Rock bottom for me was two years ago. I had started my 2nd year of college with a very low gpa.(I mean academic probation). I was jumping from major to major not knowing what I really wanted to do.I ended up not fully focusing my attention on one particular subject and I was barley sliding by in college. I had gotten so far away from my studies that my social life started to become more of a priority to me then actually going to classes. I would honestly miss the exact number of classes just so I could do nothing? Now that I think about it, I realize that it lacks common sense. But during that time it made perfect sense. I wanted to have a big group of friends that would support me and honestly do a lot a great philanthropy work! So how was I gonna accomplish that? I would join a sorority. It didn’t matter which sorority because all of them at the core pretty much had the same values ( just worded different). So I did It! I joined a sorority thats motto was to build strong girls. I stand by that motto today but what I learned during my own experience was that it doesn’t build strong girls not even close to it! I did think that i should put my own biases aside and not write from a place of hurt or anger but if I choose to not say certain things or censor myself because I know that it would upset another person then how can what I write be authentic? So I know that everyone is not gonna agree with how I now look at a sorority and maybe your own experience with a sorority is way better than mine and it really did build character then awesome!! I can only write about what I have experienced through my own eyes and not some fluffy piece that doesn’t contain any truth to it.
The process of joining a sorority is like being vetted by the FBI and the CIA and then maybe the FBI one more time for fun.
The process is so oldfashied and outdated that it honestly should be revised to a more current society. So what is this grueling process? Well to simplify it way down its a two week(already too long) program that allows girls that have already been initiated into the sorority to interview girls for potential membership into their society. Sounds like any other criteria to getting into any other kind of program but here’s the kicker.
Have you ever heard of the idea or concept of “illusion of choice”.With pertaining to a sorority the program and the ones running the program tells you that you can get to choose what sorority house you get to be in and they choose you. It’s a mutual agreement. Lies! That’s not true at all! If that were true then you wouldn’t have a process of narrowing down houses from 13 to two. As the weeks progressed you had to narrow your selections to a certain number each voting period and so did the houses. So to make it way easier think if you voted for house A and house B as your top two but let’s say house A didn’t want you but house B did then you would go to house B. Your vote doesn’t really weigh that much in comparison to the houses. With knowing this then it was basically what house wanted you! That may sound like more personal than it actually is because the real truth is that many of these sororities ( they wont admit it probably because they dont wanna be crucified) do care what you look like when it comes to your race and body image. I’m pretty much saying if you weren’t there ideal look then you wore not gonna get an invitation back.
Why? Because as cliche as it is, they wanted to look like the hot girls on campus and that perception was wayyyyyyyyy more important than the quality of girls they wore allowing into their houses. Not all houses believed in this philosophy or warped way of thinking but I will say over 75% of them did. It’s pretty easy to see when most of the members of each house all looked the same!!!!! I mean I couldn’t tell one girl apart from the next. Its pretty nasty to think that these girls didn’t have an individuality but that’s what they wanted someone who they believed to be hot that would keep their reputation the way they wanted. Well how is that building strong girls? Sorry you don’t look like a victoria’s secret angel because you like to be healthy then sorry you don’t make the cut. You don’t have perfect complexion and long blonde or brown hair then sorry you don’t make the cut. You don’t have the same science major or education major then sorry you don’t make the cut. So who is left at the end of the day? Let me be honest with you I am not a size 2, I am not a tall women by no means (5’3 or somtimes 5’4 if i’m stretching), I have frizzy bleach blonde hair. Sorry but I wouldn’t make the sorority look like a hot girl! I guess by their standardization of what a sorority woman was then even I don’t measure up. What does that say about the society we live in? That the appearance of women is what we value rather than her mind or soul?
Joining was the easy part! Participation was the worst!
When I say I wouldn’t recommend anyone to join an organization that’s written values wore far from what they honestly believed, then this is where I would say don’t do it! It’s a con! You make lifelong friends and they are gonna be your bridesmaids in your wedding( I should’ve ran when i heard this statement.)This ideology practically summed up their entire belief system. I’m about to cast stones at this entire community ( that I once glorified), a woman’s value is not based off of a man or another woman! It’s hard to say but let’s be real, Sororities have gotten pretty hard awakening when several stories and media sources have claimed that its a drinking organization rather than a volunteer organization.Sororities in the past few years have gotten the reputation of having excessive binge drinking and drugs. And I will say in the sororities defense that they did preference their excessive drinking and parting with ( I would say like 4-5 times a week) saying that you don’t have to participate but let’s be real for a second. 1. That’s a politically correct statement of covering their ass. So basically saying we aren’t causing you to drink but if you do then that’s on you. 2. Any type of relationship is formed through commonality and participation. Basically if you were not participating then you weren’t building relationships with your “Sisters”.( also known as peer pressure). If you’re counterargument is that sororities do have other activities that don’t include drinking then you are so right! My response would be not often do they actually participate in those events as they should. They don’t participate in volunteering as much they do binge drinking sessions.
