Pledged (33 page)

WHEN MELODY TWILLEY FOUND HERSELF WITHOUT A
Greek affiliation, she began researching MSU and dozens of other national multicultural sororities with the aim of founding her own nondiscriminatory multicultural group. At the first open meeting she held on campus for students interested in joining a multicultural sorority—an entity foreign to the University of Alabama—fifty girls showed up, many of them white. In January 2003, Melody and eight of the girls officially started their own sorority from scratch. For reasons they keep secret, they picked a mascot (the sea horse), colors (“real blue,” blush, and silver), a flower (Stargazer Lily), and a jewel (pearl). They came up with a secret group purpose and the letters to stand for it: Alpha Delta Sigma. They wrote rituals, put themselves through an induction ceremony, a pledge period, and initiation, and a sisterhood was born.

Now, as Melody—in jeans, flip-flops, and a T-shirt commemorating a community service event—and I lounge on couches in a student center, coincidentally across from the university’s Greek Life Office, she tells me what it’s like to be a sister. “We had an ice cream social Tuesday night, Friday night we had a dinner, and we have to fulfill our community service requirement,” she says. “We’ll rush in the fall. We’re trying to be as close to Panhellenic as possible, but there are some differences.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Well, during Panhellenic rush, [rushees] wait in front of each house and suddenly the doors fling open and the sisters do their ‘door songs.’”

“They have door songs?”

“Oh, yes!” Melody puts on a phony wide smile and, in a cheesy little-girl voice, sings and claps the chirpy Phi Mu door song. Then she says, “We can’t do door songs because we have no door.”

The Panhellenic Association, the university’s governing body for the white sororities, has yet to reach out to Alpha Delta Sigma. Melody plans to apply for her group to be accepted as a campus Panhellenic sorority; if Panhellenic rejects ADS, Melody will consider suing them.

A thin white girl passes by and taps Melody. “I’m going to come to one of y’all’s things, I promise. It’s just finals and everything,” she says before moving on.

“Potential New Member,” Melody explains to me, her face lit up as she uses one of the terms newly instituted by the national white sororities (it is supposed to replace the word “rushee”).

I ask her why it is so important to her to be part of a sorority. “Why not just have friends?”

She tells me that sisters are more than friends. “We want to leave a legacy, perpetuate this. We’ll be seniors and then the next year all of us are gone,” she says. “I wanted to start a sorority so my future daughter can join it. All the other little girls would get to say, ‘My mama was a Tri-Delt,’ or ‘My auntie was a Pi Phi.’” Melody laughs as she mimics the you-go-girl gesture of snapping in the shape of the letter Z. “My daughter will be able to say, ‘My mama
founded
Alpha Delta Sigma.’”

MARCH

Hazing activities are always mandatory unless a girl is physically unable to take part, gets sick during the activity, or is terribly upset about the hazing. Girls who are unable or have the courage to refuse to participate in hazing are less a part of the pledge class.

—Rush: A Girl’s Guide to Sorority Success, 1985

Your pledge educator, the chapter’s Vice President of Social Advancement, will outline specific requirements in the areas of Moral, Mental, and Social Advancement.

—Pi Phi Forever, 1990s

Revolving

MARCH 1

VICKI’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

you’ll never remember class time, but you will remember the time you wasted hanging out with your friends. downstairs in the tv room

THE CONSENSUS AMONG BETA
Pi sisters was that the 2003 rush
had been extraordinarily successful: the current pledge class was the best overall group the sorority had recruited in many years. Granted, the sisters still commented to each other about some of the pledges’ flaws. “Oh, that one’s not as cool as we thought she was,” the Beta Pi sisters said about a girl they had persuaded to come to their house instead of going to Alpha Rho. Even Vicki got into it, making fun of a “dorky-looking” pledge with Ashleigh and wondering aloud why they had accepted her. But the Beta Pis were largely satisfied: they heard from the Rho Chis who returned to Beta Pi that many of the rushees had ranked Beta Pi as their favorite house.

