According to her, sororities add a unique aspect to the whole WPI community. She mentioned that sororities are very diverse, but, "people don't see that...We all have our own special interests, and people, specially guys, don't see that."
For Robert, sororities are a great way of developing true friendship but the process of developing that friendship is not as easy as many asume. For her sororities facilitate the developing of true friendship but does not automatically provide it for you. "I think freshman year you have to work harder to get friends. I remember my freshman year, having a lot more male friends than female friends until I joined a sorority. It takes a while to bond and become friends as any other normal process. We don't automatically click because we are women."
She is also somewhat bothered by the "tech-chick" attitude that WPI males automatically assume on all WPI women as well as some of the derogate nicknames they have for sororities. "I think that every Greek organization on campus has some kind of bad nickname or reputation, that has been imposed on them. Ours is a bad nickname but we don't pay a lot of attention to it because we don't think a lot of people take it too seriously. We just kind of laugh it off." Robert commented.
Robert also mentioned that unlike what many people think there is not a lot of rivalry between the two sororities on campus. "During rush and some other Greek events there might be some tension, but if you talk about women getting together at sports or clubs, or just individuals, one on one, I think people from both sororities will agree that there is not a lot of rivalry. Members of both sororities are living together and friendships don't end just because your friend happens to belong to a different sorority."
She, however, likes the idea of bringing another sorority to campus. "It will give the rushees more choices and also lessen the competition and frustration between agd and pss because it wouldn't be one against the other trying to rush the same people anymore." According to her that would also give them an opportunity to develop better rushing methods. "Pledges do not get to see us in our settings, unlike the fraternity rush, where pledges can be more relaxed. I can't complain about the way that is being done now, because there are only two sororities and is the most fair way of doing it. But we would like to change that."
Robert also commented on a Greek corner printed some weeks ago by Newspeak in which a fraternity blamed Andrea Dorrow and the sororities for the implementation of the BYOB rule, "Maybe they had some valid point, somewhere in there. I really don't know what they were trying to get at, but I think they went about the wrong way of addressing it."
According to her, sororities will keep trying hard to break the stereotype that has wrongfully been imposed on them by doing more philanthropy events and showing more aggressively to the WPI community what sororities are really all about. "People are not going to look for the good things. We have to show them the good things until we break the stereotype."
Newspeak Staff Photo / Eric Wilhelm
Phi Sigma Sigma participated in last December's canned food drive sponsored by Alpha Phi Omega, in which the participants built elaborate structures out of canned food (and whatever else they could find). All cans were donated to the Worcester County Food Bank.
