Pledged (7 page)

But the other seniors backed her up. “Yeah, girls, we really need to go for Delta Lambda.” Some of the underclassmen stopped smiling as they wondered if the seniors were serious. Nobody had so much as mentioned Delta Lambda all week.

Now Whitney, the most crotchety of the seniors, spoke sternly. “It would be awful,” she said, “if our chapter thought that the best thing for us would be to choose a fraternity other than the Delts.”

The room fell hushed for a few beats as the underclassmen’s jaws dropped. Delta Lambda hadn’t even registered on their radar that week. The Delts had serenaded Beta Pi, the Alpha Rhos’ next-door neighbors, that evening, and Beta Pi hadn’t sung back. Word was that Beta Pi had rejected the Delts for Kappa Tau Chi, a bigger, more traditionally popular house. Groups weren’t allowed to serenade more than one house per night, so Delta Lambda was scrambling to find an acceptable house to sing to on Sunday. But the underclassmen hadn’t realized until now that Alpha Rho would be the target of the Delts’ desperation. Delta Lambda had called Charlotte a few minutes before the meeting to tell her that the boys wanted Alpha Rho. Until now, the president had shared this information with the seniors and no one else.

Now there was chaos as the juniors shouted at the seniors, and the sophomores looked on in bewilderment. “Delta Lambda didn’t give us any gifts this week! They don’t want us, so we don’t want them!”

“Why would you drop this on us at the last minute?”

“We did Greek Week with the Delts last year!”

“They haven’t even serenaded us!”

“Just because you’re seniors doesn’t mean you can do this!”

“Okay, everybody quiet!” Charlotte broke in, smoothing her Armani skirt and tossing her meticulously highlighted hair as she tried to drown out the girls’ side conversations. “Seriously, everybody shut up!” The room quieted, though sisters still glared at each other. “We’re going to have to two-two-one.”

Known in some houses as “Dissension,” 2-2-1 was the way many sororities across the country ran debates and discussions. Amy sat next to Sabrina and settled in for what she figured would be a long meeting. During a 2-2-1, five girls were allowed to speak their opinions, one at a time: two positive points (pros), then two negatives (cons), then a positive. But the president was the one who chose exactly which girls would get to speak—and Charlotte was known to play favorites. Amy knew Sabrina, who was busy examining her braids, wouldn’t bother raising her hand. Charlotte never called on people like her.

First up was Delta Lambda. Amy waved her hand, newly painted nails flashing, but Charlotte pretended she didn’t see her. Amy was good at these; and Charlotte must have known she would be a negative.

“Pro: According to Greek politics,” one senior said as she stood up, “Delta Lambda is a stronger house than both Zeta Sigma and Omega Phi.”

“Pro: Delta Lambda has more brothers than the others,” said another sister.

“Con!” a junior shot back. “The Delts didn’t show any appreciation or interest in the form of presents.”

“Con,” another junior said. “Beta Pi was clearly their first choice. Why would we want to be someone’s second-choice house—especially when their first choice was Beta Pi, of all people?”

“Pro.” A senior sneered at the junior. “All the seniors want the Delts for a reason. It will look better for Alpha Rho if we match with them. Obviously,” the senior sniffed, “the most popular girl wants the most popular boy.”

The room broke into pandemonium again. “This is
important
,” the seniors whined. Amy, Sabrina, and Caitlin didn’t worry much—there were only twenty-two seniors, by far the minority.

“Next round: Zeta Sigma,” Charlotte said, and selected the next group.

“Pro: Zeta Sigma is just as strong as Delta Lambda and it is steadily climbing the ladder of popularity.”

“Pro: They have a house near Sorority Row, and the Delts don’t,” said a sophomore.

“Con:”—the debate was rapid-fire now—“Some of the guys are rude. They could reflect badly on our chapter.”

“Con: More of us are dating Omega Phis than Zetas.”

“Pro: The Zetas did a lot for us this week.”

“Last one, Omega Phi.” Charlotte seemed to be getting weary. The juniors wondered whether she was going to vote with the seniors just to get this over with.

“Pro: Omega Phi is as strong a house as Zeta Sigma.”

“Pro: Omega Phi did a lot for us with the gifts and are a very supportive house toward us,” a sophomore said. “Shouldn’t that be what matters?”

