As I’m doing my best to catch up on the many hours of sleep I lost both during and in preparation for recruitment, I find myself reflecting on the attitudes and perspectives I had before joining my sorority chapter, Delta Gamma (DG). I wish I could go back and tell my freshman-year self that even though recruitment is overwhelming and your future is filled with uncertainty, you are about to join a group of girls who will uplift, encourage, and care for you through every up and down you have in college. 

With nothing to fill the hours that recruitment practice demanded, I find myself with time to think and reflect. I have wondered, over these past few days, why I used to passionately proclaim my hatred for Greek life. I wondered why I swore up and down that I would never, ever join a sorority. I wondered why I used blanket statements when labeling “sorority girls” as shallow, self-centered and fake. My younger self argued ardently that the only reason a girl would desire to join a sorority was because she lacked individuality and needed a group to give her a sense of belonging. 

Part of me wants to laugh when I think about how deeply my disgust and hatred ran for sororities prior to joining one myself. But, the other part of me wonders why there was that deep hatred in the first place. Why did it exist? Where did that hatred come from? Why was I so quick to spew judgment on an organization and community I knew so little about? 

To best understand how I changed from a 16-year-old girl who espoused nothing but hostility for sorority life and the girls who took part in it, we must first go back to my social life in high school. I pretty much kept to myself. I had about two close friends, and I didn’t really mind or even notice how small my circle was until a devastating blow occurred when one of those two friends moved seven hours away. 

With only one close friend, I began to realize how alone I often felt, and though I had friends thanks to my extracurricular involvement, it was not enough to distract me from the fact that I somehow ended up with only one close friend. So now, looking back at the baseless insults I hurled at sororities to anyone who I deemed like-minded and individualist enough to understand my “cool girl”-esque monologuing, I realize that I was subconsciously funneling my jealousy into hatred. 

The Merriam-Webster definition of “sorority” is simply “a club of women.” A club of women. Teenage Calla was jealous of the fact that, unlike her, some girls had hundreds of friends to turn to at any given moment. Though I am still extremely close with my aforementioned best friend from high school, I would be lying if I said that the part of me that desperately craved a large group of supportive female friends, was jealous of any girl who had that. I projected my insecurities onto sorority girls simply because I wanted something they had so desperately, but would not admit it. 

Internalized misogyny was buried so deep in my younger self that I stopped myself from displaying any kind of deep and genuine emotion for fear that I would have to admit that I was no different than any other sorority girl.

But I recognize now that it was not simply my own insecurities that added fire to the fuel of my loathing. There were also socio-cultural factors encouraging me to disparage sorority girls and sorority life as a whole. The hate in me, as hate often does, originated from a place of fear. But that fear was not my own, that fear belonged to the unspoken misogynistic beliefs that had been taught to me since childhood, and ingrained in me by every layer of society. Misogyny is defined as, according to Merriam-Webster, “hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against women.” 

Internalized misogyny is the subconscious bias that women have either against themselves or against other women. Being raised in a society dominated by the male gaze, whether that gaze is seen in books, movies, sports or even classrooms —girls and women alike will often take on, whether consciously or unconsciously, the perspectives and opinions of whatever man in whatever room speaks the loudest and often, with the most anger. 

As it did for me, misogyny will often manifest in the attitudes and beliefs women attribute to other women. If to be a misogynist is to hate women, then unsurprisingly, the very concept of a sorority is enough to induce a fit of nausea. What would be worse for a misogynist than a large group of women, or, in other words, a “no-boys allowed club?” This no-boys club completely rejects men and acts as a safe space for women to be authentic without the often suffocating and all too familiar judgment they receive from their male counterparts. 

The times I have felt most accepted and most myself were when I was with the members of Delta Gamma. And because it is fresh on my mind and a perfect example of how deep the love and care women in a sorority can have for each other, I must mention recruitment week. 

I say this because during this time—misogynist beware—the girls of Delta Gamma will come together for roughly hours, almost every day, for over a week, to practice recruiting girls to their chapter. We practice recruiting because, through practice, each member learns how to best reflect the sorority’s values. Those values are to foster strong friendships among women, to promote women’s education and cultural interest, to empower women to act with intention, to develop the best qualities of character in a woman, to support each other through every endeavor

We care about each other, so we make time outside of our jobs, classes and various other involvements to come for hours on end to practice, each individual girl working for the common good of the whole. We do this because we know we are being the best we can be, not for ourselves but for the selfless success of the women we care about. To want to recruit and to be there every day, even when we are tired or have something taxing us mentally outside of practice, is to say without words: I value my people, and no matter what, I will show up for them. 

