Other than the police, Caitlin refused to tell anybody the rapist’s name, because she assumed Chris would assault him; and if Kappa Tau Chi brothers recognized Chris, they might identify her. When detectives tracked the boy down, he insisted the sex had been consensual, but to no avail. Kappa Tau Chi pulled his pin—kicked out a brother who had already been initiated—and he transferred schools. Since then, the Kappa Tau Chi brothers, who knew the girl involved was a member of Alpha Rho, refused to seek out Alpha Rho for mixers and, the sisters heard, had gotten into arguments over whether individuals could date Alpha Rhos. But as far as Caitlin knew, none of the brothers knew her identity. She hoped that wouldn’t change.
When Sex Turns to Scandal
WHAT HAPPENED TO CAITLIN IS HARDLY UNCOMMON. Several studies have found that rape and sexual assault are particularly prevalent at Greek events and houses. Out of the four State U sorority sisters whom I chose to follow throughout the academic year, two turned out to have been raped by fraternity brothers after Greek functions: Caitlin by a new acquaintance and Amy by a friend (I didn’t know about these incidents when I chose the girls). It would be irresponsible, though, to suggest that these kinds of episodes, however common, characterize the Greek system as a whole or that they occur only in the Greek system. Yet it is still important to explore the sexual side of fraternity-sorority relations because of its broader statements about the image and function of sororities and the power distribution within them.
In the Greek system, sex, whether assault or affair, rarely remains an issue between the participating individuals alone. At one university, sorority sisters convinced a sister who was raped at a fraternity party not to report the rape because if she did, the fraternity brothers would “hate” them and wouldn’t invite them to parties anymore. In Caitlin’s case, the rape caused a lasting rift between the entire sorority and the entire fraternity. When I asked Caitlin why, after her experience, she would still want to be a part of this system, she told me that what happened to her could have happened at any party. When I asked her why she fought to return to Alpha Rho, she said that besides the chance to hone leadership skills, she had by then also already forged a connection with her pledge class. “In high school, I bounced a lot between groups and was kind of a loner. So in Alpha Rho, it felt really good to feel like I was part of a group. Since we had to be at the house several days a week for pledging, I’d already spent so much time with these girls,” she told me. “I was so proud of myself because I had gotten into my first-choice house. I couldn’t see cutting that out of my life.” In fact, because the rape had occurred within the Greek system, Caitlin said she felt more protected than if she and the rapist had not been Greek. “I know Kappa Tau Chi can’t do anything because there are enough people who know about it. There’s a ‘They can’t touch me’ mentality,” she said. “But it’s still awkward at functions when the sisters are wearing letters and standing with their house and the brothers are wearing letters and standing with their house. I’m standing in my letters with my sorority and I’m sure they look at me and think I’m evil.”
Several sororities have rules that seem to discourage sex; some, if not most, have a strict bylaw forbidding men from venturing upstairs in the house. Many sororities impose a curfew on male guests and forbid sisters from hosting them overnight. During one mid-Atlantic sorority house meeting I attended at the beginning of the year, the adviser instructed the sisters that they even had to “escort male guests to the bathroom.” But that hardly deterred the girls; that mid-Atlantic house was known as one of the most promiscuous houses on campus. State U’s Alpha Rho and Beta Pi both utterly ignored the no-overnight-guest rule. Some of Brooke’s Texas Eta Gamma sisters blatantly defied it by regularly sneaking boys into the supposedly secret chapter room to have sex.
But the real problem isn’t one of sorority sisters hustling boys into a no-guy zone under cover of bunk bed. The more interesting issue is the sorority system’s contradictory perspectives about sex. On the one hand, the girls are reminded of the need to appear chaste and ladylike; on the other hand, they are pressured to find dates for a multitude of events and are encouraged to go to fraternity formals, which often include an overnight hotel stay. This paradoxical view can confuse new members, who then look to the older sisters to lead by example. An interesting power structure ensues, on two levels. From the fraternities’ perspective, sororities generally consist of attractive girls who have already been prescreened through the rush process. These girls have dates to offer because they need escorts to the many Greek system functions. So a sorority can afford to be a selective group, which is why it is the sororities who usually have control over the Greek Week escort process and can choose the highest bidder (or most generous suitor) from among the fraternities. But the sexual power structure within sororities is even more fascinating. When girls are put in charge of other girls—younger girls who don’t yet understand the political landscape within the house—sex can become a commodity and a way to establish dominance within the sisterhood.
