, unquestioned support from her sisters and the availability of a listening ear whenever she needed it.
Sounds pretty nice to someone who has an almost irrational fear of loneliness, right?
What really sold me on rushing was the fact that I didn’t even know that this friend was in Greek life until three months or so after I met her. I had been so indoctrinated with the images of sorority houses, matching pink sweatshirts with Greek letters, and relentlessly competitive fundraisers that I assumed I could spot a sorority girl a mile away. My friend proved to me that being in a sorority doesn’t have to be 100% of your identity if you don’t want it to be. Liberating myself from anticipated subjection to that stereotype was the final straw, and with only a few reservations left, I dutifully filled out and submitted my OrgSync form.
Even before the first event began, I felt that my recruitment experience was fraught with anxiety. For once, though, the anxiety wasn’t coming from me. I had gone into rush not expecting nor feeling the need to join an organization, only to pledge if I had a real connection with the people I met (and to take advantage of free food and crafts). Most of my friends, though, had a different perspective. I began to see the consequences of this mentality—dependence on others for social validation—as soon as I left Rosse that first night. Two of my friends were sitting further back and had been able to leave the auditorium earlier than the rest of us. As we all took Middle Path back to the first-year quad, one of my friends who was next to me leaned over and said, “Those two are being really cliquey.”
“What do you mean?” I answered. “They just got out earlier than we did.”
“I don’t know! They’re just being really cliquey right now, okay?”
In a way, that answer acted as the thesis statement for rush. For no apparent reason (or for an imagined one), one person would perceive another’s actions as hostile in some way, then refuse to consider that they were misinterpreting the situation nor change their attitude.
When it came time for off-campus events, for which one had to RSVP to reserve their spot, I felt the social pressures rise perceptibly. I went to a restaurant with a group that I really liked, but at the end of the night, I had spent so many hours monitoring how I’d come off—trying to impress others, but not talking too much, sitting up straight, watching how I ate, etc—that I was exhausted. Once I got back to campus, I barely felt like recapping the night with my friends because I was so tired of talking.
Those few RSVP events gave everyone a chance to really display interest instead of just dropping by an on-campus function. It also meant the dedication to certain groups deepened, almost into dependence.
If I felt like my friend group had skinned its knee during the first few rocky days of rush, the beginning of invite-only events was like some judgemental overlord pouring lemon juice on the wound.
I remember the nervous anticipation I felt when I awaited an invite from my favorite organization on Thursday night. I told myself it didn’t really matter if I didn’t get one, but I knew I would be a little disappointed if I were rejected. I’m lucky to have experience with disappointment and rejection (Greek recruitment is curiously similar to an important audition), so I felt like I could manage a let-down.
Unfortunately, some of my friends weren’t able to handle the feeling so well.
To their credit, it’s an awful feeling. I was fortunate enough to be invited to events from three different organizations, but one of my friends was sorely disappointed on the first night when she wasn’t invited back to her favorite sorority.
In the end, my friend did get an email, but it was a polite rejection, not an invitation. My friend was crushed to see so much time, effort, and hope lead to nothing, and spent the next half an hour or so crying. I know how rejection feels, and it almost felt as shitty to watch her sobbing, saying she didn’t understand what had happened.
To be quite honest, I didn’t really understand, either. I had watched her do everything you’re supposed to do. She really clicked with some of the sisters at the meet and greet, she stayed at their events for as long as possible, she friended all the sisters on Facebook, and she even reached out to one of them to meet outside of rush events and discuss Greek life. She exhibited so much interest in them, and they didn’t show any in her.
This kind of rejection has happened to all of us, and we all react differently. But my friend’s reaction was what, to me, signalled our group’s descent into the trope of petty girl-on-girl hate that I so detest in sorority girl stereotypes.
Let me reiterate: I really, really, don’t appreciate it when someone lashes out as a coping mechanism. This has happened so many times in the past week, though, that I’m starting to realize it’s more apparent in my friends’ personalities than I thought.