In Fact you really only had to volunteer or you could do a payout option most the time to get out of volunteering a few times a month ( like maybe 2 times a month if that). And if you didn’t then there wasn’t a real punishment. In Fact you didn’t even get a slap on the wrist or anything.So that’s about it! If you wanna learn to drink an excessive amount and have really cute instagram photos then I would join! If you wanna look like you have authentic friends then join! If you want to have this warped sense of participation in unproductive organization then join! I’m not saying that a sorority should be able to fix problems in society but I am saying that you have a group of 200-300 women in a room and the only thing that truly is getting accomplished is planning the next downtown outing then that isn’t doing much. And that’s being real! There are other organizations that are making a difference on college campuses and having a bigger impact on society than a sorority. I wish someone had said that to me!
Sorority or Mean Girls?
The main thing I hear when I hear about a sorority is that many people have this idea or stereotype that girls in sororities are mean girls. Let’s clear that up right now. Everyone has their own individual personalities and their own ways of viewing certain matters. So I wouldn’t say a sorority is full of mean girls but I will say its heavily full of politics. And that if you’re not kissing ass to the executive board( like the president cabinet) then you might as well have been invisible. I will say that the way this particular sorority was set up made for ideas to only be generated by a few as opposed to what the majority wanted. With that being said they did not advocate for much change within the chapter but rather what benefited them in the moment as opposed to long term growth. And within any political environment or authority there is gonna be gossip or hearsay and a lot of it was taken for truth. And instead of going to the source and trying to figure out what was fact and what wasn’t it felt alot like whoever kissed their ass was right and the one who didn’t suck up was wrong.
I learned a lot in this sorority and that is don’t be silenced by someone who appears to be in charge because of what they hold as power and what they don’t. I could have walked away from that organization and told them to buzz off but I didn’t. I let one girl say the worst things imaginable and conjure up these lies that came from nothing but one girls imagination. And I honestly believed that if I didn’t make a scene or stayed quiet then the truth will come out. Here’s a little life lesson it didn’t. I got tormented by this person for three months and she got away with calling me so me names because she got to tell her story first. And I was nervous and frightened so I believed that if someone wanted the truth then they would hear it then they could talk to me about it. Another life lesson that also never came and in fact I found out that I was the one being talked about from the executive board. I had talked to the property manager and I even asked for a meeting to hear my side of the story but at that point it was too late. Because this person painted me as a monster that everyone took for truth. Why? Is all I wanted to know. But I knew why. People get scared when you decide you don’t need them in your life and they attack and find ways to make you look bad. Let these people go!! It wasn’t until that semester of college was over and I got several phone calls and hearing apologies from the executive board but why did none of this make me feel better? I got treated as a criminal without a hearing or jury. These WOMEN couldn’t have the decency to talk to me but rather talk about me. I got discussed and analyzed like a fucking science experiment. When I hear their motto is to build to strong girls I realized how silly that was. They didn’t build strong girls but rather tore me down until I felt so alone and abandoned by an organization that said they would be my bridesmaids but just like tides in an ocean change direction so can other people’s opinions.
Not all experiences are gonna be the same
My story isn’t every girls experience in a sorority. And I know a lot of amazing people who joined and do great things but my journey wasn’t those happy go lucky experiences that is splashed all over social media. I want to be real and those photos are not real! They are so staged and have so much work and effort go into the lighting and editing to make it look natural. But you know what I truly believe is the worst thing is that you take photos with just a select group of people and alienate those who aren’t in your selected friend group.Its very cliquey. I wanna be authentic in the way I like and the relationships I have but I know a lot of people who like the way their social media looks and hate their actual lives. What kind of example is that setting? If we make the world think one thing but the truth is another then we are lying to everyone including ourselves.
Don’t let someone else determine what you do
I know writing this was gonna be hard and I know I’m gonna be criticized or judged and probably the worst of them all,Unfollowed on social media !!!!! (Insert dramatic music here)!! Why not be honest in the way I was treated and the way I felt? Why because it brings out some ugly truth that we want to bury or even worse it brings ongoing issues to the light? I will speak for myself and say that this experience brought me to the lowest I mean to lowest point in my entire life.
I had never felt so ashamed,embarrassed, and even scared to ever go to that sorority house again. I choose to leave half of my stuff there and I was willing to just let them have it and never go back to that house and endure any of that pain! That’s never a way to handle a situation when trying to move on. So I went to that house one last time and I didn’t know it then but I realized this was my chance to start completely over. I didn’t give myself permission till many months after that experience but it did give me the ability to close one door for good! And I walked out of that house and never looked back on my time there. I knew I had two roads I could go down and that would be option one which would be me ranting and dragging this organization in the mud or option 2 I could simply walk away and learn the lessons that this experience had taught me. So it took me a long time to realize that option 2 was the only way I was gonna heal from this life that I had lived and the torment it took on my soul.
Dark&Stormi 
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