A sorority at De Pauw University booted out a bunch of its pledges and it made the news. Here is the link to the story. [1]
Before I continue, I wish to make my own sentiments perfectly clear. I detest the notion of fraternities and sororities. They are, to me, childish things which people belong to out of some desire to be special without having to rely on their own abilities–special by association. Pass the initiation, become accepted as a member, and you then can “borrow” the prestige of the group.
Or be tainted by it, as with, say, the John Birch Society or the KKK.
This is not to say I see no reason for many of these associations to exist–unions are a very loose form of such things, and I would argue that they serve a positive purpose, although they share the same capacity for abuse of the individual as any large organization, corporate, religious, or social. They are, to put it in as simple terms as I can, a necessary evil.
My prejudice in this regard stems from one of the more persistent myths underlying American culture–that of the coherent and independent individual. I say myth because it is patently untrue–likely an impossibility–and yet we struggle collectively toward instantiating the model through our laws, our national ethos, and our image of ourselves as individuals.
Which makes joing a fraternity or a sorority a particularly perplexing contradiction.
One joins such organizations for numerous reasons all of which center or potential benefits from the association. Anyone who remembers the 2000 election will be aware of the brief flurry of press about Bush’s membership in a Yale fraternity of some notoriety, the Skulls. His dad was a member, as were many other politicians. The implication was that membership bestowed an undeserved leg up in life.
Well, frankly, that is the whole point of such clubs. Masonry is the model. Part of the benefit derives from their exclusivity, which is portrayed by opponents of the Greek system as anti-democratic.
But this, too, is based on a misapprehension of the nature of democracy.
I refer now to the fact of it, not the ideal, which has become something wholly other than its origins. In his excellent book about the Greek myths, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso writes:
Equality only comes into being through initiation. It does not exist in nature, and society wouldn’t be able to conceive of the idea if it weren’t structured and articulated by initiation. Later, there comes a moment when equality is geared into history and thence marches on and on until the unsuspecting theorists of democracy imagine they had discovered it–and set it against initiation, as though it were its opposite.
There’s a lot in that paragraph and it is illuminating to look at the 20th century through the lens it provides. Everyone, it seems, wants to be part of the club called democracy. They see the benefits of the club. Benefits obvious only because it is a club apart from other clubs. They want to belong to it in such numbers that eventually it will no longer be a club, but simply the state in which we all “naturally” exist.
But it’s an implausible ideal, because in order to belong to the club one has to change from one state to another. And the benefits, frankly, one expects cease to be benefits once so many people share them that there is no distinction between people.
This is a paradox, and such things as fraternities and sororities point up the paradox eloquently and make us generally uncomfortable.
In microcosm, the initiation rites of such organizations imitate the citizenship pledges we expect of new citizens, who do in fact go through an initiation to become part of the club. There are laws they must abide by. I think, honestly, the nature of the requirements are less important than that there are requirements. We have changed them over time, but still, you must speak the language, understand the history of the country, and be willing to take an oath.
There is nothing natural about this. And the bestowal of benefits upon completion of these requirements is an aritfice. That doesn’t make these benefits false or unreal, but we need to understand that so-called Rights are constructs. They do not exist in nature.
But we wish to pretend they do. Because Americans are born into a club that grants us automatic membership, we grow up assuming this is the way things ought to work everywhere, and those systems which deny the kind of oppression-free existence we enjoy are the artificial systems, Then we run into things like the Boy Scouts, Masonry, frats and sororities, unions, and so forth. When we are accepted into these things without major obstacle, we see them as more or less social niceties, perks of self-selected life choices.
But when those communities exercise their implicit rights to deny us entre, well, then we get all huffy and demand equal access.
Which access was never equal to begin with.
So a bunch of young women who didn’t understand that they were joining in essence an autocratic institution got tosses because they didn’t meet the standards. I frankly don’t care what those standards are. If one doesn’t like the idea of discrimination, the proper response to fraternities and sororities is to refuse to join. That, frankly, is the action of the assumed idealized individual that the American mythos presumes as our birthright.
But those who join understand, instinctively, that there is benefit to be derived from membership, and by so joining they seek advantage over those who are not pledges. The bleat of the rejected is disingenuous because by joining they have made a move to separate themselves from “others’ by assuming a special status, bestowed by the institution, and wearable by association. Their motives, while consciously perhaps are social, are part and parcel of an initiation and benefit cycle going back to the Greek mysteries of inclusion and exclusion–which is why the system is called Greek, by the way.
If in fact we don’t like the idea of exclusive organizations, then the best way to deal with them is by letting them die on the vine. Don’t join. But if you do, then understand that you are supporting a system which has the innate right to withdraw membership. It is a democracy in the classic Athenian model–the members get to say and by definition get to say who’s a member. It can be cruel.
But how is it any different than the larger system?
We are working toward a point at which the rules by which membership in the democracy are less personal, having to do with things we can all achieve or meet, unlike past eras where race, literacy, physical type, disease, etc stood in for “fair” standards, But while we don’t rely on such things anymore, we still assume there must be standards. When we forget this, it comes as a rude shock when someone rejects us from something we assume we should have access to just by being who we are.
As I said above, I detest the fraternity and sorority systems. My response to them is to have never participated. But I don’t pretend that they are somehow antithetical to being an American. By virtue of setting standards of initiation, they are based–loosely–on the very foundation of America. Our first act was to claim the right to be apart from a larger polity and by virtue of the apartness, to be different. Which meant, implicitly, that we accepted the idea that standards could be set and applied and that individuals must meet them to be part of the club.
We’ve gotten more sophisticated at making people feel like such membership is an altogether natural recognition of born rights, but really, it isn’t. Not entirely arbitrary, no, but not in any way something recognizable as natural.
So to the unfortunate girls who got booted at De Pauw…sorry, but that’s the nature of the system you tried to be part of. If you don’t like it, don’t play.
Or…start your own sorority. Then you can boot those who qualify for all those other ones.
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