“No.” The senior who spoke was getting angry that the other girls couldn’t see the importance of choosing the biggest house possible. “You guys don’t understand. Omega Phi was so small last year it had to double up with another fraternity for Greek Week. When a house first becomes big enough to not double up, it’s matched with the worst sorority. That’s not us.”

“Listen,” Whitney responded out of turn, “this is our last Greek Week, so out of respect for your older sisters, you should vote our way. We’ve all been here longer than you, so we know what’s best for this house.” She paused, found some uncertain wide-eyed faces staring back at her, and looked hard at them. “And if you want the seniors to be active sisters this year, you will do this for us.” The underclassmen gasped.

Amy raised her hand again. She didn’t want to cause trouble, but she hoped to raise the point that it would be generous of Alpha Rho to accept a lower-tiered fraternity as an escort, thereby raising the boys’ status. While waiting to be formally acknowledged, she told this to the juniors around her. The seniors overheard her whispering and shifted their seats so they surrounded her. By drowning her out and blocking Charlotte’s view of her, they made sure the president wouldn’t allow her to speak. Frustrated, Amy said, “Y’all, can I say something real quick?”

The seniors shushed her. “Enough talk,” one of them said. “We’re voting now.” Charlotte nodded and distributed the ballots. Discussion was closed. The executive board left the room to tally the votes.

Going Through the Motions

SEPTEMBER 15

VICKI’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

i mean does any of it really matter?

THE BETA PI HOUSE WASN’T NEARLY AS CONFLICTED AS
Alpha Rho. All
week the Delts had made it clear that Beta Pi was their first choice and heavily courted the sisters with notes and presents. Beta Pi considered the Delts to be only an “eh” house, but had serenaded them to be polite. The girls were much more enthusiastic about the biggest fraternities—last year they had gone with Iota, in their eyes the top fraternity, and now several girls were dating brothers in another popular group.

Frankly, Vicki didn’t much care when, with little fanfare, Beta Pi ended up choosing Kappa Tau Chi, one of the top three houses, composed of guys who could keep up with the sisters at the bar. She hated the serenading, surviving it only by mouthing the lyric as far back in the crowd of sisters as possible. She wasn’t much for events like Greek Olympics, either, which usually consisted of such scintillating displays of athletic prowess as the Guy Has Peanut Butter on His Face While Girl Chucks Cheerios at Him event. Especially at times like these, Vicki was embarrassed that she was a member of a sorority. She never wore her letters outside of the house. When non-Greeks asked Vicki where she lived, she told them she lived in an off-campus house without saying which house it was. If pressed, she sometimes admitted she was in Beta Pi, but only if she accompanied her confession with a face that let the inquirer know that she wasn’t
really
a sorority girl.

Vicki spent most of her time in the house talking online or on the phone to her friends back home, whom she believed were more similar to her than her sisters were. After she begged them for several days straight, her parents reluctantly agreed to pay for a cell phone plan with enough minutes to cover her nightly calls to her friends.

Now that she was single and willing to date fraternity brothers, Vicki found that the sisters were friendlier to her, though they were perplexed by the way she was chatty on the phone to her friends from home yet reticent in the house. Vicki, who was particularly timid around the cliques of older girls, wasn’t daunted so much by the fact that the Beta Pis were mostly pretty and thin—Vicki herself fell into those categories—as by their ease and comfort with sorority life. With a Screw Your Sister event coming up in a couple of weeks, the sisters were working hard to set Vicki up with the right date. The point of Screw Your Sister was to set a sister up on a blind date with a fraternity brother who was either terrible (screw her!) or terrific (get her screwed!). Because Vicki had just broken up with her boyfriend, her roommates were being overly sympathetic. Vicki hoped they were going to set her up with William, the Iota president whom she had met at the club.

The Escort Revealed

SEPTEMBER 15

SABRINA’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

Thank goodness for marijuana

WHEN THE ALPHA RHO EXECS RETURNED, THEY AVOIDED EYE
contact
, except for Caitlin, who shot Amy and Sabrina a worried look. “Omega Phi: forty-three votes,” Charlotte read. “Zeta Sigma: forty-one votes.” She paused. “Delta Lambda: forty-six votes. We will be matching with Delta Lambda.”

The house was in an uproar. Girls were shouting, crying, and screaming at each other. “I can’t believe this is happening!” a junior gasped.

“This is ridiculous!”

