The Exclusion Argument

Next up on our list: exclusion.

Being a member of greek life is supposed to be the perfect way to meet all of your new friends in college. The advice that I constantly got when voicing my concerns for meeting new people was “No biggie! Go Greek!” As if going greek would immediately solve all of my concerns/

Is this really the best way to make friends in college?

Let me take you through how the whole sorority rush process works.

So, first you start with conversation days. These are the most annoying, exhausting, all around soul-sucking days of the process. Basically, you get dressed up to talk to a bunch of people about your life while they judge you on whether or not your answers are interesting enough for a call back the next day. Keep in mind this whole “conversation” happens in exactly fifteen minutes. No more, no less. You also are required to do 10 of these in a row. What an amazing way to meet potential new friends!

Next up on the week of fun comes house tours. Luck you! You get to prance around a three story building in heels, making sure you don’t accidentally fall flat on their oh-so-perfect marble floors. But wait! Don’t forget to compliment the girls on how chic and elegant each fluffy pillow and decorative vase is. If that’s too boring for you, don’t worry, you also get to try and make the girl interested in your life story again! If you don’t juggle all this well, then you get cut. That’s that.

You’ve made it round three!!! Congrats! What’s your prize? A super exciting video filled with white privilege that has nothing to do with academia or higher education whatsoever. I am not going to get into this whole discussion now, it’s too long and complex for only one paragraph. A blog will be dedicated to just the topic of white privilege and terrible videos portraying greek life will be released later, promise. Anyways, at this point in the rush process, you only get a maximum of four minutes to talk to your rushee until they send you out the door and you get to go through yet another cut.

You’re finally here, the last day of rush. Preference night. This is your last chance to prove that you have what it takes to join this elite group of girls. You better bring your a-game. On this night, you have to wear the type of dress you would wear to a wedding party. To compete you should probably be wearing heels, tons of makeup, and your hair better be perfectly quaffed.

After all of this, you finally find out whether you’re lucky enough to be picked by one of these sororities. If you haven’t been, oh well. After all, you only paid a 60 dollar deposit and a couple hundred bucks on the perfect clothes. There is absolutely no guarantee that after this whole process you will even get a bid.

As a freshman in college, if you go through this entire judgemental process and then get told no, you are starting this new step of your life with your peers telling you that you aren’t good enough. For no real reason, you have been judged, stressed, singled out, and ultimately, excluded in your first week of college.

Furthermore, after you go through this whole degrading experience, you get to be continue to be excluded throughout the rest of the year. Every thursday night, there are mixers with one frat and one sorority, and you can’t go. Every friday night, there are exchanges with only one sorority and one fraternity, and again, you can’t go. As you walk through campus center, you see girls wearing their sororities backpacks and sitting in cliques together.

The sure fire way that people told you to make friends has backfired. The process that helps so many fresh college students meet people is the same process as the one that excludes hundreds of people. Is it really okay for a college to preach going greek for meeting friends if it will also make people feel like they have no friends?

In my opinion, no, in no way is the idea that “greek life is good because it helps you make friends” a true argument because it only benefits the girls that actually make friends. That being said, I don’t agree with this argument, and I feel that in terms of exclusion, and feeling like you belong in a new place, greek life is ultimately detrimental to the college experience. What are your thoughts?