The officers were determined to take full advantage of this opportunity. Now that they had an impressive collection of pledges, the sisters’ job was to mold them into a unified pledge class. During the first Saturday night sleepover of pledge period, the pledges had to listen to the insufferably repetitive Kylie Minogue song “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” over and over again, for the entire night. On the second Saturday, the girls participated in a mandatory scavenger hunt that sent them scrambling into various other Greek houses to coerce members into giving them the desired objects, and when that failed, to steal them. During the third sleepover, the sisters got the pledges drunk and forced them to serenade and dance at several fraternity houses.

Meanwhile, the pledges were expected to find time during the eight-week pledge period to interview every sister in the sorority. They recorded the interviews in their “pledge books,” which the pledgemaster reviewed periodically. This was a way to force the pledges to spend time at the Beta Pi house and participate in activities, such as planned pre-games with fraternities, so they could get to know the sisters. Each day, the pledges were also required to carry a different item around with them everywhere—a box of Lucky Charms, a fork, corduroy pants, bright pink azaleas in their hair—and to be prepared to present the item whenever a sister requested to see it.

For the fourth sleepover, the sisters decided to celebrate the halfway point of pledge period. Beta Pi officers lugged several handles of vodka upstairs to the fourth floor “pledge room”—a large, cold, loftlike room where the pledges were already beginning to curl into their sleeping bags—and told the girls they had to finish the alcohol. Vicki and a few other sisters smuggled away one of the handles for themselves and hid in Vicki’s room to empty it. At the preapproved time, when the pledges were sufficiently drunk (and Vicki was practically keeling over), the Beta Pi sisters entered the pledge room. The president waited until the room was full, then came barreling upstairs.

“The campus police heard we were having a party and are coming to check it out!” she yelled. “You have to finish the alcohol right away!” The pledges drank faster. Vicki generously helped them. When the doorbell rang and the president hurried downstairs, the girls screeched; when she returned with a uniformed police officer by her side, the screeching subsided until the officer flicked on a stereo and started dancing. Now the girls screamed in delight, continuing to drink as the officer, blond and chiseled, stripped. Later, Vicki spent the rest of the night throwing up in William’s bathroom. William held back her hair.

Vicki, Olivia, and Morgan thought that the pledges—who often went out of their way to be extra nice to Vicki and her friends—were “cute.” They tried to spend time with the pledges when they came to the house to do interviews or for their weekly pledge meetings. Vicki and her friends also helped some of the pledges acquire fake IDs. Gradually, a new division emerged in the house: the girls who had IDs and went out to the bars (on average about five times a week), and the girls who didn’t and stayed home. The first group would learn about the evening’s social activity by finding Vicki or Olivia, both of whom could now usually be found holding court in the television room. The pledges, some more nervous than others, would peek into the room and ask in a deferential tone, “What are you guys doing tonight? Are you going out?”

Vicki was euphoric about the changes in the house this semester. Her bedroom was calm, lacking the tension and drama of last semester’s room. Morgan seemed more tolerable. When Vicki ran into Laura-Ann, Vicki was outwardly kind and inwardly remorseful that their friendship had been ruined because they had roomed together. Laura-Ann, who lived in a world of her own, felt differently. A sister had informed Vicki that Laura-Ann said how happy she was that she and Vicki could be “best friends” even though they didn’t live together anymore.

Sometimes during the Saturday night sleepovers, Vicki and Olivia would stride into the pledge room, their long hair flowing, to say hello to pledges. During one of these visits, a pledge asked Vicki for advice.

“Vicki,” she whispered, “I can’t stand one of the other pledges. What do I do?”

“Just give it time,” Vicki said. “Going through pledging together will really help you learn to appreciate her.”

“It’s so weird,” the pledge said. “You and I are the same age, but I look at you like you’re so much older.” Like most of the other pledges, as she spoke to Vicki, her voice became higher pitched and more unsure.

That night, the pledgemaster had the pledges name the fraternity brothers they had hooked up with so that the older sisters could tell them whom they were and weren’t “allowed to touch.”

“I hooked up with Dan in Theta Theta after the last pre-game,” said one pledge.

“Wait a minute,” said a sister, “
Vicki’s
Dan?!”

The pledge looked mortified. “Oh my God, I didn’t know,” she said, her tone rising. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God!” The room hushed.

