Wednesday, September 30, 2015 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, September 30 , 2015 // The Statement 
5B

MORALLY BANKRUPT: 

The Greek life crisis

By Chloe Gilke, Managing Arts Editor

E

verything is immaculately organized. 
The Panhellenic Association’s recruit-
ment mass meeting will convene in the 

Michigan League’s Ballroom from 5 to 8 p.m. 
There will be 17 tables, one for each chapter in 
Panhel and each table will be decorated with 
posters, paper cutouts and smiling girls in skirts 
and T-shirts.

I double-check the time written in my pink 

Moleskine before I step out the door — 6:00 
isn’t too late, unless this thing was supposed to 
actually be a three-hour commitment. But that 
doesn’t make sense. Would our sisters actually 
keep us tied to chairs in the League for three 
hours, testing our dedication before the rush 
process even begins? I’m freaking out. And I’m 
not even rushing.

Greek life is a powerful social system on 

campus — powerful enough to make a seasoned 
journalist sweat through three layers of BareM-
inerals powder and powerful enough to draw a 
crowd of hundreds to a standard Thursday eve-
ning mass meeting.

At the beginning of my freshman year, I 

considered joining a sorority. I ended up mak-
ing some friends in my hall and getting really 
busy with my film classes, and I chose not to 
rush. But sometimes I think about how my col-
lege experience would have been different if I’d 
stood in the League Ballroom three years ago, 
and found my family of sisters who made me 
miss home and Chicago a little less. Even as a 
senior, that’s an appealing prospect.

But I’m not writing this to justify my own 

decision to tough it out and carve out my friend 
group the old-fashioned way. I’m not writing 
this to put down anyone who joined Greek Life 
and loves it, and I’m not trying to capitalize on 
the stories of those who tried it and decided it 
wasn’t for them. I’m writing this article for my 
Ballroom-mates who chose not to hide behind a 
pink Moleskine and a prestigious editorial posi-
tion at the campus newspaper. I’m writing this 
for all those orphans, floating by the intricately 
decorated tables, plastering on a smile and wait-
ing to find their family.

***

According to data compiled by the University 

in winter 2015, 21.43 percent of the undergradu-
ate population is involved in Greek life. Students 

who would like to join Greek Life are presented 
with several options: 28 official fraternities in 
the Interfraternity Council, 17 sororities in the 
Panhellenic Association and 12 sororities and 
fraternities in the Multicultural Greek Council. 
The recruitment process and other aspects of 
Greek life are formally governed by these stu-
dent-led groups.

The Panhellenic Association (referred to as 

‘“Panhel” by many members of the Greek com-
munity) mandates that Potential New Mem-
bers (PNMs) participate in a formal September 
recruitment process. After the mass meet-
ings, each PNM participates in a series of mix-
ers and parties, briefly meeting women from 
every sorority before the second and third set 
events, where their choices are narrowed down 
through a mutual selection process. By Octo-
ber, sororities make bids on their top PNMs, 
each woman selects her favorite of the bids and 
pledges to the corresponding sorority.

The University’s Interfraternity Council 

website labels its recruitment system as “open” 
and “informal,” which means that the experi-
ence of rushing a frat differs a lot from house to 
house. But in general, young men who rush fra-
ternities do not have to attend events and meet-
and-greets at every fraternity; most guys pick 
between one and three frats to rush. Events are 
focused on evaluating the potential for a guy 
to join as one of the brothers, and male PNMs 
spend more time at an individual house during 
the rush process than their female equivalents. 
After weeks of parties, events and brotherly 
bonding, a fraternity will choose whether or not 
to make a bid on a guy, and if he is lucky enough 
to be accepted to more than one fraternity, the 
young pledge picks his favorite of the bunch.

When interviewed, many members of the 

Greek community for this story were tight-
lipped about what goes on behind closed doors 
during those recruitment events. This is no sur-
prise, considering that the IFC and Panhel are 
notoriously watchful during regular recruit-
ment months, and are especially so in the recent 
firestorm of Greek controversy.

