71 CommentsThis just in! SGA has voted to recognize sororities at Barnard by a vote of 14-5. Zoe Camp reports.
Some words from the SGA meeting happening now: SGA was asked why the student poll existed in the first place, to which SGA members replied, “the student body really stood up and there was a large majority. It’s our responsibility to do what we said we would do and follow the poll.” A follow-up to the vote has been proposed. “Maybe fifty years ago, Barnard didn’t accept Greek Life,” an official said, “but fifty years later, that may have changed.” Members of the council announced they were headed out for drinks after the meeting.
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71 Comments
@Anonymous there was a time when greek life was archaic but in my opinion it became more classical
@Broke Greek I’m in a sorority, and I receive a generous scholarship each semester to subsidize the high cost of dues. My chapter has done everything it can to make sure it is financially feasible for me to participate. The idea that panhellenic sororities are only for rich girls or that they aren’t welcoming to minorities is a total myth.
@Barnard Is NOT an undergrad college of Columbia, and I’m sick of Barnard girls saying it is. Cuz it’s not. Get it right bitchaaas.
@Smarter than You The vote is about giving Barnard students access to the same extracurriculars that Columbia students have. Your personal objections do not matter.
@This means just one thing MORE CHICK FIGHTS!
@Anonymous Sorority due amounts are somewhere between $200-$400. They start out a bit steeper than that, then gradually decrease to a pretty reasonable amount, compared to other sororities at other universities. Each sorority offers generous scholarships and other forms of aid, including payment plans, to help their members with paying their dues. Sororities select members on a need-blind basis, so they don’t know what your socio-economic class would even be. Yes, they do take members who aren’t members of a high socioeconomic class. The only way I know any of this is because my friends in sororities told me about it, because I wanted to go through recruitment but thought I couldn’t afford it. I didn’t end up going through recruitment because I ended up being out of town for an emergency, but that’s what I’m told as far as dues go.
@Anonymous Will this mean that it will cost less to be in a sorority? What do girls do who can’t afford to be in a sorority? Do sororities actually take members who aren’t members of a high socioeconomic class?
@Greek Expert Guys, I watch ABC Family. I know what it’s all about.
@Anonymous Horrible decision. Next thing you know they’ll talk about bringing back the ROTC! Disgusting!
@Anonymous no u
@... “delta delta delta can i helpya helpya helpya?”
@What a huge waste of my student life fee.
@What a huge waste of my student life.
@TL;DR TL;DR
summary of previous comments: herp derp derp derp herp derp
@... I’m not familiar with the creature that makes that noise. What is that sound?
@TROLL IN THE DUNGEONS!
@Anonymous If you’re simply responding to the grammatical misuse of the word \philanthropy,\ then maybe you should try using proper grammar yourself before you criticize others.
@Anonymous hey, i think u’re uninformed and need to get my facts straight. i am also pretty sure u know very little.
@Jonathan WHY DONT YOU PEOPLE HAVE WORK TO DO AHHHHHHH
@yes in terms of numbers 10% of Barnard students are in sororities. do you know how many other activities get recognition and have significantly less participation from the student body?
@anonymous do those smaller groups have fees and dues then number in the hundreds of dollars per member the way sororities do? do they have the right to select its membership in the same capacity?
you’re comparing apples and oranges.
@seriously you do realize that if you’re one of the people who is against sororities because they’re exclusive, you’re being MORE exclusive by voting for them not to be recognized? you’re actually asking an institution to refuse to acknowledge them even though they exist, are prevalent on campus and not going anywhere. how’s that for exclusivity?
@i http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper#The_paradox_of_tolerance
@anon good job giving yourself away. you might as well have used your real name.
everyone knows who you are.
@prevalent only in terms of the noise sororities make about themselves. not in terms of numbers. this does not create refusal to finance their activities an action that promotes exclusivity.
@Umm Yeah it does actually. F@CU chose to cut the IGC’s funding in proportion to the percentage of Barnard students in each council (51% for Panhellenic, 4% for IFC, etc.). If this decision had gone “no,” it is highly likely (I would even say guaranteed) that F@CU would continue to distribute this funding cut so long as the IGC permitted Barnard students to join its organizations. The IGC would be forced to consider the role of Barnard students in the Greek community and would need to find some way to compensate for the lack of funding (anything from prohibiting Barnard students to charging only Barnard students an activities fee). That would indeed promote exclusivity.