In 1997, a sorority girl came forward to announce that her sorority had ordered her pledge class to sleep with an entire fraternity. The pledge class was sent to stay at a fraternity at another college, where the girls were told to have sex with the brothers. “You have to sleep with the brothers here in order for you to cross over,” the pledges were told. “You have to sleep with them . . . That’s your duty.” At first, the girl thought it was a joke. But when she again was told that her pledge class had to have sex with the fraternity brothers as well as the fraternity’s pledges, she refused and depledged.
Other university groups have attempted to capitalize on sorority sisters’ sexuality. One of the biggest sex scandals to hit the sorority system allegedly occurred at Southern Methodist University in the late 1970s and early 1980s. SMU boosters reportedly set up a student-run network that paid sorority sisters to have sex with athletic recruits to persuade them to play for the SMU Ponies (the boosters also supposedly bribed university secretaries to alter course grades for athletes and paid other students to take tests and write papers for football players). Under the supervision of the boosters, an SMU law student known as “King Rat” worked with four other students to pay about a dozen sorority girls $400 per weekend to seduce recruits. They gave the sisters a booster’s credit card, a fur coat, and a Mercedes-Benz to use to entertain the athletes. The girls were instructed to sleep with the recruits both to convince them to come to SMU (with promises of continued sex if they did) and to get information about what other schools were illegally offering the high school athletes. The sorority sex network, which began in 1979, ended in 1985 when the sorority sisters became too frightened by the emergence of AIDS to continue sleeping with strangers. These and other allegations led the NCAA to impose its first “death penalty” on a football program when it prohibited SMU from playing football in 1987.
The SMU sex scandal, which the media dubbed “Ponytail Gate,” seemed to involve consenting sorority sisters who were willing to sell sex as something of a fund-raiser (as an alternative to, say, bake sales). But other sorority women have stepped forward since then to claim that they were expected to provide similar services despite their unwillingness to participate. One evening in 1988, a sorority girl who was a little sister to the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at Florida’s Stetson University attended a punk-themed mixer. At the “Pike” house, the little sister, wearing a denim miniskirt, black stockings, and black shoes, went to the bar area and drank a couple of rum runners. She went into another room where she had an “upside-down margarita”: she lay down with her mouth open while three brothers poured three kinds of alcohol down her throat. Eventually she passed out on the dance floor. When she came to, she was being gang-raped by fraternity brothers, who scattered when she started to scream. “How could they do this to me?” she shouted. “I’ve done so much for them.” The next day, the little sister returned to the Pike house and resigned. She later found out that while she lay semicon
scious and stripped of her skirt, stockings, and shoes, several of the brothers poked and slapped her and poured shampoo over her body as they laughed and pointed. She also learned that the event had been a “spectrum”—a fraternity term for sex as spectator sport; while some brothers raped her, others stood outside on top of a bicycle rack to peer through a window at the scene. A former Pike later admitted that the house held spectrums twice a month. The little sister dropped out of school.
Fraternity chapters started the little sister programs (a different group from the Little Sisters within sororities) in the 1960s, but by the late 1980s universities had begun to abolish fraternity little sisters because of claims that the fraternities were sexually exploiting the girls. In 1988, the Association of Fraternity Advisers resolved that the program treated the women as “subservient or ‘second-class’ status.” At the University of Missouri-Columbia, which suspended its little sisters program after a spate of sexual assaults in 1989, some of the girls were forced to drink alcohol and read sexually explicit material before meeting their “big brothers.” The University of South Florida terminated its program in 1990 because of complaints of sexual harassment. And a 1994 report from the University of Rhode Island discussed how fraternity brothers referred to little sisters as “freshmeat” and held parties where some female students were denied entry because their breasts were too small.