On Thursday, Sept. 10 (coincidentally, the 

same night as the Panhellenic Association’s 
mass meeting), members of every Greek chapter 
attended a mandatory discussion with Universi-

ty President Mark Schlissel and other members 
of University administration. Schlissel talked 
openly about his frustration with Greek life’s 
party culture, perpetuated through viral videos 
like “I’m Shmacked” and evidenced through 
incidents like Sigma Alpha Mu’s destruction 
of the Treetops Resort this past January. And 
party culture has consequences vastly worse 
than a night in the emergency room: A recent 
University-wide survey cited that members of 
Greek life are 2.5 times more likely to experi-
ence sexual assault than their non-Greek peers.

LSA sophomore Julia Baer, a Delta Delta 

Delta sister, recalled her rush experience as 
being “a blur,” but was quick to point out that 
she never experienced any of the darker, news-
headline-worthy aspects of Greek life.

“I feel like this reputation that exists because 

of a few people, and that’s really a shame, 
because it’s not representative of the commu-
nity at all,” Baer said.

***

LSA senior Jessica* recalled picking out 

her outfit before the first mixer of recruitment 
season freshman year. Her Rho Omega — an 
upperclassman sorority member in charge of 
overseeing groups of PNMs — called Jessica 
with a few helpful tips and reminders.

“She said that some of the houses I was gonna 

go to were going to have cheese and cracker 
plates out, and that it was actually a test,” Jes-
sica said. “If I actually ate the cheese and crack-
ers in the houses, I would never get in.”

For Jessica, this was the moment where she 

decided that she wouldn’t continue rushing.

“That’s just so not me. Obviously, I was going 

to eat the cheese and crackers. I love cheese and 
crackers! It became this symbolic thing, like I 
can’t join an organization that wouldn’t accept 
me because I eat cheese.”

Jessica said she was ostracized by some of her 

friends after she decided not to rush. She had 
already talked to a few older girls in one of the 
sororities, and one friend had even approached 
the president of a chapter and promoted Jessica 
to her. Since she’d asked for favors and other 
girls had gone out of their way to comply, Jes-
sica’s Greek friends felt slighted.

“That was actually the hardest thing to 

say no to. Once I felt like I was already being 

accepted by this group, to refuse that, it actually 
tarnished my friendship with those people,” 
Jessica said.

This subtle not-hazing, low-grade emotional 

warfare is a typical experience of rush for many 
girls. With the Panhel mandate of visiting every 
sorority and making connections in every room 
comes the inevitability of getting cut and facing 
rejection from many of the houses.

Baer remembered adoring Tri Delta so much 

that she thought of “suiciding” it — choosing 
Tri Delta as her only preference, meaning that 
if she weren’t accepted she would not be a part 
of Greek life. But Baer weighed her options and 
decided that she’d rather join a less-preferred 
sorority than spend all that time and effort in 
recruitment for nothing.

“I would not go through (recruitment) again. 

It’s emotional torture. It’s awful. But I was 
like, ‘I’m just gonna put everything down, and 
whatever house I get in, I’ll be in. I’ll make great 
friends no matter what,’ ” Baer said.

Not everyone sees Greek life in such an egali-

tarian way.

Many rushees refer to a website called 

GreekRank, which allows users to anonymous-
ly rate chapters based on qualities like “looks,” 
“classiness,” and “social life.” Comments on the 
site perpetuate “tiers” and other reductive ste-
reotypes of particular chapters, but the data on 
the site is irresistible, and influences many girls’ 
rush preferences.

Baer, who hails from New York, believes that 

many in-state girls, who hear rumors about the 
tendencies of chapters, allow all the labels to 
influence their decisions in rush.

“A lot of people coming from Michigan come 

into rush with the idea that they have to be in 
‘XYZ’ or they won’t do it,” Baer said. “For me, 
being in Tri Delt hasn’t been about rank at all. 
That’s not what I wanted, that’s not what it is. 
I have a great group of friends, my best friends, 
and it’s not a status thing at all.”

