IU Delta Zeta undermines women’s integrity at DePauw
Recently, members of the Delta Zeta sorority at IU significantly undermined the credibility of a sister household in Greencastle, Ind., at DePauw University. Beginning in the fall term of 2006, the Delta Zeta national office began a program to ameliorate what they saw as low recruitment in their respective chapter at DePauw. The New York Times reports that “national representatives took over the house to hold a recruiting event. They asked most members to stay upstairs in their rooms. To welcome freshmen downstairs, they assembled a team that included several of the women eventually asked to stay in the sorority, along with some slender women invited from the sorority’s chapter at Indiana University” (Feb. 25, 2007). The problem here is not that the national office took control of what they saw as a subpar situation – nor is it that members from another sorority were invited to help recruit. The problem with this realized scenario is that, the women of Delta Zeta were apparently seen as a marginal population of “socially awkward” women as compared to others women of other sororities at DePauw and so were isolated during the event. The term “socially awkward” comes from a survey taken by a professor of psychology at that university, essentially taken from the mouths of those surveyed. Apparently, in order to belong to a sorority one most circulate with the in crowd, to not do so is seen as a failure of character and warranting of isolation and rejection in the eyes of Delta Zeta national (in agreement with the seemingly shallow student body). IU women of Delta Zeta on this campus, I think would do well to provide an explanation of their involvement and their stance in regards to a seemingly unethical decision made by the national office. According to the New York Times, several women effectively ousted by the national office have dropped out due to issues of depression, reportedly directly related to the events that have transpired since this fall. As the situation stands, Delta Zeta at IU has not differentiated their views from that of the national office, and so is complicit with any ethical wrongs the national office has committed at DePauw. Jared Pool Senior
