Becoming Greek

While living a Greek life may be attractive to many, becoming part of said life is never easy. In fact, it is often time-consuming and annoying, a constant thing that lasts months until initiation. One of my friends chose to join a sorority and she is going through this process as I write this. She won't be initiated until mid-November. Until then, she has to do all kinds of little tasks, which take up a lot of her time.

Right now, for one, she has to take this online course on alcohol awareness. I understand why this is important to her sorority. A lot of people in Greek organizations have had bad things happen to them as a direct result of their booze consumption. However, this course doesn't say anything that she hasn't learned a thousand times already. How much a drink is, how men can drink more than women, how being drunk can affect your judgement. None of it really matters since she doesn't drink anyway. It seems like a waste of time for her to have to take the course just like everyone who does drink.

This isn't the only thing she has to do. Not by a long shot. She has all of these random little tasks her sorority assigns her. Last weekend she had a lockin to go to, where she and everyone in her class have to stay in the sorority house for 24 hours together. It is supposed to encourage bonding or something. Next weekend she has a lockout, where she will go with a handful of other girls and stay at the house of one of the sorority members who lives a few hours away from Purdue. She has also had to do some other things, like go to a pumpkin carving and pledge night. Most of these activities serve no real purpose. They are supposed to help the group become closer, but it doesn't help much when none of them want to be there in the first place. My friend is also supposed to go to a lot of parties held at fraternaties, but she chooses not to because of all the alcohol consumption at them.

Now her sorority cannot actually force her to do all these things. They are not allowed to force her to do things like go to fraternity parties. However, they can reward her for doing so. She can get points for going to events and meeting sisters from older classes and stuff, points that will help her get a better room and other benefits when she actually moves into the house next semester. In this way the sorority perpetuates the Greek traditions of togetherness and drinking.

Why does she have to jump through all these hoops to join the sorority? She doesn't drink and doesn't want to drink, yet she has to complete the alcohol awareness course and gets invited to parties (which seem kind of contradictory...). She wants to be a part of her sorority, but she doesn't want it to take up all her time and become her whole life. It seems like her sorority makes joining overly difficult on people like her who want to join and won't do anything stupid, but have things to do outside of Greek life.