But experts told me that these organizations continue to exist, both openly and underground, even though neither the National Panhellenic Conference nor the Interfraternity Council condones little sisters. According to the 1985 book Rush: A Girl’s Guide to Sorority Success, little sisters are generally defined as a group of between eight and twenty girls, often sorority members, chosen by fraternity brothers to “help the fraternity plan and hold parties and have money-raising projects to buy the fraternity expensive gifts.” Little sisters often pay dues and attend weekly dinners and little sister meetings at the fraternity house. The relationships often become far more complex.
Many fraternities also expect the little sisters to be their cheerleaders at athletic events, to cook for them, to clean up after parties, and to serve as trophy dates to help them recruit new brothers by flaunting their sexuality to rushees. Fraternity brothers use pictures or slide shows of their little sisters to lure recruits and suggest that joining the fraternity will give them sexual access to these girls. The pictures have ranged from charts explaining the number of beers it took to seduce each little sister to glossy, full-color centerfold advertisements of the sisters in bathing suits accompanied by the explanation, “Chosen on the basis of beauty, charm, and loyalty to [this fraternity], they remember our birthdays, host parties for us, and generally take pretty good care of the brothers.”
“Take pretty good care” is quite the euphemism. Several little sisters have admitted that their membership included sex with many of the brothers, with gang rape a distinct possibility. Studies of these programs have shown that a girl is often expected to have sex with most of the brothers in order to be accepted as a little sister in the first place. Indeed, there have been cases when little sisters who refused to have sex with a brother were kicked out of the program, or “had their jersey pulled.” Even girls who have merely broken up with a boyfriend in the fraternity—or who have dated a member of a different fraternity—have had their jerseys pulled. But fraternities have also kicked out sisters who became too promiscuous, leaving a blurry line between what is considered appropriate little sister sexual behavior and what is shunned.
At one little sister initiation ceremony, the girls had to touch their breasts while simulating oral sex on a banana. They still would not receive their little sister pins unless they French-kissed the other little sisters sexily enough to meet with the brothers’ approval. Some fraternities auction off their sisters in an annual fund-raiser known as “Slave Auction.” As the little sisters are encouraged to drink and “hump the pole” on a stage, brothers bid on their “services,” including baking, cleaning, and driving.
Competition to become a little sister is intense. When a fraternity selects a little sister, the brothers might take her for a limousine ride or give her roses. “They . . . sing and put you on their lap and lean on one knee,” one little sister told then-doctoral student Mindy Stombler, who studied the programs. “It was seen as a big honor,” another sister said. “It feels good that so many guys have picked you. When they came and got me, I was so light-headed that I almost fell over.” The perceived prestige is partly why the girls accept this kind of treatment—and may similarly explain sorority sisters’ devotion to the importance of fraternity relations. A little sister told Stombler, “Something that made me so mad was that they would tell us to go up to the would-be pledge and make sure that he is having a good time . . . [The brother would say] ‘You know, dance with him or give him a drink or something or walk outside with him,’” she said. “I wouldn’t stand up at a little sister meeting and say, ‘They’re using us.’ I didn’t feel like I had the power to do that.”
OCTOBER
Clothes are the first thing sororities will notice about you. You must dress appropriately. Proper attire does not necessarily mean expensive designer clothes. (But wearing them can’t hurt!) Rather, your clothes should fit into your personal style while expressing a sorority girl image.
—Rush: A Girl’s Guide to Sorority Success, 1985
Big and little sisters exchange presents on every holiday (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween, Easter, and so on). Birthdays are expensive gift-giving times. Popular gifts are handcrafted or specially made objects that represent the sorority’s symbol, crest, colors, or Greek letters. Needlepoint is very popular, as are hand-painted wooden and acrylic objects. Fresh flowers are a must.
—Rush: A Girl’s Guide to Sorority Success, 1985
OCTOBER 6
SABRINA’S IM AWAY MESSAGE
if i’m going to waste time, i’m going to do it right.
