What is she rushing into?

"Having a best friends weekend sounds like a great idea, but it seems like most weekends are spent befriending bottles of vodka."

This made me laugh. :)

Anyway, I just wanted to say I know a woman who joined a sorority her junior year--I'm not sure why, I think maybe she thought it was one of those rare sororities that really did concentrate on community service. But after she joined, she found out about some "unsisterhoodlike" behavior going on there, possibly related to the fact that she was gay, so she left the sorority and started her own sorority that would be centered around activism and making a safe space for LGBT people. I thought that was really cool.

If she's set on rushing sororities, and the idea of Greek life or no life is in her head that deeply, you can't convince her out of it. It's something she's going to have to learn herself. But what you could do is continue to take a genuine interest in her life, look out for warning signs, etc.

And I think there's a ban on hazing, and if you get the national chapter/headquartery thing involved, that'd keep them on their toes. Most frats/sororities don't want their charter revoked because then they lose all their "privleges."

And I think the reason it's still so patriarchal is because the people in charge are former Greek members, and the incoming students have been socialized to accept their treatment as normal.

Oh Greek life. The Greek kids are the only segment of campus that activities actually exist for--at my school, anyway. Example: Homecoming is just an excuse for them all to dress up and have a popularity contest.

Regardless. First I love your title for this post. Tres witty. Second I think you make a good point about sororities being very feminist at face value. That's an idea I'm suddenly wistful for--an intelligent, enlightened truly woman-oriented sorority. College would be and is a great time to bolster some confidence and analyze some issues as a group of women. So why don't sororities take this great chance to think about their own futures?

"A woman for a general, and the soldiers will be women."

I think you're right - in a lot of ways, sororities and feminism really do seem to fit together. Many high-achieving, community service oriented women join them, and then support each other as sisters through college. Feminism at its best, right? That's part of why the Greek social scene is so interesting (and depressing) to me: on the one hand, there's service and career prep and sisterhood and closeness, and on the other, there's the "right" kind of member (like you say - white, hetero, christian), alcohol abuse, and looking as hot as possible for frat boys who treat women horribly.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, since a friend forwarded me this article (from Rolling Stone, a month or two back). It's an article about Duke, Greek life, and sexual politics that brings up some of the same things that you do here. I wonder about support structures for young women, and why projects like the AGA and sororities can sound so similar and be so different on the ground.

I hope that your friend can stay critical of the scene that she's headed for, and that you're all able to stay close friends - Best Friends' Weekend or not. (Also: Ellen, your friend who started the LGBT sorority is my new heroine. So awesome!)

Hmmm...her college sounds a lot like a certain Texas Christian University that's in my area...

After a year of college with frat parties abound, I still haven't been to one. I guess mostly because I already know what goes on there, and I'm not interested...There's a gigantic fraternity house next to our campus that's dubbed 'The Rape House' by everybody, because apparently every weekend morning girls come stumbling out. I can't believe that even with such a derrogatory connotation, it's still one of the big party areas around campus. Fraternities around my area just reek of bad vibes, big egos and danger for women.

I have to say, this article saddened me. I'm involved in a sorority up here in the Northeast, and Greek life is a very different story. At my school, sororities hold the highest average GPAs, are involved in planning the largest campus fundraisers, and are integral parts of the community. I came to college never expecting to "Rush", but I found a group of well-balanced, loving, caring, respsectful young women, who are more involved in women's rights than I think many of this site's readers realize. I'm lucky enough to be involved in a sorority that encourages creative individualism, diversity (racial, sexual orientation, martial status, etc.), and is strictly non-hazing. I understand your fear, in that sororities are stereotypically breeding grounds for catfights and eating disorders, but sadly, so is college life in general. I feel pretty lucky to have a group of reliable, intelligent women to rely on when college life gets hard (and let's face it, being a twentysomething isn't that easy). I hope your friend has the same very positive experience I have had, and I hope you'll reconsider generalizing us as party girls who befriend our vodka. Who knows? Your friend may surprise you more than you realize.