Much Ado About Nothing
I can’t believe that this story is getting so much press coverage (on CNN & Good Morning America and at Business2.0). Brief recap: the Delta Zeta sorority chapter at DePauw University has been declining in membership, becoming so small that it’s in danger of being shut down. So the national sorority reviewed the members and tossed several out of the sorority house (not out of the sorority). Big deal, right?
Apparently not, for you see, the national sorority committed an unforgivable sin: it cast out the ugly girls. This makes sense: the function of a fraternity or sorority is to provide alcohol for young men and women unable to purchase it for themselves in a pleasant atmosphere accompanied by suitable musical entertainment and in the presence of the opposite sex—i.e. to throw parties. If the members of the group are not attractive, not enough attractive members of the opposite sex will attend their parties; why then would an attractive member of the same sex join? It very quickly becomes a vicious circle.
Fraternities and sororities which don’t recruit die, and amazingly quickly. I saw twice it when I was at Austin College, in both cases following an identical pattern: a poor pledgeship year followed by a year with relaxed standards; that same year the more-attractive seniors graduated, leaving a frat/sorority with a drastically reduced average attractiveness; the following year no-one went to their party and no-one pledged; and that was that.
The Delta Zetas really had no choice: had they not replaced the unattractive girls with attractive ones in the sorority house, their parties would have been less attractive to boys, and hence less attractive to freshman girls—and thus in a year or two there would have been no more Delta Zeta chapter.
No matter how much lip-service the Greek system pays towards friendship and comradeship (and they are certainly present), the glue which holds it all together is partying. And everyone wants to party with the prettiest & the handsomest. Thus it always has been, and thus it ever shall be.
