Eight women opened up Friday about their experiences with Greek life and community, describing a superficiality that pervades rush, pressure to join a house and the realities of being affiliated. Organized by the Inter-Community Council, Friday’s panel came days before the start of fall recruitment.
About 400 women are expected to participate in Panhellenic Council sorority recruitment, said Panhell recruitment vice presidents Sara Heard ’15 and Kathleen Wahl ’15, beginning with round one parties Monday.
Sunday evening, posters urging students “Don’t Rush into Rush” were taped onto Collis Café’s walls and tacked onto bulletin boards on the first floor of the Collis Center for Student Involvement.
“I didn’t want to rush, but I was influenced by my peers,” read one. “In my house, girls from certain sports teams automatically got a bid,” read another. Many included the hashtag “#dontrushintorush.”
Panhell released a statement early Monday morning expressing support for the movement and saying that Panhell members made posters on Sunday as well.
“We hope to see some of our more favorable anecdotes displayed alongside the more critical ones in an effort to portray a balanced picture of Greek life,” according to the statement, posted by Panhell vice president for public relations Jessica Ke ’15.
Lacey Jones ’16 opened the panel, describing her time leading up to sophomore winter, when she ultimately decided to rush.
“Freshman year at Dartmouth was a rude awakening,” Jones said. Though she expected the small College to be a reprieve from her huge high school, she said she ended the year with no cohesive sense of community.
So she chose to participate in winter rush. The sororities she liked best did not call her back, and none of her remaining options felt like a good fit, so she decided to drop out, she said.
“I have never felt as worthless as I did after rush,” Jones said, explaining she was ashamed that recruitment had so much power on her self-perception. “It felt like I had slipped through Dartmouth’s cracks.”
Jones found a new community after attending a poetry slam one night, discovering a group of people who she said made her feel safe and genuine. She said being unaffiliated allowed her to rebuild her own identity, a theme reiterated by other panelists.
Unlike Jones, Sam Parker ‘15 completed rush and joined a house, calling it “single-handedly the best and worst thing” that happened to her at Dartmouth. Currently inactive, she criticized common sorority events like tails and meetings as largely shallow, though she said she enjoyed sisterhood events, which occurred less frequently. She said that her efforts to have conversations with her sorority about potential reforms, such as those brought up by the Panhell executives who abstained from recruitment last winter, were mostly rebuffed.
“For me, the house was too complacent,” Parker said. “I didn’t like the bureaucracy of how it was organized, and I didn’t like that our house wasn’t willing to take a stand.”
Themes of superficiality, Greek resistance to change and a loss or discovery of identity continued through the other panelists’ narratives.
Lulu Chang ’15, who said she believes that inclusivity and the Greek system are mutually exclusive, entered Dartmouth certain she was not going to rush. However, because all her friends decided to participate, she did as well. She was invited to two preference night parties but decided to drop out.
“I felt like such a horrible hypocrite,” Chang said, explaining that she had always criticized the Greek system as superficial, yet still went through recruitment as a superficial version of herself.
Chang said she has many friends who have grown from their Greek life experiences, but dropping out of rush was the best decision for her. There is no need to sacrifice individuality to fit in with a greater community, she said, contrary to the myth she believes Dartmouth perpetuates.
Like Jones, Adria Brown ’15 did not receive a bid at her first-choice sorority, and chose to drop out of Panhell rush. Although she “internalized negative feelings” in the aftermath of rush, she later joined Alpha Pi Omega, a historically Native American sorority, and said she felt more comfortable with her identity. She reminded the audience that communities for women exist outside of Panhell sororities.
Whereas several other panelists came into Dartmouth uncertain about whether or not they would rush, Heidi Meyers ’14 said she had no hesitation at all that she would rush. As a result, she spent her freshman year cultivating relationships with affiliated women, and went into fall Panhell recruitment with confidence.
She did not receive a bid at her house of choice, and said she spent much of the term feeling demoralized and angry. She rushed again in the winter and said she enjoyed the experience, as she felt in control of her own situation. She joined a sorority in the winter and immediately felt loved by her sisters.
However, her experience in and opinion of her sorority rapidly declined when, in the aftermath of a tough personal experience, few sisters reached out to her. Retrospectively, Meyers said, she never felt like she had a community.
“When I found something that I liked, it inevitably led me to people,” Meyers said, ending her narrative with advice. “Searching for people was the wrong thing to do.”
Unlike most of the other panelists, Jennifer Ontiveros ’15 did not feel as much peer pressure to rush, because none of her friends wanted to go through recruitment. After deciding to focus on other interests for a while, Ontiveros decided to join a coed house. She contrasted coed rush with her perception of Panhell recruitment, saying that she never encountered superficiality and did not feel stressed.
“I didn’t think the stereotypes of sororities were all true, but at the same time, it turned me away from trying to do that kind of Greek life,” Ontiveros said.
Discussions of superficiality and negative stereotypes of sorority life continued with Katie Wheeler ’15 recounting her experience — a story more elaborated upon in her opinion column, “True Rush,” published in The Dartmouth.
Wheeler said she rushed because she wanted something to do, and the Greek system was a large part of her freshman year social life. But she said the women’s rush process can have a negative effect on participants’ self-esteem. Despite this, she said, the College has normalized and accepted the process.
During her time in a sorority, Wheeler realized that her interests did not align with those of her sisters and ultimately depledged her sorority. She added that recruitment deliberations were “unacceptably degrading” and that her sisters were often not supportive of her.
“While my experience is personal, it is representative of trends and problems with the system at large,” Wheeler said.
Unlike all the other panelists, Naldine Isaac ’15 remains active in a Panhell sorority, which she rushed her junior winter. She recounted her fear that joining the Greek system would come at odds with her affiliation with the Afro-American Society, a community in which she said certain people have strong anti-Greek sentiments.
Although she felt that recruitment was superficial, Isaac said she was “pleasantly surprised” by the good relationships she formed in her sorority. She found that her house was diverse, accepting and gave her opportunities to share personal stories that she would not have talked about outside of a supportive space.
“Whatever you end up doing, it will probably be the right decision for you,” Isaac said.
Around 30 students attended the panel, which took place in Casque and Gauntlet Friday evening.
Chang is a member of The Dartmouth senior staff. Wheeler is a former member of The Dartmouth staff.