Vicki, who liked this pledge, hadn’t seen much of Dan this semester. She saw William regularly, and (unbeknownst to William) had also gotten together once with a friendly Epsilon Chi brother. Vicki and Olivia, who was now dating one of William’s fraternity brothers, had gone to the Epsilon Chi house, made out with their dates there, then moved on to Iota together to be with their supposed boyfriends.

With all of this other action, Vicki was surprised to find that she cared that Dan had recently hooked up with, of all people, one of her pledges. Nevertheless, she reassured the now-hyperventilating pledge that she wasn’t currently involved with him.

One night soon thereafter, Vicki flirted with Dan at Louie’s, not noticing that William was staring at them from his seat on the other side of the bar. Olivia walked in, saw William first, and asked him where Vicki was.

He gestured with his chin, his goatee neatly pointing to Vicki, who was flicking her bangs out of her eyes. “Over there,” he said, “all over that sketchy guy in the baseball cap.”

When Vicki spotted William and came over to talk to him, she noticed Dan pacing back and forth, watching her from a distance.

A FEW NIGHTS LATER, MORGAN, WHO WAS DATING ONE
of Dan’s Theta Theta brothers, told Vicki that Dan had found out about William. Dan had admitted to his brothers how much he liked Vicki, and how hurt he was that she had a boyfriend. Vicki immediately called him and arranged to meet him at Louie’s.

“Okay, so I’ve been seeing William on and off now for a couple months,” said Vicki, shaving the time period.

“I heard he was your boyfriend,” Dan said.

“No. I don’t want a boyfriend,” Vicki said. “I’ve been seeing him but I don’t feel that way about him.”

“Were you seeing him when we went to my Formal?” Dan asked.

“I had so much fun with you at Formal,” Vicki dodged. “I thought William was playing me—that’s when I started talking to you. You’re the best Formal date ever. William’s not my boyfriend. I’m just hooking up with him.” Vicki left the bar after promising to see Dan again soon.

When she got back to the Beta Pi house, Vicki changed into a pair of capris. “Ugh,” she remarked aloud to herself. “I look fat.”

As if on cue, Morgan suddenly popped into Vicki’s room. “Really?” she said, standing on her toes to inspect Vicki’s body. “Let me see!”

Vicki rolled her green eyes and distracted Morgan by telling her about her discussion with Dan. “I don’t like how weird he and I are,” Vicki said. “I don’t know how long it’s going to be before we talk again.”

“Come on,” said Morgan, who was planning to see her boyfriend anyway. “We’re going to the Theta Theta house.”

Dan was overjoyed to see Vicki. The foursome were lounging in his room when Ashleigh repeatedly called Vicki’s cell, crying hysterically and hanging up. When Vicki called Ashleigh back, Ashleigh didn’t pick up her phone. Morgan returned home to Beta Pi, leaving Vicki and Dan kissing on the couch.

Ten minutes later, Morgan called Vicki. “Ashleigh’s going crazy. The guy she asked to Date Party said no,” Morgan said.

Five minutes later, Olivia called. “Oh my God, you have to come back to the house,” she said. “She’s drunk and talking about killing herself.”

Vicki hurried to Ashleigh’s room, where Olivia and Morgan were trying to console her. Ashleigh’s drunken panic had passed, and now she was curled in her hot pink comforter muttering, “I just want to go to sleep. I want to wake up in the morning and not be here.” As Ashleigh drifted off to sleep, Vicki, Olivia, and Morgan sang “I Will Survive” to her and told Ashleigh how much they loved her.

Vicki and Olivia went downstairs to the dining room to recap the night’s events. As Vicki was updating her on the latest developments with Dan, Olivia sneaked to a sink and mischievously poured a tiny cup of water over Vicki’s head.

Vicki sat still for a moment, dripping. “Oh no, you did not just do that,” she said, then made a beeline for the nearest water pitcher and dumped it over Olivia. As the girls dashed around the room collecting all the liquid ammunition they could find, a thought struck Vicki. This spontaneous fun was exactly the kind of thing she wanted to remember about college—not the obligation to call William, not her tendency to stay over at his house instead of cavorting around hers, and not even William himself.

