Actives Need to Clean Up Facebook, Too

[SydneyK]

So, I was looking at facebook and came across an active (in a sorority I won't name) who made comments such as (names changed to protect the innocent):

• my sorority sisters don't care about my personal problems - they even make me cry more
• Thanks, Ginger, for being a REAL sister
• we only had (insert low # here) PNMs show up for pref - I wish I could've left town

So my question is this. Aren't actives told to make sure their myspace/facebook/blogs are cleaned up? These comments were made DURING recruitment. If I were one of the PNMs who attended this sorority's pref and saw that comment, I would think, "Well screw you, too."

It just strikes me as odd that women put such inappropriate details in a public place, especially at a time like recruitment. This is supposed to be the time to show PNMs how great your sisterhood is, not a time to complain about having only one REAL sister.

This sorority has been struggling with numbers for a while... I just can't believe they wouldn't tell their members to make sure that, if they can't paint their sisterhood in a brilliantly positive light, then don't say anything at all.

Don't most groups have some kind of pre-recruitment workshops going over information like this? Is this a case of a poorly involved advisor? Or are some things just expected to be common sense (and therefore not a concern for either the chapter or the advisor)?

[purplewindex]

Oh my goodness. We just had a workshop about internet sites like Facebook, MySpace, LJ, etc. and were told that it was absolutely necessary to either put it on private for Recruitment or clean it up. It's ridiculous that somebody would put something like that on FACEBOOK, of all things.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by SydneyK

So, I was looking at facebook and came across an active (in a sorority I won't name) who made comments such as (names changed to protect the innocent):

• my sorority sisters don't care about my personal problems - they even make me cry more
• Thanks, Ginger, for being a REAL sister
• we only had (insert low # here) PNMs show up for pref - I wish I could've left town

So my question is this. Aren't actives told to make sure their myspace/facebook/blogs are cleaned up? These comments were made DURING recruitment. If I were one of the PNMs who attended this sorority's pref and saw that comment, I would think, "Well screw you, too."

It just strikes me as odd that women put such inappropriate details in a public place, especially at a time like recruitment. This is supposed to be the time to show PNMs how great your sisterhood is, not a time to complain about having only one REAL sister.

This sorority has been struggling with numbers for a while... I just can't believe they wouldn't tell their members to make sure that, if they can't paint their sisterhood in a brilliantly positive light, then don't say anything at all.

Don't most groups have some kind of pre-recruitment workshops going over information like this? Is this a case of a poorly involved advisor? Or are some things just expected to be common sense (and therefore not a concern for either the chapter or the advisor)?

Umm duh.

If she hates her sorority this much, and is this miserable, do you really expect her to listen if a chapter officer or advisor tells her to clean up her facebook?

[ThetaPrincess24]

Why is she paying her dues as a member if she hates her chapter so much? Regardless of the inappropriate comments on Facebook, if she is that miserable why not just turn in the pin?

[tunatartare]

Networking? Mommy, grandma, and five aunts were all XYZs? Parents paying dues? I worked on a project with a girl who was miserable in her sorority and talked shit about them every chance that she got. She purposely avoided them and never showed up to anything. When she got called in to standards, she asked me to go with her so that they would "cut it short" (hell no!). When I asker her why she would continue to be in it, she said that her parents were paying her dues and that it looked really good on her resume and for possible social connections if she could say that she's an XYZ rather than she was an XYZ in college but left the sorority.

[AnchorAlumna]

Originally Posted by KLPDaisy

I worked on a project with a girl who was miserable in her sorority and talked shit about them every chance that she got...When I asked her why she would continue to be in it, she said that her parents were paying her dues and that it looked really good on her resume and for possible social connections if she could say that she's an XYZ rather than she was an XYZ in college but left the sorority.

I would have NO trouble voting to expel somebody like that. Everybody would be happier.

[tunatartare]

It was the second semester of her senior year. She had already caused them so much grief that they probably figured that it would be less time-consuming to forget about her than it would be to actually go through the process of expelling her.

[SydneyK]

Wow... I hadn't really thought about this being intentional. I just assumed she was dense enough to have forgotten about people other than her close friends having the opportunity to read it.

If she deliberately ignored requests by her chapter officers or advisors to remove the information (or refrain from posting such information), then the situation is worse than I had originally thought.

I just thought it was oversight on someone's part. We give PNMs all kinds of advice on here, so I thought perhaps we needed to give actives advice as well. Don't I feel naive!

Looks like this chapter just needs to do some weeding-out.

[BamaDad DZ]

Thank you for the advice. I will certainly pass the idea of clean Facebook text on to my daughter. Everyone speaks constantly of monitoring your Facebook entries during recruitment for fear of sorority eyes gathering incriminating tidbits ofmorsels of information.

[alum]

I agree with this. Quite frankly I am appalled at some of the interest groups on the college sites, "I got blackout drunk and tried to dance", "what did I do last night?" It may seem harmless and be funny to some members but it really is detrimental to Greek Life. When you have faculty and administration officials who don't look kindly on the Greek system, it belies our case that we are not all about drinking but about sister/brotherhood/philanthropy etc.

[tunatartare]

Originally Posted by alum

I agree with this. Quite frankly I am appalled at some of the interest groups on the college sites, "I got blackout drunk and tried to dance", "what did I do last night?" It may seem harmless and be funny to some members but it really is detrimental to Greek Life. When you have faculty and administration officials who don't look kindly on the Greek system, it belies our case that we are not all about drinking but about sister/brotherhood/philanthropy etc.

I think that those groups are only detrimental to greek life when it's at a big school with a large greek life population. At my school, 1% of girls and 3% of guys are greek, I can't even count the number of groups that we have with names like "my BAC is higher than my GPA," "finish your beer, there are sober kids in India," "I do stupid things when I'm drunk," etc. Seeing as there are hundreds of people in those groups and there aren't even that many people in greek life, I don't see how the administration could possibly look down on us for that.

[alum]

Good point! In response to that, I would say that NO student should be joining these side groups. Don't you think faculty and academic advisors look at profiles when choosing a student for a specific position, honor or even just to see the other side of the person? I know that my colleagues and I do.

Some of you are scolding a young woman on her AI mission because her myspace page is showing oddities. I am not that old, yet I don't think I would want a 28 y.o. grown woman who still liked cartoon characters initiated into ANY group. We should be reminding everyone to keep their facebook page G-rated.

When I read the Wake Forest thread that got bumped recently and read the original thread that went with it, and the livejournal page that started it all, I realized that we actually know the girl who may have inadvertantly started the whole mess 3 years ago. I haven't mentioned it to her mom, but it certainly makes me think differently of this girl.

[33girl]

Re that Wake Forest thing, I would hardly say she "started the whole mess." The "mess" was already happening, she just wrote about it (and very well, may I add). That's like saying newspapers caused a robbery because they did a news story on it.

[tunatartare]

Alum, I have to say that it's a bit ridiculous not to pick a student for an honor or position just because his/her facebook says that (s)he likes to drink and party. Personally, it seems that things like grades, activities, recommendation letters, etc. would hold more weight than a facebook picture or group. At least I should hope so.

[greekalum]

Where's this Wake Forest thread?