Disaffiiliate from Sorority?

[Anonymous]

I am in a sorority and it is actually much more beneficial to me now than it was when I was in school. TBH, it is a AA GLO, and those tend to be socially focused in college but morph into more of a networking and mentoring focus later on. Then again, I knew that going in as both my mom and grandmom were members of the same sorority. I grew up around it and saw what it would eventually become for me.

Both of my kids have shown an interest in it and we have strongly advised them to wait until they graduate and pledge an alumni chapter where the folks are a bit more mature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was wondering - has anyone actually taken the time to disaffiliate from their college sorority?
I was in one in a top college. It was a lot of fun and definitely helped my social life. Now, I think back and I am disgusted. I feel like the sorority is everything that I teach my young daughter to never be. We excluded other girls (I can remember some crying and having to go home for a few days when not "selected"), we sat in meetings and discussed other girls after meeting them for 15 minutes, blackballed some girls for the most trivial reason, and then we paired up with fraternities for ridiculous events that other people were not invited to.
I didn't go to one of those schools where sororities are everything in life, but it was still a big part. We weren't even the most popular or the beautiful crew. We were pretty middle of the road, and tried to be kind. That makes me think that if I am so embarrassed to have been a part of such a clique, it must have been even a hundred times worse for others.
I can't stand when people defend them because they do "community service." My sorority was a bunch of goody-goodies and I don't think we set any records for service. Plus, there are a million ways to help other people without being part of a group that excludes people in the process!
Should I just chalk it up to things we do when we're young? I still get a magazine every month that I immediately throw away. Go through the effort to disaffiliate?
(Anyone else read "Pledged" by Alexandra Robbins? That definitely intensified my feelings!)

I could say the same about my college sorority experience. And yes I did read Pledged but it was a long time ago and since I barely recall it, it didn't have too much impact.

I don't get your point of needing to disaffiliate though. Who cares? Take your name of the mailing list and never tell anyone you were ever a member. Problem solved.

[Anonymous]

You can't undo the years you spent there. It's not as if by going through some kind of "disaffiliation process" you suddenly didn't do stuff with them back in the day.

It's not a religion - it's a club. Get off the mailing list. No one else gives a darn whether you were in a sorority or what sorority it was. If it really matters to someone else, it's a reflection on them, not you.