Around the same time every year what sounds like a funeral dirge proceeds around the freshman residence halls. Women are in mourning. It’s a funeral in a way a funeral for broken dreams. Freshmen women were just told what sorority they were placed in and there is disappointment. Another perspective: freshmen men in a fraternity are given alcohol. Someone refuses but is told by the fraternity president that its normal for Pepperdine because with college comes alcohol. A little unsettling but nothing unexpected. We would say these two situations are the result of either an inability to cope or poor personal discretion. The system though escapes unscathed.
No man-made system is perfect. We can try to get as close as we can to an ideal but ultimately there are always going to be those girls who cry or those fraternities that mistakenly kick-off an individual’s drinking career. But does the good of the Greek system outweigh these side-effects? They must first be understood rightly.
The Greek system has demonstrated its ability to include students and “do life” well with them. They are a family in every sense. They care for the welfare of their brothers and sisters serving each other not out of obligation but because they are a family. They look to the needs of their community in ways that other groups on campus rarely do. What is most impressive is the genuine fun they can have with each other. They are also one of the best examples of community at Pepperdine. The Greek system offers transformation of lives through mentoring and leadership through a system of inclusion. And that is where the virtue of the system is hidden in the inclusion that individuals offer each other the sense of belonging. In that illuminating inclusion radical personal growth is possible. The question is do these virtues negate the vices of the disappointed women and poorly influenced man who the Greek system produced.
The woman who mourns: some find themselves disappointed because they didnt get the sorority they saw themselves in but we’re wrong if we chose to see this as just disappointment. The inclusion that the Greek system offers resonates with us but amidst this beautiful inclusion is an equally terrible exclusion. What we see as disappointment is a deeper feeling of rejection. Rejection in the Greek system isn’t like it is for a sports team job or college where your inclusion is based on your merit academic achievement or athletic ability — all things we can improve with hard work. The Greek system rejects individuals based on who they are. We don’t act like we understand the gravity of this message.
Rejection from a certain sorority or fraternity can be like telling a person that who they are is not good enough that their personhood is not sufficient. And it’s not computers nor quotas that make this decision. It’s a group of individuals choosing what people they like and what people they don’t. The response: tears tears that are probably more serious than we want to admit because they come from feelings that we would rather not acknowledge. We respond by saying that those individuals should be prepared for that and not let the process affect their hearts but it does. It’s hard to find people who wouldn’t readily cling onto an upstanding group of people during a new and unsure time in their lives. This is the way the system functions though; there need to be people on the inside and people on the outside us and the Other.
The story of the underage freshman pressured into drinking is a different colored pony. People are radically transformed inside the Greek system. The Greek system influences students in unprecedented ways sometimes going beyond the influence of parents school and the church. When the members of a tightly bound family advise and instruct others in that community it isn’t taken lightly.
But the flip side of the pancake is that the same powerful inclusion that gives weight to words of advice can also be used for the dark side. The acceptance that the Greek system offers is seemingly more real and therefore carries great weight. Possibly too much weight. If a culture that is as unified and bonded as fraternities and sororities becomes tainted the cancer spreads easily. If the culture says that brotherhood is expected its going to be respected. If helping others becomes a standard it becomes a standard for the community. Likewise if the message sent is that it’s fine to take your grandmothers’ car for a high-speed chase or drink when youre not old enough it’s going to be acceptable and endorsed.
This is the ultimate risk of the Greek system: that identity is found in a sorority or fraternity that individuals conform for the system. These are social groups that should be viewed as just that not a source of identity. When we find our identity and get our security from institutions and people we will have our life rocked when those things that we have placed our trust in fail. At Pepperdine we don’t seem to realize this. We are set on finding ourselves in other people organizations and our own success. We make these a crucial part of who we are while convincing ourselves that we aren’t as dependent as we really are that its not as central to us as it really is.
Identifying ourselves with a perfect community is what we are meant for. That’s what God wanted. But as humans are we confident enough in our own ability and discretion to say we have what it takes to be that perfect community that sincerely knows whats best for others? That is the call the Greek system makes that the system knows what’s best for their members.
The system is flawed. There are however individuals who work to redeem they system and use it for good. The individuals involved in the Greek system are not the problem — it’s the system. It can’t work without including and excluding without placing the awful power to determine and disregard identity in the hands of humans that don’t really know how to use it properly. The way this game works also sends out a message that is very contradictory to what a Christian school would stand for — exclusion and finding identity in man rather than finding identity in something greater.