As second semester of my freshman year rolled around, I watched as many of my male friends began the three-month process of joining a fraternity. I gloated to them about how I never had to make sandwiches or do laundry for 50 of my brethren, and at the time, I remember the sense of freedom it gave me, for I could make my own friends, on my own time, and never have to pay my dues in order to belong to an organization whose main purpose was to throw parties. In high school, I had always thought that sororities were silly. To me they were groups of dumb bottled blondes who wore Tiffany's jewelry and spent evenings painting their nails together. I felt that Amherst's exclusion of sororities from campus life was a blessing, allowing me to find my friends at my own pace. No sororities meant I never had to succumb to someone else's standards as I had had to succumb to the all-powerful cliques that ran my high school.
Looking back, freshman year of college was one of the loneliest times of my life. By May, the "sandwich gang" was now officially comprised of members of a brotherhood, a loyal group of 50 men spanning all grades, sports teams, and interests. Membership in a fraternity at Amherst gave them a power that I envied-for at any time, they had access to a group of friends larger than the number of women at Amherst I had even had conversations with. A fraternity gave them a sense of belonging and security, for they all knew that no matter what, they were part of something that had to accept them.
This is not an article advocating the expulsion of fraternities from Amherst College, for I strongly believe that such organizations have been beneficial to the approximately 200 men who have joined them. Rather, I feel that if the Amherst administration continues to allow fraternities to exist off campus, they need to take steps to ensure that women at Amherst are given the same opportunities.
I've heard so many reasons why a sorority would never work at Amherst College: that Amherst women are too smart to ever want to associate themselves with a sorority, that the nature of women at Amherst-known to be competitive and driven individuals-makes them more likely to form small cliques and engage in petty fights towards other women. But really, are women at Amherst College so different from the women at any other elite institution that has sororities like Columbia, Princeton and Trinity?
As a senior in my final months at Amherst College, my one regret is that I did not do more in my time here to make a difference in the college experiences of future generations of Amherst women. The mistakes I made in my first year here are part of who I am, though I recognize that people still judge me for the numerous poor decisions that I made. While a sorority can certainly not change hundreds of years of social stigma attached to the actions of sexually or even alcoholically adventurous women, at the very least, it could unite larger groups of women, introduce them to a greater variety of people and give them the same feelings of security that fraternities give to men. The purpose of this article is not to announce that I am starting my own sorority, for at this point in my senior year, it would probably result in an organization of my fellow thesis-writing cohorts in the computer center. However, I hope that this article will at least open up a dialogue amongst Amherst students about the possibility of a women's organization. I write to you, the younger generations of women at Amherst College and urge you to try to make a difference. It's difficult to predict how much success a sorority at Amherst College would have, but its impossible to know unless people try.
And hey, who doesn't want someone to paint their nails with? Or in my case, to order Wings with.