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Originally Posted by ColdInCanada11
High school sororities have always fascinated, and I have wondered: is your high school sorority more important than your collegiate, or vice versa? Or does that issue not come up? I love that there is an organisation to provide this support to younger women!
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My experiences were very different in high school and college, and I wouldn't say either are more important than the other. I also wouldn't necessarily call the high school experience an organization to support younger women. (See my comments below.)
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Originally Posted by carnation
What were these like? Did more people get in than not? Was it a really desired club? Did they have rush?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by barnard1897
I imagine it varied from chapter to chapter. In our chapter, it was very competitive to be selected for a bid. You either had to make the right friends in the chapter or be from the right neighborhood and dress the right way. So it was mainly for girls in the popular set. Recruitment ran very much like the collegiate version with themes and releases along the way, except you had to be invited to even the first round event. The pledge education included history of the sorority, the names and locations of all other chapters, Greek alphabet, the mascot, the crest, etc. I recall wearing the pledge pin even at school. And they could issue black or gold marks to a pledge depending on conduct and performance on membership ed tests. I enjoyed getting to know girls from several different schools; most of them were from fairly wealthy families in our town. But there were girls who did not get asked to join and no rhyme or reason to why that was.
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In our chapter everything was closed as far as rush goes. If you didn't have friends in the chapter, then you weren't going to get in. It also was not done to be super open about wanting to be a member. There were no open parties for what we called rush week. We had a theme every year and some fun times with the pre-selected pledge class. However, once the membership decided to offer you a bid, there were not any cuts like there are in college. We did have the chance for one final membership vote prior to initiation, but I don't know of anyone who ever got blackballed.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about the whole concept. I had a wonderful time. I was in it with all my best friends that I'd been best friends with since elementary school. To this day, I'm closer to my friends from DBS than I am to my Kappa friends, but I don't believe that it's because I was in the sorority. These girls would have been my friends anyway because we had always been friends. We have a shorthand from growing up together that still works mumble mumble decades later.
We did the social stuff, but we also had a philanthropy week every year that we raised money for a charity chosen at the annual national convention. The philanthropy took a lot of planning, and we learned a lot doing those things. We learned how to run meetings and organizational skills.
My biggest issue with it is the whole closed membership process. There were a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of friendships would be ended over being in it or not being in it. We still have DBS and another high school sorority in my town. In a few years, my daughter will be chosen or not, and I'm not sure how I feel about any of it.
