Grouping people together is not a new phenomenon. We've been doing it since middle school when all of a sudden people wanted to be in the cool crowd and not be known as the kid wearing jeggings from last year. High school took this mindset and put it on steroids, our brains now heavily affected by hormones and other people's opinions. But the cliques and labels of high school were supposed to fall after graduation... right?
The Greek life tier system has strayed away from its original purposes and is now a whole new set of rules and labels for college students to live by. If your school doesn't have a prominent Greek life, you might disagree with everything I'm saying. You could disagree with everything I'm saying even if you do see a Sigma or a Delta symbol every time you walk to class. However, like it or not, Greek life is a big deal at a lot of schools and the tier system that we all blindly follow isn't going away anytime soon. A few embroidered Greek letters on sweatshirts should not be given the power in our modern-day world that they have.
If you go to a school with a heavy Greek life presence, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about when I say the word 'letters.' They're presented proudly on our sweatshirts and t-shirts, giving anyone who passes by us a quick, two-second indication of the type of person we are. Are we stuck up? Do we go out on Tuesdays? Are we, as a chapter, pretty enough? Who do we social with? Everything you need to know is indicated in a few stitched letters on our chest like our own little Scarlet Letters.
I myself am in a sorority filled with open-minded, amazing women who encourage me to be the best version of myself every day. There hasn't really been a point where I am with my chapter and think to myself, "If only we were a higher tier, then finally, I would be fulfilled." But this is a huge factor in girls' (and guys') decisions when they rush and can influence how they view certain chapters.
However, I think we all know the realities of modern-day Greek life and how not everyone is looking for the same things out of it. Some people just want to say that they're in a top-tier sorority or in a certain chapter—and that's okay. Bragging rights is a completely fine way to go about rushing a sorority if that's truly all you want out of it. This isn't to say that a 'top-tier' sorority won't give you the same level of sisterhood as a lower one or have any more/less drama. I just think it's helpful to note that if all you want out of a sorority is to say you're certain letters, that might be the only thing you get out of it. The letters aren't everything.
The letters cloud our judgment about people and can really limit us into making friends and forming relationships if we let them. We have these preconceived notions of who people are before we even get to know them, all because of a few letters in an ancient alphabet.
