Confessions Of A Sorority Dropout
By Katy Gioeli
When you finally get your bid from the sorority of your dreams, you are told that you will never be alone. You are told that you will always have your sisters, no matter what. You are told that hundreds of girls will have your back.
But when I walked into our house for the last time, I’ve never felt more alone. My eyes met forty faces staring at me with stone-cold judgment.
I’ve learned in life that you can’t have it all, and as a college student with parents who struggled to make ends meet, I came to a point in my life where I realized that sometimes you have to make sacrifices for bigger, better things. I never wanted to leave, but sometimes leaving is the only option.
Looking back on my bid day, I remember feeling so loved and cherished. I felt so important. I never imagined that one day, when financial struggles would force me to resign, I would be met with such hostility.
The most common criticism that is heard about Greek life is that by joining you are “buying your friends”. I never let myself believe it was true. I always told myself that sororities were so much more than that, and that sisters held a lifelong bond that no one on the outside could understand. Man, was I proven wrong.
As soon as I became unable to drop hundreds of dollars on the regular, all but three of my sisters turned their backs on me. Out of over one hundred girls, only three were sympathetic to my situation. And don’t even get me started on the amount of dirty looks and Instagram unfollows that came my way. Even my own “family” turned their backs on me. All because I couldn’t afford to be called their sister. Somehow I was being held accountable, not to mention being scorned, for something that was out of my control.
It’s not as if leaving was a happy decision for me. If I had copious amounts of money to blow on fake friends and a house to sometimes go to, I would’ve gladly stayed. I was pretty sad when I had to quit. I wasn’t ready to end that chapter in my life. But now I’m angry. I’m angry because when you join a sorority, your sisters promise to have your back. They promise that through thick and thin they will be there for you.
They promise to never leave you. Yet here I am, in a time of “thick” and not a single sister is by my side. Instead, they are all too busy playing victim in my resignation to take one second and imagine how I must feel in this time of financial crisis. Instead, they are calling me a liar and judging me for a decision I made to better the lives of my family.
I’m not here to tell you to boycott Greek life, and I understand that every chapter is different. My time in my sorority was not a bad one, and I do not regret it. If you are considering rushing and have the means to do so, then I say go ahead. But this is my story, and I feel as though it needs to be heard. Because “sisters for life” does not mean “sisters until you can’t pay anymore.”