I understood—and still understand—my friends to be compassionate, kind, empathetic people. This perception, though, was shaken when the friend who’d been rejected the previous night made a social media post featuring a screenshot of her email and a scathing caption (including “F*** Fake Bitches” as the location) about how petty and horrible the girls were. What struck me as the worst part, though, was that those “fake bitches” were the very people this friend so desperately wanted to befriend. If she really thought they were despicable, ingenuine people, why would she wish to be in that group?
This episode was not an isolated incident. At this point, I was really displeased with my friends’ behavior. I was disillusioned with rush, even though I had made real connections that I felt would turn into friendships with girls in a particular group. I questioned if these friends would turn on me as quickly and dramatically as they had on the sororities were I ever to accidentally upset or exclude them. I really, really hoped that these were anomalies in their actions, not facets of their personalities.
Here’s the dark, ugly thing about rush: it brings out the qualities in people you thought you’d never see. By viewing it exclusively as a competition, pledges feel like they’re pitted against each other, which makes them doubt their friendships, regard “competing” girls with animosity, and respond to rejection with malice. When they’re rejected, rushees exhibit the very cattiness and hostility that they accuse their rejectors of, fulfilling the stereotype of the “sorority bitch” that I had so hoped was based only in fiction.
The potential of joining a group and earning that everlasting social validation distracts people from their existing friendships, the ones formed without the institution of a few Greek letters joining them together. Of course I didn’t plan on ignoring any of my current friends if I try to join a sorority; this was their worst fear, though, and it manifested itself over and over, especially when some friends of mine lost all of their options for a sorority.
I think that Greek life is more about finding a group of people who share your values and working with them to do a bit of good. It shouldn’t be about identifying a band of clones to whom to cling for the next three and a half years. Unfortunately, I saw that the latter was an idea endorsed by people I had thought to be invincible to that kind of mindset.
My main qualm with Greek recruitment, at Kenyon or any other school, is the element of perceived “us vs. them” that breeds such hostile, uncharacteristic reactions. When two of my friends vehemently denied my suggestion to think of rush as a chance to meet friends rather than a chance to beat out other people, I finally had a name for what had been bringing me so much cognitive dissonance about rush: artificial competition.
Often, the object of artificial competition’s malice is people in the same position as the aggressor: girls trying to fit in and make friends. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard one of my friends refer to other girls rushing—strangers—as fake bitches because of the way they looked. These girls had great skin, wore pretty clothes, and were good at conversation—they were what my friend perceived as “typical” sorority girls, and more likely to get a bid because of that. Right off the bat this way of thinking is incorrect, especially at Kenyon, where being quirky and unique is prized over conformity to a stereotype. Because of artificial competition, my friend made horrible accusations about girls she had never met, just because they seemed to fit a stereotype that doesn’t apply to social success at Kenyon.
The sororities who made the decisions were also targets of animosity. From what I understand about the process, it’s mandatory for organizations to narrow down the pool, because they can’t admit every person rushing. These decisions strike me as very impersonal, especially because rushees have only spoken to the groups for a total of a few hours by the time cuts have to be made. My friends, though, took these decisions very personally, and it made me sad to see them scrutinizing every quality that could have been the cause of their rejection. I think my friends are all beautiful, talented, intelligent people, but the rush process made them face their insecurities, made them relive moments of self-loathing over and over again.
Of course, one can choose to have a more detached (and consequently more positive) outlook, but it takes years to cultivate the kind of self-esteem that allows one to take what is basically institutionalized social rejection with grace and understanding. This is a quality that a majority of teenage girls just don’t have yet.
Overall, rush magnifies the negative results of competition. It turned my friends into people I barely recognized, and it brought all of us an unwelcome degree of social pressure and exhaustion.
As it turns out, I received two bids and I’ll be accepting one. I am incredibly excited to join a group of sweet, fun-loving sisters, among whom are some of my best friends. In all honesty, though, I would not go through rush again. I was lucky to have a great result, but I wouldn’t do it over. Rush week was one of the most stressful weeks of my life, but I’m happy with the outcome. I’m even more happy, though, that things can settle back down for my friends and me.