… and thinking it was just because you weren’t skinny/pretty/ditzy enough… not to mention getting kicked out of your house.
Clinical depression is an illness characterized (in part) by innappropriate sadness. Being depressed because something demeaning happened to you is, IMO, an appropriate response.
What hawksgirl said.
There’s a lot of diversity in Greek-letter organizations (GLOs). Certainly, some adhere to horrible hazing rituals. But not all, and I still wager, as someone who has gone through an initiation process, been on the other side of the initiation process for a GLO and other organizations, it really isn’t all that different. I’m seen petty infighting and “blackballing” during selection for an organization I worked with. I’ve seen “rituals” and welcoming traditions in clubs I am a part of.
There are in-jokes and insider/outsider jargon in those groups as well.
Let’s not kid ourselves and act as if the neighborhood coffee klatch can’t be racist, classist, and exclusionary. Everything you’ve stated also applies to some folks in those groups as well. I know that some honor societies, bands, and service clubs that haze. I have friends who used to be close to cliques that left them feeling betrayed, humiliated, etc.
Are you referring to a shirt that a fraternity member wears? I googled it and didn’t get a hit. I find it hard to believe that someone would wear something like that, though an anti-GLO person might.
hawksgirl:
Finding a cite on the prevalence of hazing in fraternities turned out to be tougher than I expected. There is very little information (you know, that you can find by googling) on the prevalence of hazing in the Greek system. You can find 11,000,000 articles either on how Hazing Happens and It’s Bad or Oh Gosh, Our Fraternity Doesn’t Haze, No Way!–but no stats.
The most I found was from the Wiki on fraternities:
Basically that gives us, hazing was widespread after WWI and gradually harsher penalties have been devised to discourage it over the years–but no indication on whether it continues to be widespread, or, for that matter, what is meant by ‘‘widespread.’’
I’m open if you can scare up anything beyond what little I could.
Hazing is particularly bad at my university–while the prevalence may be high at the University of Michigan (my perception, my anecdotal experience, my conversations with others, the countless times I have witnessed pledges doing obviously hazing-like things), that’s not to say it’s high everywhere. Drunken and outlandish behavior by many college students is also prevalent here, and that is not limited to the Greek System.
While I’m perfectly willing to have my ass handed to me on a silver platter with trimmings regarding the actual prevalence of hazing in the Greek system, not much can be said that will make me ever respect fraternities and sororities, especially not at this university. Generally the behavior of sisters and brothers here is at best irritating and at worst deplorable. I’m sure there must be nice people in there somewhere–but it’s sure hard to sort them out from all the bitches and bastards.
ETA: (guess they’re the idiots giving you a bad name.)
Quite upsetting, yes. But mentally ill? Not so much. YMMV.
I completely agree with you here. I’ve actually noted a lot of similar behavior across the board, and it seems to be tied closely into social class issues and overall snobbery.
I don’t want to believe that someone would wear it either, but many someones repeatedly wear them on the University of Michigan campus. I’m pretty sure it’s their slogan.
Looking upthread, I didn’t mean to come across as strongly as I did with the ‘‘bitches and bastards’’ comment, I’m just getting tired and pissy and spent too long in the Pit today. I have serious reservations about the value of these organizations but that doesn’t mean they’re all horrible. I almost joined a service fraternity – not a live-in situation but more of a service organization. There are good organizations here, especially the multi-cultural ones or the service-oriented ones. The ones I hate are the ones that exist for drinking and partying and treating other people like shit.
I guess that also includes your definition of “hazing”. There’s a spectrum from “stripping them naked, blindfolding them, and making them fornicate with sheep” to making the newbies wear the same shirt and going on a scavenger hunt.
I’ve seen gaggles of girls on campus dressed weird-but-similarly running around obviously looking for their “sisters” or giggling and being led blindfolded through a public place. I personally don’t consider that to be awful treatment. Its fun being surprised and doing silly things sometimes, and it helps make people better friends through having the same experiences.
