sorority

Unfortunately, sorority girls are observant. Like I said, there are no secrets beyond our perfectly manicured lawns and Greek letters.

Yet, here at the poster child for liberal higher education, Greek life persists as a bastion of aging understandings of gender and sexuality.

It wasn’t like I was afraid I would be a total recluse in Berkeley, but I think putting myself out there was an important step toward reidentifying with me being American.

When people in Greek life and beyond blur hotness and power together — when some bigger institution or body has to tell us who’s hot and who’s not — we perpetuate a culture in which those who don’t have racial, class, gender or body privileges are unable to obtain social and political power, or even just feel sexy.

If I decide to show no skin, or if I want to wear the smallest skimpiest dress in the world, that is my decision. A community full of young women shouldn’t treat each other differently depending on their outfit choices. A sorority should be a space in which women are uplifted through sisterhood, and by regulating their dress code and enforcing the concept that a woman’s worth is correlated to her modesty, a sorority is failing to do so.

Being in Greek life should be an opportunity to surround yourself with people you connect with — a way to spend time outside of school doing things you enjoy. I chose my sorority because I loved the company of so many women in the house, and I still do. But spending my weekends in houses full of strangers, waiting for the party to end made being in Greek life feel more like a job I paid to participate in than the inclusive community I had hoped for.

Living in a sorority began to feel like taking one step toward adulthood and then three steps back. Looking back now, I could never imagine myself in a house where my male friends were banned from my room after 10, and I was subject to an overbearing housing contract. To me, it felt like in order to assure that no girls broke Panhellenic trust, we were simply not given any trust to begin with.

Weeks before I left for California, I spent my afternoon researching UC Berkeley and what clubs and societies there were to get involved in. Pictures of sorority houses and sisterhood events flooded my webpage, and it seemed to me like sororities were so essential to the American college experience.

The city of Berkeley has many streets and avenues for college students to inhabit during their years here at UC Berkeley. Not only are these housing streets infamous for their ridiculously high rent, but they also have a little reputation of their own. Which street do you live on, and what does it say about who you are as a person?