Alexandra Robbins, a former staff member of the New Yorker, decided it was time to expose the dark underbelly of sororities and discover if the common stereotypes and myths of Greek life were true. After trying to interview sources and finding sororities unwilling to give her free reign, Robbins went undercover.
The book, “Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities” follows the lives of four sorority girls who volunteered to risk their membership by sneaking Robbins around and letting her capture their sororities, and their personal lives, in full. Robbins followed the girls for a year, monitoring their instant messanger away messages, attending sorority functions and generally going wherever the girls would let her.
Before every Greek gets up in arms over being “had” by some snotty anti-Greek, Robbins must be given some credit.
Her research is extensive. The book finishes with 26 pages of endnotes citing research from college newspapers, books, sorority pamphlets and handbooks, and even from sorority members themselves.
But Robbins’ attention to detail does not justify her lack of concern for the community she is exposing.
What Robbins fails to realize, as she expounds sorority ritual as freely as if she was describing a girl’s outfit, is that in journalism, there is a fine line between expose’ and blatant disregard for your subjects. If in her year of talking to hundreds of sorority girls, she never developed enough respect for any of them to reveal their virtues, handshakes, secret meanings and ceremonies in order to make sure the book does not just collect dust at Barnes and Nobles, she is not fufilling her journalist duties.
As a sorority member myself, I tried to read this book with an open mind. I found it thought-provoking to say the very least. Robbins pointed out the amount of time sororities require, something many members often do not realize. She shined light on situations that caused even myself, a die-hard member, to question the system. As I was reading, I felt Robbins was genuinely concerned for the masses of girls who pledge themselves to Greek-letter sororities each year.
But ritual, what most sororities feel is what binds their organization together, is sacred ground. It might sound ludacris, but my own mother does not know what goes on in our ceremonies or the deeper meaning of our symbols.
Robbins said ritual “in many cases came down to nothing more than backward-spelled passwords or trite expresssion.” With this statement it is clear she missed the point, and once again the message of sororites was lost on the masses.
Each sorority does it differently, but generally behind the closed doors of chapter meetings, initations and other special ceremonies, sororities do things a specific way. From special phrases to deeper meanings of symbols, these secrets are for members only. They give sorority sisters a deeper shared bond, not just in one chapter but in each of the sororities’ chapters nationwide. The founders designed ritual to reflect the goals and ideals they had for the sorority, and the sorority only. Members are expected to keep rituals secret.
The “trite expressions” are supposed to be put into practice. If a sorority preaches love and tolerance in the ritual, the actions of its members should reflect it. To Robbins, ritual is just lip service, but to many sorority members it is much more.
But, Robbins does not respect the secrecy of such practices. By publishing the secrets of several sororities, she proves that she has no regard for the female Greek system’s most sacred attribute.
Through most of the book, Robbins portrays sororities as little more than a catalyst for date rapes, drug usage, drinking and snobbery, stating she was suprised at how much the girls lived up to their campy images.
The four girls she followed had lives that seemed melodramatic and over the top, but I understand she has an income to sustain.
If sorority life was like Robbins said, in which members utilized a secret drug room, which she reportedly saw at one college, and constantly drank and ostracized their sisters, it would be safe to say there are more than a few who would disassociate. But Robbins avoids speaking to members who told her anything more.
It is a shame that Robbins did not follow through on the potential to create a book that gave a balanced look at the female Greek system. It would have been nice to hear both sides, but it seems she would rather play up the negative actions of some and expose the secrets of the others.