Attack Of The Pretty Petty People

Sorority Evictions Raise Issue of Looks and Bias

We are fast becoming a nation that thrives on its history and penchants for prejudices and judgments of others. We not only have a legacy of institutional prejudices implemented by our immigration and segregation policies and practices, we are raising our children to recognize that influence peddling and elitism is the bottom line for success. Of course, this is the wrong lesson to teach our future generations because our own history proves that it doesn't work.

This approach to life is the epitome of the conservative, GOP and Christian Right agendas. The entire idea creates an "us versus them" mentality and places the competition for wealth, power and influence over caring for others, having compassion for all of humanity, and offering others a way out of their plight. The Christian Right is entrenched in the idea that only they have the answers to life's problems and only their understanding of our relationship with our creator is valid. But there is an old joke that has St. Peter walking a new arrival to heaven through a neighborhood where he cautions that arrival to be quiet... because a certain segment of our society believes that they are in heaven alone.

But we are ignoring the lessons of Christ. Whether anyone worships Jesus Christ or not, there are some valid lessons from the gospels that are universal and true in every circumstance. Faith, hope and charity are the spiritual essentials of life. Compassion for others, even the least among us, is an essential component of finding peace and fulfillment in our lives. Hording wealth and influence peddling are not the keys to greatness or happiness. Worshiping the almighty bottom line dollar is not an effective strategy for living a valued life.

But we see our prejudices and elitism emerging in our colleges more often than not. When I attended St. Louis University in my attempt to attain a MSW/MPH degree, I ran into law school, med school, business school and other students that were chasing the almighty buck and elitism as if they were what was offered on the altar of life. I never finished that degree program, partly because I ran out of money, but mostly because I did not have the will to face the inhumane attitudes and behaviors being bred at that university... especially since it claimed a Catholic identity and denied Christ in almost everything it did.

So when I read this article about sorority sisters being evicted from the sorority house and bounced out of the "club," I wondered whether those of us with any sense of spirituality and love for all of God's creation really had any claim to the love that we claim as a birthright. I was also disgusted that such an attitude could exist within any of our educational institutions, meaning the school and the sorority. The truth of the matter is that this sorority should be banned from all campuses until such time as it changes its prejudicial ways... or we should allow it to exist, clearly labeled as a clear-cut example of what we do not want our progeny to become.

When a psychology professor at DePauw University here surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of “daddy’s little princesses” and another as “offbeat hippies.” The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as “socially awkward.”

Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.

“Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave,” said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization.

“I sensed the disrespect with which this was to be carried out and got fed up,” Ms. Holloway added. “I didn’t have room in my life for these women to come in and tell my sisters of three years that they weren’t needed.”

Ms. Holloway is not the only angry one. The reorganization has left a messy aftermath of recrimination and tears on this rural campus of 2,400 students, 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis.

The mass eviction battered the self-esteem of many of the former sorority members, and some withdrew from classes in depression. There have been student protests, outraged letters from alumni and parents, and a faculty petition calling the sorority’s action unethical.

DePauw’s president, Robert G. Bottoms, issued a two-page letter of reprimand to the sorority. In an interview in his office, Dr. Bottoms said he had been stunned by the sorority’s insensitivity.

“I had no hint they were going to disrupt the chapter with a membership reduction of this proportion in the middle of the year,” he said. “It’s been very upsetting.”

The president of Delta Zeta, which has its headquarters in Oxford, Ohio, and its other national officers declined to be interviewed. Responding by e-mail to questions, Cynthia Winslow Menges, the executive director, said the sorority had not evicted the 23 women, even though the national officers sent those women form letters that said: “The membership review team has recommended you for alumna status. Chapter members receiving alumnae status should plan to relocate from the chapter house no later than Jan. 29, 2007.”

Ms. Menges asserted that the women themselves had, in effect, made their own decisions to leave by demonstrating a lack of commitment to meet recruitment goals. The sorority paid each woman who left $300 to cover the difference between sorority and campus housing.

The sorority “is saddened that the isolated incident at DePauw has been mischaracterized,” Ms. Menges wrote. Asked for clarification, the sorority’s public relations representative e-mailed a statement saying its actions were aimed at the “enrichment of student life at DePauw.”

This is not the first time that the DePauw chapter of Delta Zeta has stirred controversy. In 1982, it attracted national attention when a black student was not allowed to join, provoking accusations of racial discrimination.

Earlier this month, an Alabama lawyer and several other DePauw alumni who graduated in 1970 described in a letter to The DePauw, the student newspaper, how Delta Zeta’s national leadership had tried unsuccessfully to block a young woman with a black father and a white mother from joining its DePauw chapter in 1967.

Despite those incidents, the chapter appears to have been home to a diverse community over the years, partly because it has attracted brainy women, including many science and math majors, as well as talented disabled women, without focusing as exclusively as some sororities on potential recruits’ sex appeal, former sorority members said.

“I had a sister I could go to a bar with if I had boy problems,” said Erin Swisshelm, a junior biochemistry major who withdrew from the sorority in October. “I had a sister I could talk about religion with. I had a sister I could be nerdy about science with. That’s why I liked Delta Zeta, because I had all these amazing women around me.”

But over the years DePauw students had attached a negative stereotype to the chapter, as evidenced by the survey that Pam Propsom, a psychology professor, conducts each year in her class. That image had hurt recruitment, and the national officers had repeatedly warned the chapter that unless its membership increased, the chapter could close.

At the start of the fall term the national office was especially determined to raise recruitment because 2009 is the 100th anniversary of the DePauw chapter’s founding. In September, Ms. Menges and Kathi Heatherly, a national vice president of the sorority, visited the chapter to announce a reorganization plan they said would include an interview with each woman about her commitment. The women were urged to look their best for the interviews.

The tone left four women so unsettled that they withdrew from the chapter almost immediately.