Tuesday, March 13, 2007

A blatantly ad hominem rant

From a Fox news article, "DePauw University Severs Ties With Troubled Delta Zeta Sorority."

"DePauw University's president ordered the Delta Zeta sorority Monday to leave its campus by September in response to a mass eviction of members that sparked allegations that only attractive, popular students were asked to remain." [emphasis mine]

Ah hah.

The article said that DZ " ... long had a reputation of being academically oriented rather than having conventional beauty or partying." The article also said they were referred to on campus as "the dog house."

Warning: Cranky diatribe ahead.

If you want to be "Greek" you have to pretend you have an IQ of 20, drink a lot, sleep around and act like you're better than everyone else. Unless you went to my alma mater (a Baptist college), in which case you can get away with more smarts and you hide your drinking and carousing, but the better-than-everyone-else-part still applies.

I'm cranky today, can you tell?

For those of you out there who are/were Greek and are perfectly fine human beings, my deepest apologies. I know you exist and you don't deserve to be smeared. Understand, I was disinclined toward being Greek before I even got to college by my mother. She quit Phi Mu (at the same Baptist college) because they shunned a perfectly precious and sweet girl because she had scars from polio. Later, not one of her sorority "sisters" showed up for her bridal tea.

Once I got on campus myself, I had only more and more reasons not to pay good money to have a bunch of country club princesses tell me if I was good enough to hang out with them and tell me who my friends could be. I bristled at how the "social Greeks" insulted the guys of Alpha Phi Omega, the "service" fraternity. The Greeks said the A Phi O's were "not good enough" for the social Greeks. I say they were too cool for school.

And in my 15 years since I graduated, I've met a few people who never let go of their inner Greek and continue to be bratty to anyone who is more than one standard deviation away from Mountain Brook. (If you are from Birmingham, you know of which I speak. Again, my deepest apologies to the decent Brookies.)

Okay, rant over.

3 comments:

Randolph Finder said...

Hello, fellow Alpha Phi Omega brother. It has been 17 years since I graduated. (Pledged in 1986 @Carnegie-Mellon U., Graduated in 1990). Ended up marrying a fellow APO brother. email is randolphfinder@aol.com

Talia said...

Giggle.

I'm surprised you didn't rant on this more, actually. The articles I have read (Meg Cabot's been covering this on her blog as well) have made that particular branch of DZ out to be pretty scary. I'm glad to see they've gotten their just rewards, all things considered.

Still, it's funny, because if the DZs are the ones I THINK they are, they were the accepting ones at your alma matter. The group the other socials looked down upon. The group that took in any girl who wanted to be in a sorority. While I wasn't interested in pledging anywere, I did have several friends who went the turtle route.

Anyhoo, glad to see you updating. Carry on.

Unknown said...

Yeah, the frats were pretty much a complete waste of time and protoplasm while I was at the University of Richmond. The school was something approaching 80% Greek, and the sole purpose of Greeks' lives seemed to be partying, partying, partying and looking down on GDIs (Gosh Darn Independents) like myself.

Luckily those of us who didn't feel the need to pay for a social group wound up being more intelligent and interesting by far.

Gotta love naraht, displaying a particularly virulent but sadly typical form of clue-freedom, service-frat or no.