FOUNDERS DAY, OCTOBER 6, was one of the few occasions when all thirteen Alpha Rho alumnae advisers—a general supervisor and an adviser for each executive board position—showed up at the house. On each anniversary of the founding of Alpha Rho, the girls were required to dress in “badge attire,” which meant they had to wear their gold, bejeweled Alpha Rho pins, or “badges,” and dress as if they were going to church or synagogue: no denim, no sneakers. Usually the unofficial dress code in the house was dictated only by what most girls happened to be wearing that season. But badge attire was ordered for alumnae functions, certain events, and one chapter meeting—the “formal meeting”—each month.
Sabrina padded downstairs in jeans at 3 p.m., when the girls had been instructed to come down to the entry hall. Sabrina wouldn’t have to mingle for long; when Caitlin came back from her lacrosse scrimmage, she was supposed to take Sabrina to a campus bar to watch a National Football League game. As the sisters gathered on the front stairs to sit and sip iced lemonade while waiting for the alumnae to show up, they eyed the crystal-fringed dining room, where fancy trays sported finger sandwiches, berries, and coffee cake cubes. Fiona, the event chair, had announced to the group that no one could eat anything until the alumnae arrived.
About two dozen alums walked in the door—women ranging from their twenties to their seventies. By 3:30, the girls were finally allowed to converge on the tables. Immediately, Fiona made a beeline for Amy and another sister, who, at size 10, were the largest girls in the sorority (though by no means portly). “Make sure you don’t take too much food,” Fiona hissed. She didn’t warn any of the other girls, who piled their plates high.
After the group mingled, Fiona ushered the girls into the chapter room for speeches. Every year on Founders Day, the returning alumnae spoke to the sisters about what it was like to be in Alpha Rho, what Alpha Rho had done for them, and how the sorority had remained a part of their lives since graduation. As the room hushed, there was a loud knock at the chapter room door. Fiona opened it a
crack, and the entire room turned to look at Caitlin, their vice president.
“You can go in and sit down,” Fiona whispered. “She’s getting ready to speak.”
“Oh, I’m just picking up Sabrina and passing through,” Caitlin whispered back. Sabrina, relieved, slipped out the door while Fiona watched, mouth agape.
“But this is Founders Day!”
“Yep,” Caitlin said, laughing, and she and Sabrina, braids flying, scampered out of the house.
Despite the occasional outing, Sabrina was working harder than she had in previous semesters. Accustomed to getting a 4.0, she had received Bs on a few papers already this term and had resolved to work harder. Part of the problem was that she had added shifts to her waitressing schedule and she was taking more course credits than usual. On the first day of classes, she had checked out a creative writing class just to hear what the class was about. She hadn’t planned on taking it; she didn’t need the credit. But Professor Stone, a good-looking man in his late thirties, had interesting things to say and seemed like such an engaging teacher that Sabrina decided to cram his course into her schedule.
Now that Sabrina lived in the Alpha Rho house, where she was constantly barraged by reminders of Alpha Rho commitments, she was having a difficult time balancing her heavy courseload with the sorority. When she had accepted Alpha Rho’s bid as a freshman, she hadn’t foreseen the scores of obligations that would come with it. Nor had she expected membership to be so expensive. It didn’t seem to bother the rest of the Alpha Rhos that there were a multitude of less obvious sorority costs in addition to the dues. For instance, sisters were supposed to buy Alpha Rho–lettered clothes in blue and green, the sorority colors. When Little Sisters were assigned in early March, each Big Sister had to buy gifts: food, Alpha Rho clothes, Alpha Rho trinkets, jewelry. For Greek events, sisters had to purchase tickets and were strongly encouraged to buy the party favors and T-shirts the sorority inevitably created to go along with every event—in addition to new dresses, shoes, accessories, jewelry, and limousines for every semiformal and Formal. They were also constantly being asked to donate to various charity and sorority fund drives. This was on top of the cash needed for the frequent casual sorority outings to bars, clubs, or restaurants. Most sisters didn’t think twice about the money. Sabrina couldn’t get it out of her mind.
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