In our world today it seems everything is a competition. Who has the better job, the better car, who has more friends. We judge each other based off the possessions we hold, or the organizations we affiliate ourselves with.
With sorority recruitment wrapping up around the country (or have been done for a while) and having seen recruitment from an Alumna perspective, something really stood out to me–the tier system.
It has been a long standing known fact, that each campus has the top sororities, the middle sororities, and the bottom sororities. The top sororities have the hottest girls, all of the fraternities want to hang out with them, they're the barbies, they're the ones that girls going through recruitment want. The bottom tiered are known for the left overs, the fat sororities, the unwanted.
But seriously, do people not think that's hurtful? That the only reason I got a bid to my sorority is because I wasn't wanted by the top tiers? Or they needed me to make numbers? Those people are telling me that I wasn't special to my sorority, that I wasn't someone they hand selected, that I was only given a bid to make quota? I earned my bid. I dressed up everyday, drank the weird water filled with weird fruit, smiled till my cheeks hurt, just like everybody else; but because I'm not in a top tier, I'm just a left over.
Since my sorority is a left over, do you know how it makes me feel to wear my letters? I know what my sorority is made of. I know that my letters mean more to me then the superficial, but wearing letters and getting judge for being in the "fat sorority", doesn't encourage me to wear my letters. I still do, because to me my letters mean more than the label put on them. They mean the late nights with my sisters, the laughs and the tears, all of the good and the bad that I've been through with my sisters. My letters mean my candle ceremony to announce my engagement and having my girls surround me at my wedding. However, getting judged from being a member of my sorority isn't a feeling I want from my fellow greeks.
I wanted a sisterhood. I didn't want the barbies or to be known for being the best partiers, I wanted girls to turn to when I needed them, I wanted girls that I'd find best friends in - and I found that and more.Yeah we may have girls that some would call ugly, or fat, but that shouldn't be a judge of who we are as a sorority. We all do the same amount of philanthropy, we all attend the same parties, and guess what? Fraternities want to hang out with us, because we know how to have fun, we know how to hang.
Having a girl cry that she's in your house, sucks. It's a terrible feeling knowing that you aren't wanted by her. But for every girl there's five that are excited to be there. And those are the girls I want. I want the girls that are excited to wear my letters, and learn what they mean. I can't wait till they have that moment where they realize that this place could be their home, that these girls are actually their sisters. So yeah, I may be a part of the fat sorority, the left overs, whatever you want to call us, but guess what? I can turn to my sisters, any of them, at the drop of the hat. Can you?