Throughout my life, I have heard the belief perpetuated that large groups of women, i.e. friend groups or sororities, have short “shelf lives.” For being the shallow and gossip-obsessed creatures that we are, our groups will fall like Rome if, for some reason, we are in close proximity for too long. And yet, time and time again, year after year, I find that even after being in close proximity, certainly for too long, I only come to love, respect and appreciate the girls in my sorority all the more. 

Every year, without fail, on preference day, I find myself sobbing hysterically, and though part of those tears may be attributed to sleep deprivation, I know as well that those emotions come from the deep love that I have for a community that opened their arms and their hearts to my uncertain and certainly misogynistic, younger self. 

Preference Day is the last day in the recruitment process, in which the Potential New Members (PNMs) will decide which sorority they want to join. Preference Day is emotional for me and for many, because every year, three girls in Delta Gamma will go up in front of their friends and hundreds of PNMs, and they open their hearts to them. My friends will tell hundreds of strangers some of their most deeply personal stories, and unsurprisingly, they all have a common theme. It was the girls I met in DG who were there for me even when I did not know them too well or even when I felt I had done something that did not warrant their care, time or support. They genuinely care because they are genuine people. 

When I was on the PNM side of recruitment, I remember wondering why so many girls kept crying, and frankly, it freaked me out. I would joke to myself that they were being held hostage and were crying for release, still a funny joke, because I never cried hearing the stories of active members. I now realize that was for two reasons. First, I did not personally know the girls telling the stories, but I know them now, hence the recurring waterworks. 

Internalized misogyny was buried so deep in my younger self that I stopped myself from displaying any kind of deep and genuine emotion for fear that I would have to admit that I was no different than any other sorority girl. But now, as I reflect on the tears I’m bound to shed during preference day next year, I can proudly admit, I am like every other sorority girl, because no sorority girl is exactly the same.  Cliche though it may sound, in my experience, it rings true. Within my sorority, I have come across people from many parts of the country—from Maine to Missouri to Texas to California and back, people with many different backgrounds, perspectives, majors and involvements. 

All because I joined DG, I have become friends with girls whose paths I never would have crossed if not for Delta Gamma. My initial reason for joining Delta Gamma was because I looked up to the girls I talked to during recruitment. They were unfailingly kind, unfailingly authentic, and unfailingly compassionate. To be able to be my complete self with girls who I just met and would later go on to love rattled me to my misogynistic core. 

I searched each girl I talked to during recruitment for that blandness, that fakeness, that would confirm my long-held belief that sorority girls were fake and shallow, but I never found either of those traits. So now, the thought of being like a sorority girl would be an immense honor, if that means that I represent the girls who made me love and continue to love Delta Gamma. 

To be representative of a sorority girl after my unfailingly positive perceptions of these women is the highest of compliments. Though I cannot speak for men or their perspectives, I can speak for some women. And to them I would say this; the next time you are tempted to make a snide comment about a girl in a sorority, or sororities as a whole, or the next time you find yourself turning your nose up at sorority girls because “they are not for you” or because “you would never join a sorority”, genuinely ask yourself: Why? What about joining a group of women threatens your image of yourself as an individual? 

Now let me make myself clear: I can not understand the perspective of any woman of color. The complex opinions or relationships they have with sororities or the notion of sororities is entirely justifiable, and understandable and their decision to join a sorority comes with facing the extremely racist history that is unfortunately present in the Panhellenic community wherever you go. It is not, nor will it ever be, my place to chide or speak on the feelings that any of these women have towards a sorority. 

I further want to make clear that I am only speaking about my experience with sorority life at SLU. I do not doubt that if I went to any other school, my experience could have been extremely different. But I did not, and so know that every word I have written comes from a genuine place. 

This article is not intended as a ploy to get every girl to go through recruitment, nor is it intended to say that happiness and uplifting female friendships are guaranteed if you go through recruitment.  Joining any organization on campus will come with its highs, lows, struggles and frustrations. But overwhelmingly, when I reflect on my experience in a sorority here at SLU, I have nothing in my heart but gratitude and love for the girls who accepted me when I did not fully accept them or myself. I have nothing but gratitude and love for these women, for they took a jealous, insecure, isolated girl and showed her how truly beautiful and empowering being surrounded, uplifted and seen by a group of women can be.