No, I would have no problem with that kind of silliness–sounds fun and harmless.
Here’s a link on the kind of things I find problematic:
Wiki ‘‘Hazing’’
I am willing to accept that not even most fraternities do that kind of thing. I’m willing to accept it’s a case of a few bad organizations giving the whole Greek System a bad name, and that I bought into it through a case of selective perception. I’m curious about all your good experiences with the Greek system… willing to fight some ignorance here. 
That kind of stuff sounds fun and quite charming. Depauw, on the other hand, is the college where sorority girls were accused of branding pledges with cigarettes in '97 (I was visiting at the time, my first experience of an American campus.)
Actually, though, I don’t really want to pick on Depauw, because the local chapter of the sorority this time around seems to have been behaving admirably, and good on the six girls who quit after the others were kicked out. I think it’s probably because the college is so heavily greek that you see the range of behaviours from supportive to downright risky.
What weirded me out about the experience of visiting such a heavily Greek campus (besides having to readjust my expectations of Greek not to mean lots of olives and yogurt) was the clusters of dress-alikes. Apparently once you get the hang of it there you can entirely predict what sorority or fraternity someone belongs to based on their attire and haircut*. That, to me, was odd. Not bad, not wrong. Just odd.
*Which was kind of borne out by the survey that apparently sparked the whole thing in the first place.
The same way that a person “becomes ill” when they lose a spouse or paerent or child to death or when they suffer termination of employment or any other highly stressful situation. Not all illness is the result of pathgens.
I saw no statement that anyone became “mentally ill.” I saw a statement that several persons suffered from depression. You might consider taking the time to learn what the various terms that you are throwing around actually mean before you employ them?.
Even funnier, the rush they had to replace the 29 who left yielded 11 students who accepted invitations to join, but only three have actually sought membership. So, that’s 25 down to 9.
Note that the president of this chapter was one of those thrown out. I hope the national chapter takes a bath on this, and if I were the dean I’d kick these morons off campus.
I think the “zero tolerance” hazing statutes are problematic, because it forces all the activity underground. Ideally, any organization would need to submit an intake process plan to the university counsel or judicial office. I think you have to allow some of the activities that bring together the group… unfortunately, it seems to be impossible to find the line that shouldn’t be crossed.
One of the great things about college life is that people have the freedom to associate with whomever they wish. Some people crave difference; others crave homogeneity. Most fall somewhere between the extremes. Ostensibly one might think that a GLO is homogeneous, but there is often a lot of diversity in an organization. You can certainly argue that there is a class issue, but that’s only a concentration of what the campus population has as well. Since the Pell Grant and other grant programs for low-income students has shrunk over the years and college prices have climbed, you’re going to see a narrower socioeconomic band of students on college campuses, particularly selective ones. To attack GLOs because of their narrow class distribution is to miss the larger picture at colleges in the US.
There is also the issue of racial diversity. I personally received invites to rush as a senior in HS. I have no idea if they knew if I was Black or not, but there was no way in hell I was going to join a fraternity populated completely by White guys… I’m not trying to be the trailblazer, thanks! I don’t think I’m unique in that respect. I felt much more comfortable avoiding that scene, and when I did join a fraternity, I joined a service fraternity, even though it is generally thought that my particular fraternity is social in nature - it actually isn’t. (Don’t believe what you saw in Step Up or whatever that dreck is called.) So unless people want to be tokens, or people want to recruit a good number of fellow students of color, I don’t see this changing soon on most campuses. I don’t know if I have a problem with that.
Alcohol/drug/sex culture is a huge part of campus life. What can we say? It’s been that way for some time. GLOs simply use pooled resources to access these and other aspects of college life. Again, I’m reminded of the scenesters I used to know in college. Some of them were pretty much all about drinking, smoking out, and talking shit about the people they didn’t like. I had a friend who was an RA who hung out with a clique of engineers who were the exact same way. And though my fraternity has an incredible history and decades of service dedicated to the uplift of the Black community, there were a lot of idiotic things going on as well in my chapter.