Baer doesn’t sugar-coat the exhausting weeks 

of rush and the stress that comes with choosing 
houses to preference, but she insists upon the 
merits of the end result — philanthropy, friend-
ship, sisterhood, and a home away from home.

“I think, in general, girls go through this 

thing that’s like, mentally draining and emo-

tionally draining. But from there on, it’s smooth 
sailing.”

***

When LSA senior Michael* rushed a non-IFC 

frat, he expected a good time.

The Interfraternity Council (or, as one 

source affectionately dubbed them, the “frat 
police”) is in many ways the laid-back brother 
of overachieving Panhel. They oversee the two-
week periods of fraternity rush in the fall and 
winter, help with coordinating events and set 
recruitment deadlines and other rules that keep 
fraternities in line with University standards. 
Without the IFC to organize mass meetings 
and promote their chapters, non-IFC frats are 
on their own for recruitment — but they also 
have leeway in extending the rush and pledge 
periods … and the freedom to bend a few rules.

“The first event I went to, they gave us some 

free pizza, free beer and free weed, so that’s 
fine, I’m down with that,” Michael recalled.

Having older male friends in fraternities is a 

large part of why many guys rush fraternities. 
Though Michael was a self-professed “straight-
edge dude” during his freshman year, as he 
became more entrenched in Ann Arbor culture 
he made more friends involved in alternative 
Greek Life, so he decided to rush during his 
junior year.

“Partially, I would say, it was a peer-pressure 

thing. (My friends) invited me to check out the 
house, and I was like, ‘Why not?’ And this par-
ticular frat had the reputation of being a not-
standard frat, and (a standard frat) is something 
I knew I wouldn’t be into,” Michael said.

Despite the fact that he was rushing a non-

IFC frat, Michael recognized some of the same 
dynamics from his uncles’ playful hazing sto-
ries of eating goldfish (yes, the swimming kind) 
and being locked in basements with kegs.

“I do believe they do hazing, but it’s not like 

they’re going to beat your ass with a paddle or 
anything like that,” Michael said.

Michael started to have his doubts about 

recruitment when he saw how long it went on 
— from free pizza in early October until the 
middle of January, when PNMs finally gradu-
ated to pledges.

In his three months of rushing, Michael had 

to memorize facts, songs and perform in front of 

the brothers. He had to clean bathrooms, wear a 
sweatpants uniform, give up his phone and stay 
locked in a room until one of the brothers grant-
ed him permission to leave. Toward the end, 
every minute he wasn’t in class, he was sup-
posed to spend at the frat. Finally, he decided he 
couldn’t take it anymore.

“Their justification for making you go 

through all of this is that, when you’re done, you 
get to be part of this awesome social group and 
live in this cool house, and you have brothers 
forever, and it’s gonna be great. I didn’t doubt 
that these guys were going to be friendly after-
wards, but I didn’t agree with their condition 
that to be a part of this group, you have to accept 
the emotional abuse.”

The week before recruitment ended, Michael 

notified the brothers that he was dropping out. 
They begged him to stay, offered to change and 
to cut the bullshit and start treating him bet-
ter. In Michael’s words, both sides behaved like 
a couple in an “abusive relationship,” where 
one cannot control the horrors it inflicts and 
the other can’t resist the desire to be loved and 
accepted. Despite the bartering (the frat offered 
to let him back in without completing the last 
week of “events”), Michael broke it off.

Michael remains good friends with a lot of 

the guys in the frat, and made sure to tell me 
several times that his experience “wasn’t the 
worst thing ever in the world” and that the frat 
he rushed is generally one of the gentler, more 
“forward-thinking” ones on campus.

He sees the appeal in joining a fraternity, 

especially as a means to community-building.

“They welcome you with open arms. They 

say, ‘We’ll give you all the weed and all the girls 
you want,’ not telling you up-front what you 
have to do to actually get to the end. It isn’t sold 
as the intense kind of experience that it actually 
is.”

