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 Movements to abolish Greek life framed it as exclusionary and outdated, sometimes even harmful.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).
Chi O is where I found some of my closest friendships and learned what it meant to institutionally build with other people. I helped organize events and work on initiatives like establishing a scholarship fund for financially insecure sisters. Chi O also connected me to a broader alumni network beyond our chapter. But more than anything, it showed up in smaller ways. Sitting on the brown couch with pink pillows in our house chatting for hours about nothing and everything. Convincing people to watch reality TV with me or playing Just Dance for an on-call. Receiving financial assistance when navigating personal family matters. Moments that only feel important once they are gone. I had one of those moments again recently with some of the younger members, and it brought me back in a way I did not expect. Knowing that Chi O will be losing our house next year made it feel more real.
Even with the difficulties that came with it, it is a community I would choose again in any lifetime. Over time, even my parents, who had mostly heard the worst about Greek life, began to see the good it brought into my life.
That version of sorority life is rarely the one that makes it into the conversation. Instead, Greek life is often reduced to a single narrative: the one that is exclusionary and driven more by status than by genuine community. And when that becomes the default, it starts to shape how entire organizations are seen. Some organizations, often without a clear incident, become shorthand for assumptions about desirability or belonging, as those perceptions are formed and reinforced through recruitment conversations and informal spaces where reputations are shared and repeated. Chi Omega became one of them. Not because of a defining moment, but because of how perception builds. A label here, a joke there and eventually a reputation that takes hold without being questioned.
That perception is reinforced in quieter ways, through which organizations are included in smaller or “closed” events, and who is left out entirely. It also shows up in which groups collaborate on philanthropy events, and which ones are consistently overlooked or ignored. These decisions are rarely random. They reflect assumptions about who is seen as worth engaging with in the first place.
And while those assumptions are rarely stated outright, they are not neutral. In my experience, they are often shaped by what different organizations are able to offer, whether that be resources, scale or the kind of exclusivity that Greek life is often associated with. In a chapter like mine, where more than three-quarters of members were women of color, and over half were first-generation or low-income students, that can look different and be read differently, even if that is never explicitly said.
Over time, those patterns become a reality, even when there was no clear reason to begin with. For example, a couple of years ago, a fraternity gave Valentine’s Day treats to every sorority except mine. It may seem small, but moments like that make it clear who is seen and who is not. In other areas, it is more direct. Organizations are “ranked” or dismissed based on what they are assumed to be socially, often by people who have never experienced them firsthand. During recruitment, those assumptions frame how interactions go and which communities are taken seriously. And, when that dynamic takes hold, some Greek organizations are never fully allowed to be experienced on their own terms. It’s difficult to build a community when it is never fully given the chance to be seen.
Greek life has changed quite a bit in the five years I’ve been on campus. You probably wouldn’t be able to tell that the “Abolish Greek Life” movement existed with the increase of students participating in Greek life. But that growth is not felt evenly across organizations. There are communities that women could genuinely find a home in, including my own, that are often written off before they are even considered. In recent years, my chapter has seen new membership steadily decrease despite consistent efforts to be welcoming to women going through recruitment. Starting next year, we will be unhoused.
Over time, that has real consequences. It affects who joins, who stays and what organizations are able to sustain themselves. For some chapters, including my own, the loss of a physical home is not just logistical, but emotional.
None of this is to say that Greek life is without flaws. The critiques that led to those conversations still matter, and not every experience looks like mine. But when critique becomes the only story, something gets lost. The people inside these communities, and the experiences that do not fit neatly into what we have decided Greek life is. And when we decide what a space is before ever stepping into it, we close ourselves off from communities we might have actually found a place in.
My experience in Chi Omega taught me that while Greek life is imperfect, reducing it to only its flaws ignores the friendships, support and sense of belonging that made the chapter meaningful for many of my sisters.