Growing up in the Midwest, sorority life meant wildly different things depending on who I talked to. For older high school friends, sororities were a way for women to stay connected long after college. In my family, sororities were horror stories from the news about hazing and toxicity. Despite that, no matter where I went to school, if they had Greek life, I knew I would rush. Part of that was the sense of community I saw in those women and the kind of girlhood it represented, especially as someone without any biological sisters.
When I arrived at Stanford in the fall of 2021, I quickly realized that the conversation around Greek life here was very different to conversations at home. Movements to abolish Greek life framed it as exclusionary and outdated, sometimes even harmful. Greek participation at the time was certainly at a low point, and by the time I went through formal recruitment in the spring of 2022, those ideas were not just part of the conversation — in many ways, they defined it. But, the version of sorority life I encountered did not fully match that framing. What I came to realize is that Greek life at Stanford is often understood in narrow ways, both by people outside of it and by the communities within it.
At its best, sorority life offers something simple but meaningful. It gives you a sense of consistency in an environment that can feel overwhelming, and it creates space for people to feel known. It’s not perfect, and it doesn’t look the same for everyone, but at its core, it’s meant to be a community. For me, that community existed within Chi Omega (Chi O)…