Is It Me? Am I The Villain?
My sorority has gotten in trouble for hazing. Headquarters is threatening to shut down our Canadian chapter, and my phone has been blowing up with sisters sharing the news.
I’ve spent the last week reminiscing on the organization I once dedicated my life to but am now not sure I would bother to defend.
E-Board walking into chapter meetings. IYKYK
Scream Queens
In university, I joined Greek life to make friends. At first, I didn’t think I was cool enough for the sorority I wanted. They were too pretty, too interesting, and all clearly hungover during the recruitment event. I resolved that I’d be part of the quieter organization. The one that talked about their book club instead of their parties.
When the hot girls invited me in, I knew I’d do anything to stay.
I was so thrilled to belong with the cool girls that I ignored shady behaviour. Older sisters told me I was let in by mistake. I was a recruitment “crack slipper.” Some gave strict rules on who I could and couldn’t date, telling me it was slutty to even flirt. Others tried to intimidate me into leaving.
At the time, it seemed reasonable. I was encroaching on their organization. I had to prove myself worthy.
Besides, I knew the trials of being a pledge culminated in being a sister. Becoming a full member was the carrot that kept me going. Once I was in, I knew they’d respect me.
Our group of pledges held each other through it. We spent late nights being quizzed on sorority history, early mornings studying before class, and afternoons answering panicked phone calls from girls who forgot the pin we were forced to wear throughout our “new member” status.
We laughed the fear away because we knew the other side promised “life-long” friendships. Leaders assured us that what we were going through was relationship-building. It was tradition, and it was crucial to establishing bonds.
I was a believer.
The last night of initiation was the scariest. I expected to be pushed into the river or spat at. I braced myself to have to run laps or strip down. There were enough movies about hazing to keep my imagination running for weeks.
The reality was much tamer. I spent the night outside in a blindfold answering questions about the sorority. I was called dumb when I got one wrong. I was called a keener when I got too many right. They gave us bricks to hold, and I clung to mine for dear life when sisters occasionally tried to take it from my hands.
The transition from outsiders to insiders was instantaneous. When we took off our blindfolds, we found ourselves at a girly sleepover. The bricks turned out to be decorated gifts from our sisters. Girls who had spent weeks bullying me suddenly talked to me like besties. It was like my faults washed away when the night was over.
I wasn’t a “crack slipper.” I wasn’t a slut.
I was a sister.
Look Back At It
When I first saw the hazing allegations, I was horrified. I laughed at how far downhill the sisterhood must have fallen. I couldn’t believe these new women could be so stupid and mean.
The more details I heard, the more I recognized my own experience and behaviour: isolating new members, asking them intimidating questions, blindfolds...
For the longest time, I saw my initiation as a positive experience. I heard horror stories from other organizations that made me grateful. Our initiation never got physical, so I never thought it was that bad. In the years that followed, I happily watched new girls go through similar trials, thinking that the fear would lead to stronger sister bonds.
Now I’m confronting that all of it was pretty fucked up.
I’m having a reckoning with my past behaviour in the same way that many men had to swallow the realities of #MeToo. Cancel culture is forcing all of us to look back and see where we let other people down.
As a sister, we felt protected in knowing our headquarters had an anti-hazing policy. Many of our traditions came from a curriculum provided from the top down. To “develop members” we had to give them quizzes about our sorority history. Grilling them a little extra hard was our own creative spin. We thought we were doing right by our leaders.
Name-calling was never condoned, but there were always a few girls that found joy in intimidating new members. Often we didn’t stop them - mostly because they were scary.
Giving women blanket power over each other is a dangerous game to play. Initiation becomes a catty Stanford Prison Experiment when not regulated. Considering our entire judicial system was structured by girls under 22, it’s not hard to see where things went wrong.
The more I think about it, the more I question my time in the sorority. What I once viewed as empowering is twisting into something much darker.
Giving homework back to my therapist
Family Ties
Since graduating, I’ve wrestled with my sorority experience. At times it feels like the best decision I’ve ever made. In other moments I wonder if it did more harm than good.
I joined as a shy 17-year-old. My parents were skeptical. I spent four years meeting new people, taking on large responsibilities in the chapter, and balancing an overfull plate. By the end, even my mom had to acknowledge the growth. I had broken out of my shell and emerged as a confident, sociable woman.
In school, the sorority feels like everything. It’s your job, your social life, your tie to a brighter future. I couldn’t see beyond my letters to a life not soaked in tradition and jungle juice. I let it consume me, and when I graduated it was like starting my life from scratch.
Unlike other school groups, I’m often forced to relive my time in the sorority. It’s a life-long sisterhood. Hell, our slogan is “Once, Always.”
As such, I find myself constantly being pulled back to moments of stress and insecurity. In that reflection, I realized that my university years were actually pretty lonely. I had a rotating wheel of surface-level friendships that saw me through some of the most impactful memories of my life. No one was a constant.
I get paranoid that some of my most meaningful friendships aren’t reciprocated. There were women that listened to my darkest secrets who now don’t even follow me on social media. I have to dig deep to remember the names of girls who I brought to the hospital, picked up from bars, or ushered out of fraternity bedrooms. I’m not confident that any of the women I went to school with even know my middle name.
For the few I remain friends with, our memories half line-up. We floated around each other, remembering fragments of the same stories. All our sisters were nearby, but we ultimately went through everything alone.
Our letters were a loose tether that kept my contact list full but never forced me to go deeper with anyone.
Now that the chapter is in jeopardy, I wonder if that experience is worth saving. Maybe the current girls would be better off forging a normal number of friendships with people in their classes. Maybe no one needs to be connected to 90 women at a time.
Anti-Hero
To get through the hazing allegations, the current sisters are suggesting a full overhaul. They want to rebuild their new member process to genuinely align with the anti-hazing policy.
Our younger sisters are righting our wrongs.
I’m grateful and excited that they care enough to build something better. I’m disheartened that what we created needs that much of an overhaul. While I think I’m a good person, it’s hard to recognize the pain and bullying I helped perpetuate for years. It’s hard not to look back and wonder, “is it me? Am I the villain?”
Maybe we all need to question ourselves to keep growing. Maybe the best thing my sorority ever did was force me to look back with a critical eye.
None of us are heroes.
As much as I would have done things differently, the sorority is still woven into my history. I left university with a bunch of loose threads, and only now have I started pulling. I’ve discovered more about myself than I ever thought possible, and I’m glad the constant reflection exposed the knots that need work. I’ve learnt more about the sisters I’ve kept in the last few years than I ever did in school, and I’m grateful that they were there to lean on.
I hope through this process the current sisters learn to spend more time tying themselves together than they do tying blindfolds.