***

Several of the young women interviewed for 

this story referred to rush as “a blur,” a rigid and 
exhausting three weeks that one has to endure 
get to the wonderful part of Greek life — the 
sisterhood and the house and the luxury of par-
ticipating in recruitment from the other side. 
For fraternity members, however, the lack of 
rigid governing structure means that the hard 

part can bleed over into the months following 
recruitment, the pledge period and the whole 
first year.

According to one study, women who rushed 

sororities were more likely to self-report feel-
ings of low self-esteem than before they rushed. 
A Northwestern University study cited soror-
ity rush as a catalyst for self-objectification 
and poor body image in college-aged women. 
For example, curvier women are more likely 
to experience feelings of low self-worth after 
judgment from their peers. According to the 
study, for every additional point in a woman’s 
Body Mass Index — a standardized calcula-
tion of weight in reference to height — she is 44 
percent more likely to drop out of rush. Even 
after rush, women in sororities are more likely 
to maintain dysfunctional and harmful eating 
patterns than their non-Greek peers.

For fraternity members, hazing has lasting 

impact self-esteem and self-worth. A 2005 study 
reported that “striving to belong to a particular 
group, especially during ritualized initiations, 
may result in the justification of that effort, 
thereby inoculating individuals against any dis-
sonant cognition they may harbor concerning 
the consequences of group membership.” The 
desire to be a part of the group can desensitize 
members to harmful group practices like objec-
tification of women, alcohol and drug abuse and 
other destructive behaviors.

How do these tragedies happen in organiza-

tion that’s built on principles of friendship and 
philanthropy?

The members of Greek life interviewed for 

this article point out the difficulty of rebuild-
ing the foundation of Greek life, making it more 
fair and inclusive. The University’s Greek com-
munity is celebrating its 170th anniversary 
this year, and there’s no denying that campus 
has undergone significant political and social 
changes since the 19th century. Greek life, in its 
great size and prominence, is just a little slower 
in getting with the times.

The Multicultural Greek Council offers 

Greek opportunities for students who want 
to join a group of other philanthropy-minded 
students in their ethnic community, but Baer 
wishes that Panhel’s homogenous reputation 
would break down and encourage more diverse 

recruitment.

“Something that has really bothered me is 

hearing the way people talk, even within the 
Panhellenic system, there being sororities that 
are, like known as being, ‘Jewish’ and ‘not Jew-
ish.’ That creates the issue of someone feeling 
like the outsider in such a tight-knit commu-
nity. But this is college, and we’re so integrated 
and always interacting with such amazing and 
diverse people … I do wish there was that kind 
of diversity in Greek life,” Baer said.

While leadership in Panhel and the IFC did 

not respond to requests for a comment, sorority 
and fraternity members claim that Greek lead-
ership is trying to change the system. But it isn’t 
easy.

“The guys, after I left (the fraternity), told 

me that they were in the process of trying to fix 
everything. But they were running up against 
opposition from alumni who were expecting 
(the frat) to continue with the same traditions 
that they were a part of,” Michael said.

Baer echoed the frustration of trying to 

reshape an institution that has had 170 years to 
calcify its traditions.

“I wish I knew how to fix it.”

***

At the Panhel mass meeting, I stand toward 

the back of the ballroom. I’m always a wall-
flower, but today, I’m also an old, sweaty upper-
classman who doesn’t want to block the fresh 
recruits from the view of a table that might have 
info about their future home and their future 
sisters. I can’t see exactly what’s written on 
the posters and am only gleaning bits of what 
the older girls are saying to the mass meet-
ing attendees. (I hear something about grilled 
cheese for charity, which sounds amazing from 
every angle.)

If any of these girls took a look at my banged-

up Moleskine or heard the tinny of some 
Neutral Milk Hotel song playing from the ear-
buds dangling around my neck, they’d know I 
definitely don’t belong in this room right now. 
Maybe I never belonged. But I’m here now, so I 
might as well grab a pamphlet and listen.

Editor’s Note: Some names have been changed to 
protect the identities of several sources, denoted 
with an asterisk.

Members of Greek life 
are 2.5 times more likely to 
experience sexual assault

21.43 percent of 

‘U’ undergrads are 
involved in Greek life

