Sorority makes prettiness an issue at Indiana college

It evicts several members, including the overweight and many minorities.

GREENCASTLE, IND. — When a psychology professor at DePauw University surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of "daddy's little princesses" and another as "offbeat hippies." The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as "socially awkward."

Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta's national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to increasing recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.

"Virtually everyone who didn't fit a certain sorority-member archetype was told to leave," said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization.

"I didn't have room in my life for these women to come in and tell my sisters of three years that they weren't needed," Holloway added.

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At the start of the fall term the national office was especially determined to raise recruitment because 2009 is the 100th anniversary of the DePauw chapter's founding. In September, Menges and Kathi Heatherly, a national vice president of the sorority, visited the chapter to announce a reorganization plan they said would include an interview with each woman about her commitment. The women were urged to look their best for the interviews.

The tone left four women so unsettled that they withdrew from the chapter almost immediately.

Robin Lamkin, a junior who is an editor at The DePauw and was one of the 23 women evicted from the house, said many of her sisters bought new outfits and modeled them for each other before the interviews. Many women declared their willingness to recruit diligently, Lamkin said.

A few days after the interviews, 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 meet-and-greet team that included several of the women eventually asked to stay in the sorority, along with some slender women invited from Delta Zeta's Indiana University chapter, Holloway said.

"They had these unassuming freshman girls downstairs with these plastic women from Indiana University, and 25 of my sisters hiding upstairs," she said. "It was so fake, so completely dehumanized. I said, 'This calls for a little joke.'"

Holloway put on an outlandish wig and some John Lennon rose-colored glasses, burst through the front door during the recruitment event, and skipped around singing "Ooooh! Delta Zeta!" and other chants.

The face of one of the national representatives, she recalled, "was like I'd run over her puppy with my car."

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I like that Kate Holloway gal! I don't really have any comments on the above....I just present it for your inspection.

National Lampoon's Pledge This!: Naughty Version (Unrated) - One of the worst movies of the year, ANY year......the review is funnier than the movie! But when I read about this real, goofy sorority it made me think of this Paris Hilton vehicle! If nothing else, click the link and go see the screen shots for the movie.......they pretty much say it all....