“We’re Beta Pi’s leftovers!”

“This is humiliating.”

Whitney pumped her fist. “Yes, we won!”

A junior frowned at the senior. “This wasn’t a competition,” she said quietly.

“Oh, yes it was!” Whitney exhorted. The youngest sisters were shocked. They whispered to each other that had they known the seniors would be able to swing so many votes, they would have all voted for the Zetas instead of Omega Phi just to keep the Delts from winning. The general consensus among the juniors was that most of the Alpha Rho executive board members, wanting to suck up to the seniors, had voted their way. The seniors must have cajoled the other votes out of some of the weaker younger sisters. It was clear that as Alpha Rho president, Charlotte, looking around at her quickly self-destructing house, had no idea what to do.

The seniors gathered in the entry hall, celebrating, while the other sisters went upstairs and complained to each other about the power the seniors wielded and how Delta Lambda had come out of nowhere. On her way upstairs, a sophomore who had especially wanted Zeta Sigma broke down crying. When the seniors glanced at her and laughed, she cursed them out. “You don’t say anything to the seniors,” Caitlin said sarcastically as she led the sophomore upstairs by the hand. “Not the seniors. They’re the oldest sisters in the chapter so they have to get whatever they want.” The weeping sophomore decided to boycott every event held with the Delts.

Charlotte called the Delt president to promise him that when the Delts serenaded Alpha Rho on Sunday, the girls would sing back. Later that night, the Delts scattered on the Alpha Rho patio red roses and a huge platter of brownies. From the veranda upstairs, Sabrina spotted the platter on the porch and crept down the back stairs of the house. The seniors hadn’t yet noticed the gifts. When the seniors in the entry hall moved their victory party into the TV room, Sabrina snuck out to the porch, grabbed the platter (no small feat—in typical overstated Delt fashion, it was rather large for tiny Sabrina), and sprinted upstairs to Caitlin and Amy’s suite. “This is for us,” Sabrina said, “and we’re not sharing!” The girls stuffed themselves with as many brownies as they could cram in. To make sure that the seniors wouldn’t benefit, the girls, doubling over with laughter, then defaced the remainder of the brownies, mashing their hands in them until they looked too gross to eat. Caitlin, who was particularly incensed at the way the vote had gone, brought the platter of ruined brownies downstairs and left it in the kitchen.

The next night, only forty girls—not even all of the girls who had voted for Delta Lambda—dressed in their traditional A-line sundresses (white with thick, ruffled straps and a tiny flowered pattern) and halfheartedly warbled their serenade to Delta Lambda in the Alpha Rho entry hall. The rest stayed upstairs in protest. Later, the Delts hosted a keg party in honor of their new dates. Sabrina and Caitlin decided that because Caitlin was Greek Week co-chair and they still wanted to have fun during Greek Week, they might as well participate, despite their distaste for the Delts. Only a few of the underclassmen sisters bothered to be courteous to the fraternity, neglecting the sorority’s goal of maintaining good relations with all other Greeks on campus. Therefore, Sabrina and Caitlin made a show of valiantly offering to “take one for the team” and to represent the honor and dignity of their largely reluctant sorority; at least for that night, they volunteered to be in charge of “keeping up relations” between the two houses by spending time with the boys of Delta Lambda.

Actually, they’d heard the Delts had weed.

During the next few days, the Delts sent e-mails to each individual sister: “Delta Lambda loves you.” “We can’t wait for Greek Week.” “We think you’re so hot.” It still took about a week for the Alpha Rhos to get over the fiasco.

Framed by Fraternities

MUCH OF THE DRAMA IN SORORITY HOUSES REVOLVES
around fraternity issues. Because so many of the official sorority activities—Greek Week, bar nights, “mixers” (theme parties)—involve their male counterparts, a sorority’s standing among fraternity brothers often determines its status in the Greek system. Sororities resemble high school cliques, vying for the attention of the most attractive boys to boost their standing among the popular girls.

Surprised that Alpha Rho, a relatively low-key sorority, emphasized the fraternity hierarchy so strongly, I asked Amy why it mattered so much. “Every house wants to ‘look good,’” she explained, her dark plum eyes sincere. “As much as we’re laid back, we still want to appear to be wanted and more popular among the Greek community. About half of Alpha Rho cares about being the popular house, and the other half doesn’t. I think that’s why we always fight over everything.”