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Dammit.
Every time I want to take a break from motteposting, something interesting and topical rears up.
My initial reaction is "THANKS, I hate it." The social environment you're describing sounds like my personal nightmare. And the rules, to the extent they're legible, seem so ARBITRARY. Whether a given sorority picks Jaylynn or Bria or whatever seems to come down to where she parted her hair that day as much as any other qualifications. Barely better than pure random selection. Its filtering for social conformity, and that is pretty much it.
BUT, I did date a girl who was the "fun police" (i.e. the "Wellness and Safety Chair" or something similar) of a particular sorority who had the unenviable job of enforcing the moral code of the chapter, which meant snooping on girls' social media and bringing violations to the attention of the leadership. Now, this was NOT a large, popular school so the overall pressures were much lesser. And that's probably why the girls felt they could get away with a lot more. Alcohol and drunkenness, drug use, and such were pretty common issues that they posted on social media (normally a secondary account they made explicitly to post debauchery). And it was hard to bring them to heel because the sorority wasn't so critical to campus social life and status that getting kicked out would be a social death sentence. Also the Treasurer for the chapter embezzled a few thousand dollars of Sorority funds during her term so its not like the leaders were paragons of virtue either.
Of course, the things this girl and I got up to would also have posed issues to the moral code of the chapter, and I liked to remind her sometimes of the 'hypocricy,' but she was smart and discreet enough not to post anything publicly, and maintained her reputation quite clean, which I wasn't going to disrupt (like that one ex boyfriend the article mentions leaking nudes as revenge? Ugh).
Perhaps THAT is what these sororities try to filter for? Discretion? Like can you maintain public appearances and not hurt your sorority's social standing by, say, making your bad behavior obvious and obnoxious, can you conform well enough that nobody would single you out as a 'bad' girl or a goody two-shoes? Well you might be marriage material!
Because even a Frat bro is probably not going to wife up a girl who acquires the reputation of being a drunken, druggie slut, even if "Drunken druggie slut" is exactly his preference in women. He needs/wants a girl who will consider his social standing, as well, at his side if he's eventually going into politics or banking or some other important career where 'moral uprightness' is a critical variable. Maybe she really is that bad girl, but she isn't one to make it known, and so he can be confident she won't embarrass him with her behavior later.
And I shouldn't complain too much, Frats and Sororities at least offer some kind of Basic Life Script that make it more likely that somebody will make a few right decisions early in life that are more likely to pay off for them later. Rush for a good sorority, maintain your membership in good standing, hang out with Frat Bros and hopefully lock one down, and graduate with a MrS degree and you're probably golden! At least for a while.
We can admit that there's a toxic side to this where Frat guys use their dad's money and their connections to get away with actively criminal behavior because an arrest and criminal record might derail their life, but I would NOT admit that Frat Culture is the proximate cause of the behavior itself.
I bask in your praise. Stay tuned for part II, tomorrow, which is the coverage of Race in the series.
You may be right, the purpose of private nominally secret societies may be that one can maintain a veneer of respectability outwardly while behaving badly in private.
I mean, that is what separates us from the animals, right?
Folsom Street Fair attendees doing it in the open vs. Eyes Wide Shut-style sex parties where most everyone has plausible deniability.
A friend of mine often points out that a fundamental sign of society degenerating is that most people now seem to lack 'discretion.' Virtually everyone is tempted to bad behavior on occasion. But it seemingly used to be that one would go to the local brothel, drug den, underground casino, whatever, to indulge if they ever did. It was shameful and they knew not to endorse it and certainly to keep it away from kids.
Now, well, almost all bets are off, the only people who keep things discreet are consciously choosing to do so.
Are there statistics out there on how common brothels have been over time in the USA? It seems intuitive to me that it's become a less accepted part of life in the past decades.
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