The next night, Vicki and Olivia returned to the boys in Epsilon Chi. Again, they fooled around with their dates, then went to the Iota house to be with their supposed boyfriends. But Vicki couldn’t muster up enthusiasm for William. Too tired to stay up with him, she immediately fell asleep in his bed.

When Vicki woke up the next morning, William was looking at her strangely. “What’s with you? You can’t tell me something’s not wrong,” he said.

Vicki inhaled deeply before she spoke. “I realized that you and I have been hooking up for several months now,” she said. “The reason I wanted to break up with my boyfriend at the beginning of the year was to be single, and I’m not. I want my freedom. I don’t want the obligation to call you after the bars. I want to do what I want and then go home with my girls. We have to break up.”

Tears welled in William’s eyes.

From Pricking Fingers to Hard-Core Porn

IN MAY 2003, TELEVISION VIEWERS INTERNATIONALLY WERE
transfixed by a video taken of Chicago high school seniors—most of them girls—punching and kicking juniors and covering them in urine, feces, pig intestines, fish guts, coffee grounds, and mud. The incident, a hazing rite that was part of an annual Powder Puff Football tradition, sent five girls to the hospital, one with a broken ankle and one with a head wound needing ten stitches. Seniors shot juniors with paintballs and forced meat down a vegetarian’s throat. The school district expelled more than thirty seniors, and prosecutors pressed charges against sixteen students and two parents. While this case is extreme, similar types of hazing are par for the course in Greek life.

As the producers of
Girls Gone Wild
and MTV can attest, there are many things college girls will do for attention or money. There are few organizations, however, that can persuade this demographic to masturbate with salt shakers and drop trousers or fake orgasms while humping doorknobs and ski poles in front of a room of cheering fraternity brothers—merely so that they can belong. But sororities can.

The pledge period, which lasts about five to nine weeks, occurs in between the time a rushee has accepted a bid and the time she is initiated. Traditionally the pledge period serves as a proving ground; the new members are supposed to show their devotion to the sisterhood and to their fellow pledges as they deprioritize the individual in favor of the collective group. In the chapters across the country that still haze (some chapters have stopped the practice entirely), pledges often have to wear their sorority’s colors. Some sororities also force their pledges to wear similar hairstyles so they look as much alike as possible.

Every week, there might be a different greeting that a pledge must use whenever she sees a sister: “Hi sister so-and-so, I’m a happy pledge of Alpha Alpha Alpha, Zeta chapter, Zeta class!” If a pledge messes up the greeting, she must stand there repeating it over and over again until the sister is satisfied. Pledges are often expected to know the name of every sister, which in some cases can entail committing two hundred names to memory. (Other sororities expect the pledges to know specific details about sisters’ lives and test them on this obscure knowledge.) Pledge books like Beta Pi’s are another widely used pledge tool.

Throughout the pledge period, many houses hold pledge exams on the sorority’s history, the Greek alphabet, names of sisters and alumnae, and details about the exec board officers. In Brooke’s house, these tests were given nightly during the week leading up to initiation. When girls did not take these tests seriously, there were measures in place to bring them into line. If all of the girls did not pass a test, then all of them had to take it again—at increasingly inconvenient hours. After the first test, Brooke’s pledgemaster awakened each pledge at 4 a.m. the next day to drag them to the house to take the test again. After the second test, the pledgemaster graded the exams, came back into the room, and said, “Girls, three of you did not pass. All of you will be at the house at two-thirty tomorrow morning to take the test again.” The pledges had to make sure that their fellow pledges were present. When one night a pledge failed to show, Brooke and her group had to find her. Eventually, they located her in her boyfriend’s bedroom in one of the fraternity houses, which the group had to break into at 3 a.m. to seize their future sister. These sorority exams sometimes occur during midterms, but there are no excuses allowed. If a girl has an 8 a.m. midterm and is trying to study or get a decent rest the night before, she still must attend her 2:30 a.m. sorority test. The practice isn’t unusual. At her school, Laney, the Alpha Sigma Alpha, said, “We were always quizzing them. We put X’s on their arms with a marker when they got answers wrong. It was very stupid when I look back, but at the time it seemed really important.”