I spent the majority of my summer like most incoming freshmen do: hitting the beach, reveling in the final months of comfortable high school friendships and counting down the days until the seemingly fabled move-in day.
Like many other members of the Phaiye Blaount-worshipping class of 2012, my summer included spending countless hours reading gossip blogs about the Northwestern social scene. It truly was an infectious obsession; I found myself neurotically checking these pages, examining the social circles that were completely unfamiliar to me.
By mid-July, I was dangerously fluent in everything from the sorority and fraternity stereotypes to the nicknames that flood each blog’s entries. Even though I knew it was kind of illicit to acquaint myself with this gossip before school, I figured that it would come naturally as New Student Week progressed. Right?
But when I got here, I was surprised that impressing upperclassmen in certain “top-tier” sororities suddenly became a stressor to compete with living on my own.
“Reading these blogs makes me both excited and nervous,” Weinberg freshman Shivani Banker said. “They make me quietly wonder, ‘Am I pretty or cool enough to be in a sorority?’”
Banker isn’t the only one to open up about these stressors. During a student-life panel on my pre-orientation trip, there were numerous anonymous questions regarding the gossip blogs, the truth of their content and, obviously, rush. I was astonished that so many strangers from across the country were just as invested in this gossip as I was.
So I had to wonder, are these blogs a service to us helpless freshmen, exposing us to the somewhat confusing hierarchy that is the social scene at Northwestern? Or, instead, do they hinder our growth and confidence as we enter a new environment?
“A lot of my friends will talk about the blogs as a joke,” Banker said. “But the funny thing is we already know the top three sororities and which ones we want to pledge.” After promptly naming these “top three,” she continued, “It really does impact us as freshmen who want to make a good impression but don’t even know anything about the whole process.”
Unfortunately, freshmen, particularly females, are vulnerable. They’re eager to make the most of their college experience in the best way possible. And if that’s by drinking heavily and dressing for the catwalk at all times, as is implied in these blogs, then so be it. It’s extreme, but the gossip blogs impress on us that it’s necessary.
These gossip blogs fall into line with how we do everything at Northwestern –- overdone and pretentious. And while those qualities got us this far, there should be a few exceptions to our work (and play) ethic, to spare the psyche of already terrified freshman girls. It simply isn’t fair for us, as new students in a new place, to be rashly exposed to intimidating rumors and stereotypes when delayed rush and the Freshman Freeze exist for a reason.
“I really hope these girls read the blogs as a joke,” McCormick sophomore Courtney Moore said. “If they read the blogs with as much care as it appears these girls are doing, they already know at this point what sororities they want to be in.”
Thus, the blogs are not only doing a disservice to Northwestern students but also to the sororities. The complex system of recruitment is meant to place women where they belong, and the process is undermined when an entire freshman class gets the idea that it’s only socially acceptable to be in three of our twelve sororities.
Weinberg freshman Ashley Holladay, however, appeared to have her head on her shoulders when it came to gossip blogs and rush. “There’s a lot of other ways to find out about sororities. I obviously trust firsthand sources more than these websites.”
While I have no doubt that we’ll all find the chapters we belong in, the process is still one that is accelerated and exaggerated in the intimidation and injustice perpetuated by gossip blogs. These blogs were great tools to kill time all of August while our friends were at school, but that’s the way it should stay.