@Anonymous If the people claiming to support Barnard’s status as an accepting, empowering, and inclusive environment for undergraduate women took themselves even a LITTLE bit seriously they probably wouldn’t refer to their peers as \frat mattresses.\ It seems like there are bigger, more offensive and alienating problems on our campus than Greek life.
@Non-Greek Clearly, none of you have actually made any effort to understand what this vote was about. If you had, you’d calm down because you’d realize that this is more of a formality than anything else. You will probably notice very little, if any, significant changes.
Relax and stop sippin’ so much haterade.
@Anonymous but haterade is so delicious
@Anonymous does this mean we’ll finally get the tri-lambs on campus?
clap your hands everybody, and everybody clap your hands…
@i'm sorry to inform you gentlemen, but it is very unlikely that you will every become full tri-lams. after all, you are, nerds.
@bc'11 you all are ridiculous.
you don’t know what greek life really means so you judge based on your stereotypes.
here’s the thing about stereotypes; they aren’t true.
so learn and don’t assume things.
@shut the fuck up you bitches are acting like barnard let the kkk on campus. chill the fuck out.
@By KKK you mean Kappa Kappa Kappa?
@person Actually a fraternity at Dartmouth. Who says Princeton is the whitest Ivy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kappa_Kappa_Kappa
@Anonymous My friend is a brother there. They throw sweet parties and are actually the most diverse frat on campus. :D
@Anonymous shut up
@Anonymous greek life is sick and archaic. it’s also serious waste of all its members’ talent. very sad to hear this news…
@this is genuinely dissapointing. there are so many more important things for which the time and money that will now be allotted to a very limited number of sorority girls could be used.
@seriously what a waste.
@yeah Why spend 10 cents more per girl in order to fund an extracurricular that some 200 girls from your school are involved in? If there’s one thing that surprised me when I first came to Columbia, it was how many Barnard students are engaged in extracurriculars with Columbians. It was surprising, but just strengthens our community. It saddens me to think that so many at Barnard don’t want their classmates to be involved with the extracurricular activities that they enjoy.
The idea that sorority girls are all sluts is stupid. Yes, there’s a lot of slutty behavior at frat parties, but most of that in from unaffiliated girls who like to go to frat parties and act like sluts. The number of girls involved in “Greek life” is much greater than the number who pledge sororities.
@gah this logic is flawed. the average student is really only part of a few organizations, yet their student life fees go to ALL the organizations of his/her school, regardless of that student’s participation level. so for example, you may be in intervarsity, but your student life fees go to other student groups that are exclusionary (dance teams, cultural groups that have interviews, etc). if you are comfortable with your money going to OTHER exclusionary groups, what is the big deal about the fact that they are now going to greek life? it’s like people are all of a sudden waking up to the fact that their money is going to organizations of which they are not members.
the thing to remember is that THIS IS OKAY — your student life fees enrich student life for everyone. not only are you able to participate in what interests you, but your roommate/floormate/classmate can do the same. what’s the big deal if the people around you want to join greek life? it’s apparently fine if they want to join a theater production, which is also exclusionary. there is really no difference except the blatant prejudice against greek life that seems to be rampant on this campus (or at least on bwog).
disclaimer: i am not involved with greek life at all. i am a senior who just thinks this is all very silly.
@gah oh sorry this was not meant to be a reply to the post by “yeah”
@BC'13 The reality is money was already going to it. Clearly, time was too because there was so much debate over this. The number of Barnard students in sororities has gone up significantly over the past few years; why not give them the full support that they’re asking for? As someone who doesn’t particularly care about sorority/Greek life, I didn’t see a compelling reason NOT to let them have recognition. If you don’t like sororities, ignore them. It’s not difficult to do.
@doesn't matter it doesn’t actually make a difference — same number of girls. now we’ll just know which sorostitutes are barnard so we can avoid them more easily
@GET OUT finally! does this mean barnard girls can stop pledging at COLUMBIA sororities?