Again, I choose to look at the story the OP linked to and say, “What a fine example of how students exercise their free will when their sorority imposes an unfair (and stupid, lookist, classist, etc.) policy on them.”
Depression is a mental illness. Several students suffered from depression (after being kicked out of a sorority, apparently). Hence, someone became mentally ill. How am I wrong about this?
Sorry to repeat myself, but I think you missed this the first time around.
I googled the hell out of this t-shirt–even went through my university search engine–but couldn’t find it.
I did, however, find these:
Anti-Abortion! But Pro Date-Rape
Obviously not linked to fraternities, but presumably someone is purchasing and wearing these, so that someone would purchase and wear ‘‘99% Rape-Free!’’ isn’t too far of a stretch. It looks like the '‘Rape-Free’'shirts were made independently, maybe some kind of CafePress thing… I’ve definitely seen them worn by more than one person around town. Though you are correct, it’s possible they were being worn as an anti-fraternity protest.
I’m getting kind of depressed now. 
On preview: Carol Stream, I’m under the impression that depression is not considered a mental illness. Mental illness I believe is reserved for people with serious functional handicaps such as those with schizophrenia. At least that’s what I took from my psychologist when she looked straight in my eyes after diagnosing me with complex-PTSD, major depressive disorder and Generalized anxiety disorder and announced, ‘‘You are NOT mentally ill!’’
Could be wrong. tomndeb is sure to clear it up though.
From dictionary.com:
depression
…
4. sadness; gloom; dejection.
5. Psychiatry. a condition of general emotional dejection and withdrawal; sadness greater and more prolonged than that warranted by any objective reason. Compare clinical depression.
…
Are you not a native English speaker?
What does “suffered from depression” mean in this case? As LifeOnWry noted, it doesn’t necessarily imply outright mental illness. The quote you initially responded to says only this:
Doesn’t say anything anywhere in the article about any of the women in question specifically being medically diagnosed with clinical depression, which seems to be what you’re trying to infer from it. Maybe it just means that they felt depressed.
And I don’t see why they wouldn’t, given that they lost at one fell swoop not only their sorority memberships, their much-touted “sisterhood” bond, and the companionship of established roommates and friends, but even the home they’d been living in for months or years. And all because, apparently, they were simply judged (by a bunch of strangers, mind you) not to be physically attractive and/or socially adept enough.
Especially for college-age young women who are still coping with adjusting to adulthood and with a lot of peer pressure to conform to society’s expectations about attractiveness and popularity, that could well be pretty damn depressing and self-esteem-lowering.
By the way, as long as we’re talking about judgments based on looks, does anyone here really think that any of the women shown in the linked article’s photo (a group shot of the sorority members who were evicted or resigned in protest) is seriously unattractive?
Yeah, some are plump or fat, some wear glasses, some are Asian, some are tomboyish. But to my 43-year-old heterosexual female eyes, they all look at least quite acceptably cute and nice. If we were talking a bunch of unwashed sociopaths oozing pus or something, I could see why the national org might not want to keep them around. But what kind of organization would give the boot to twenty-three of its members just for looking and behaving like pleasant ordinary girls rather than gorgeous sexpots?
From the website of the National Institute of Mental Health on the subject of Depression:
(bolding mine)
A “depressive episode” does not indicate the actual onset of a full blown mental illness such as schizophrenia in the way that is frequently used in casual conversation. If you do not like that characterization, go get yourself a doctorate in psychiatry or clinical psychology and get the terms of the DSM-IV or its successors changed.
Now, if you are finished trying to hijack this thread with another of the non sequitur posts we have come to expect from you, perhaps you would like to actually participate in a thread for a change?
Which is part of the rules, isn’t it?
Dudes- some sites require cookies, some sites require registration, some sites launch spyware attacks. Since you have already gone there, why the fuck not cut and paste a paragraph or two? Then, perhaps I’ll know whether or not I want to read more or whether your quote is enough.