This is the kind of thing that drives me bats. Even if we legislate that the sorority let the girls stay, who’d want to be in a club with a bunch of stuck-up prigs? Stuff like this only demonstrates how far we still have to go when it comes to tolerance of difference.
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 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 believe everyone should be allowed to associate with who they wish, but then again that raises significant barriers to outsiders in a university environment. What if it was your daughter that got kicked out for being chunky?
Is it not a free country? If Hooters can be selective why not a sorority? In todays twisted society you will see another suit. I’d like to see some leadership from these down trodden archetype. They should form their own sorority. They they can prove to the world that they have the commitment to meet recruitment goals? Perhaps Hollywood will consider a sequel to Shallow Hal based on these events.
1: Most (not all) sorority girls I knew in colleges were stuck up and shallow. Sounds like they still are at DePauw.
I did know two that weren’t like that, and they were friends of mine–we had several classes in common. They had enrolled at Purdue to get a real degree (both were chemistry majors). They were in a sorority only because their moms were in that sorority, and they lived there mostly to keep Mom happy.
It’s not just Delta Zeta, and it’s not just DePauw University. Sororities at many institutions discriminate against “healthy” ,i.e. fat women and of course “tanned”, minority women.
Once discovered, it is up to the candidates to refuse acceptance into the sorority….wait until “serious night”.
I thought the whole point of being in a Sorority is to be an Elitist Snob. The
fat girls should form their own Sorority and keep out thin girls. That will show them.
I was a Delta Zeta many years ago at another university. I have since greatly regretted buying into the whole sorority/fraternity thing. I’m surprised there were any ethnic minorities to be kicked out. That’s progress from my day. My best friend was almost kicked out when the morons at national discovered her father was Jewish. She went out and joined the Episcopal church (an action she later regretted) and thus sanitized herself sufficiently to be able to remain a “sister.” Cheers to those who left voluntarily in protest. Don’t form another sorority, as someone suggested. Remain proudly independent. I wish I had.
Get real folks….an ugly and/or fat girl who withdraws from the university because she is so upset with such an insensitive thing as to be called fat and/or ugly probably is not ready for adulthood and the world at large. Perhaps the best thing for her is to go home and eat donuts and cry in her chocolate milk until some suave attorney can extract enough money out of the offender(s) to asuage her guilt over her fatness or ugliness. I am not sure I spelled asuage correctly but I think you get the drift. I bet her attorney can help her…..just ask Howard Stern.
WaaaaWaaaaWaaaaa. Hire Judge Liedel when he retires.
Get Real….maybe she should just go home and eat donuts and drink diet colas until her feelings are soothed. Obviously she is not ready for adulthood and the world at large. Eventually she will have to face a real world or as an alternative get a good attorney and get some money. Regardless she will stil be fat and perhaps ugly.
Mike, I think you’re the one who needs to get real. Maybe you should go whine with the other thin models who have a tough time finding a job, now that we see that they are the ones who still are skinny and ugly: yes, I said ugly.
Wnile your head is in a different reality than the rest of us, I’d like to think that you hve read enough to notice that a lot of campuses have simply decided to face the adult world and act exclusively: they have decided to move the sororities off campus for a more lucrative form of housing: labs! Of course the Delts sued: talk abour crybabies.
I think the real question is, who wants to see fat chicks at sorority parties!
People laugh and mock when anyone brings up the subject of anti-fat bigotry. No me.
I’ve had a couple of very obese women friends and I was appalled at how they were treated. It could be horrible.
Anti-discrimination laws and minority status are debatable — but the kind of ill-treatment fat people get is just plain wrong.
Can we please deal with the junk in you trunk elsewhere
some other day Smarty-pants
This expulsion from a sorority is a good thing. The remaining sororiety members will all start giving themselves false confidence, when they have no significant assets (Surface beauty is a true curse). Barbie doll women are the source of much pain to the rich male populous, with men not realizing this, until their 50s when they get the first divorse and half their assets go up in smoke. Good luck to you, you dumb beautiful people, as you will need it when your surface beauty gets you into really hard circumstances.
Guess what, without the brain power of women like the ones Delta Zeta dismissed, we might not even be able to post a comment on this site. Not to say that extra-pretty women don’t contribute academically, but, let’s face it, they’re not the bulk of the women at NASA (current scandal notwithstanding) or Bell Labs. What the women look like has no bearing on their academic talent, or potential to excel personally. Frankly, extra-good looks just makes the women more tolerable for some of their less-evolved male counterparts to endure. I’m glad DZ got ‘outed’.
The less attractive ones are often better in the sack or on the golf course.
# 16 Blatant Spam 🙂
Let’s see…. they’re half empty, worried about their image, so they kick out all but 12 conventionally pretty coeds, whereupon six more (presumably the brightest six) quit, and then there were six.
As some big, scary animal said – it’s a free country. Seems to me they’re exercising their freedom to shoot themselves in the head. No, wait – that was Sony. Or maybe it was the RIAA? Or Britney Spears?
I guess self-destructiveness comes in many forms. The DZs might make an interesting Master’s project for some grad student.
The whole greek system is for kids who feel they need to buy their friends.
Aren’t Sororities supposed to teach women how to be trophy wives?
#20 – You’re close. I thought the whole purpose of sororities was to gather all the hot chicks together one place so they could gang up to have sex with only the hot guys in the frats and vice-versa.
It doesn’t seem to me that anyone has pointed out that the DePauw DZ chapter seems to have had a reasonably enlightened and inclusive approach to sorority. Then the national DZ’s came in and shut them down. I think that this illustrates the principle that anyone who goes to work for the national umbrella organization of a Greek letter social organization is a socially retarded individual whose lack of individual identity has left them unable to cope with the “real world” after college. If they had any intelligence, they would enter PhD programs and become professors.
The Delta Zeta approach seems to be the diametric opposite of my recollections from the late ’70’s of national fraternities going into local chapters to force them to remove (or at least tone down) hazing or lose their charter.
I would recommend that the 29 women from DePauw get together and apply to another national sorority (not currently represented at DePauw) to start a local chapter, and petition the university to be given the use of the current DZ house. Maybe petition the university to kick the DZ’s out of DePauw at the same time.
Alpha Phi is one of the most racist sororities out there. In my opinion they are just a bunch of rich daddy’s girls and are extremely shallow and superficial.