@Anonymous WAY TO PAY ATTENTION, GENIUS
@Anonymous you’re \ashamed to go here,\ really?? do you have any idea what being involved with greek life is actually like? and of all the things to be ashamed of, you pick an organization that promotes women leadership, that encourages the four undergraduate schools to coordinate among the student body, and that supports national philanthropies? awesome thing to be ashamed of.
@THIS Those of you who think sorority girls = frat parties = sluts have to remember that most frat parties are full of independent girls, too. While sorority girls do go to the frat parties and hook up with frat guys, they also do a lot of things to better the community. Shouldn’t you be slut-shaming the girls who go to the frat parties but don’t give a damn about the community?
@i right. because it doesn’t promote women’s exclusion, objectification, or conformity at all.
(not to mention widespread misuse of the word “philanthropy,” which anyone else of average intelligence or english proficiency knows cannot be used interchangeably with words like “charity” or “organization.”)
@Anonymous clearly you don’t understand what each of the sororities do for their respective philanthropies, and yes, they are PHILANTHROPIES. you should get your facts straight and actually learn about greek life before you make statements about which you know very little. don’t be making assumptions about stereotypes of so-called “conformity” and “exclusion” if you don’t have any experience whatsoever within a greek organization. you know what happens when people assume things…
@i it’s so funny to me how every time i’ve said anything against greek life i’m told i’m “uninformed” and “need to get my facts straight” and “know very little.” funny—i probably know more about greek life statistics and the way greek life works than you, let alone most people who voted at all, given my presence at nearly every town hall, the questions i’ve talked about with SGA, and the numerous girls i know in each sorority—in addition to the ones i know who didn’t get into the sororities they wanted. the girls i know who are in sororities have themselves told me confidentially, or sometimes publicly, how sororities work, including a large amount of very stereotypical information (not surprising at all—i mean, they all are part of NATIONAL organizations, aren’t they? why would columbia mysteriously be exempt?)
your knee-jerk reaction is to say i’m “uninformed” because i’m talking about “stereotypes.” it’s as if you think all stereotypes were inherently false or something just by virtue of being stereotypes. i can tell you based on the 12309812390128 experiences i’ve had with greek life and greek life people here at barnard/columbia that they most definitely aren’t in many case. do you have any better argument to make besides calling me out on this absurd nonexistent claim that you’ve been conditioned to identify by your sorority recognition defense script? i mean, exclusivity in greek life isn’t even a stereotype. it’s a fact. perhaps you should get YOUR facts straight.
and there you go again, abusing the word “philanthropy.” philanthropy is a mass noun, not a count noun. you can’t pluralize it. further, it refers to the act of charitable donation TO an organization, not the organization itself. or do sororities speak a special dialect of english?
@Anonymous Why are you under the impression that Greek Life organizations do not have a truly philanthropic component?
They hold events. People pay for these events. The money from these events are then donated to charitable organizations.
@i I never said you lack a philanthropic component; I was just making a small, extra comment in the sororities’ annoying and consistent grammatical misuse of the word “philanthropy,” which does not mean “charitable organization” and also cannot be pluralized.
@i doesn’t know what she’s talking about:
phi·lan·thro·py
–noun, plural -pies.
…
4. a philanthropic organization.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/philanthropy
sounds “uniformed” to me
@Anonymous HAHA! i like how you changed it from “Helen (Bwog)” to this. way to cover your ass behind the walls of anonymity
@Anonymous It’s the three undergraduate schools of Columbia University: CC, SEAS, GS.
Barnyard is an affiliate college, get it straight.
@Anonymous that’s not even true. it’s 4 undergraduate colleges. look it up.
@Anonymous http://www.columbia.edu/prospective_students/index.html
Columbia only has three undergraduate schools and they’re on top. Your affiliate college is on the bottom.
@hah actually, barnard is above the other 3 undergraduate colleges, http://www.columbia.edu/newcuhome/content/schools-3.html
@Anonymous Go ahead and carry that on for the rest of your life. It will get you places.
@..... Idiots. But no one cares.
@Anonymous lame
@groupies for the frat boyz!
@i i have always been the first to defend barnard against anything. for the first time ever i have become ashamed to go here.
@Anonymous But it won’t be the last time.
@Blah Fuck these people
@Anonymous too bad for those of us who don’t like greek like
@Anonymous yup too bad!
@wow fml now
@Fantastic Great decision.