All right guys welcome to my channel my name is megan and i am a junior at the university of kentucky up until last year in august of 2020 i was in a sorority but i decided to drop in august and now that it’s almost an entire year later
I’m going to explain to you why and how greek life can actually end up being an extremely toxic environment so yeah let’s go ahead and get started before we get started in this video i just want to put a disclaimer out there that i am in no way telling you whether
Or not you should join a sorority or not or for a fraternity for that matter i also am not making this video to hurt anyone’s character or defame any sorority fraternity organizations i will not be using anyone’s names to protect people’s privacy i just want to make other women and men
For that matter aware of how greek life can sometimes be not all that it is cracked up to be on social media and in popular culture so if you would like to hear about my story then keep watching so first of all let’s go ahead and break down how you
Actually get into a sorority for those of you who do not know like what the rush process is so basically you are going to be put into a gamakai group which is like your rush group and it’s going to be most likely girls who live in your housing building with you and you’re
Also going to get a gamakai which is a older girl in a sorority who has like disaffiliated from her sorority to take you to all the sororities and at the end they’re going to reveal which sorority they’re in but they don’t want you to know which one that you’re in
So it won’t affect your decision based on like oh i want to be in the sorority my gamma kaizen like that that way it won’t be an issue but whenever you actually go to houses you’re going to listen to them sing this like song usually or like do an intro speech or something
And then you’re going to get to talk to usually two girls sometimes one sometimes like three but usually it’s two girls in the sorority and you basically um they ask you a lot of questions and they want you to talk about yourself and it kind of feels like an interview or like um
Like you’re being kind of drilled with questions which i didn’t really like like it makes it really nervous kind of like a forced conversation um just because being on the side of i went through the like learning how to recruit process you actually are given like a checklist of
Things that you are supposed to ask them about so if the conversation fails force that’s because it is um they make you ask certain things so yeah that’s a thing but basically you’re going to travel to all the houses the first round with your gamakai group and you’re going to
You know be there for about 20 minutes and talk to girls in each one at the end of that day you go and you rank the sororities that you like um like from one to our school has 14 so like 14 and the bottom four is the ones that you
Don’t want to go back to and then the next day the sororities all have ranked the pnm’s which is your potential new members and if they want you to come back they’re going to get put on your paper if they don’t want you to come back they
Won’t um and the only way that your rankings matter is if more houses wanted you back than the like number that are acceptable for the next round so say you only got seven houses back then even if four of those seven were the four you wanted to drop you’re still
Going back to them because like the sororities pick over you unless all of them pretty much want you anyway so you go through like several rounds our school was four we did open house philanthropy sisterhood and then preference that’s what it’s called um and basically you just get more information with each round
And like the conversations get longer at the end in preference you’re down to your two houses that you like and that like you back um and then you’ll go to those two houses they do some kind of like weird ritual ceremony thing and then you get to pick the one that
You like the best and then they pick whether they want you or not and then if you match with your number one house then you’re gonna get that one if you don’t and number two wants you then you’re gonna get that one but basically the next day after you do
This sometimes it’s like the next weekend if you guys are doing them weekend recruiting you’re going to go to some kind of public location i’m not sure what it’s like with kobe because i was recruited in 2019 but you’ll go to a public location ours was an auditorium
And basically the gamma kai’s reveal what sorority chapter they’re in and then you’re going to get an envelope with your chapter in it and everybody opens them all at once and most people get the chapter that they won i’d say probably like 80 to 85 but some people will get their second
Choice i got my first choice um but yeah now i’m just going to kind of talk about how the recruitment process can be kind of problematic first of all like i said earlier the conversations feel like really forced because they are and it’s like kind of a job interview like interrogation kind of
Vibe which can give a lot of people anxiety and like be very nerve-wracking um which just was not a positive thing like i know a lot of people going through it who had like anxiety attacks and would like cry and all kinds of stuff because they were just like scared or nervous
Or they didn’t get the houses they wanted back or whatever else like it’s just a really emotional process that can be difficult on people’s emotions also particularly with sororities who consider themselves like top tier at the school are very like selective and like pre-judgey so like um like if you’re a top tier
Sorority they might be like oh well we only want tall skinny blondes so like if you don’t fit that then sorry like we’re gonna pre-cut you and they don’t say that they do this but everybody knows that they do like you can just look at who they bring back
And know that they do that um so i just like that’s kind of wrong like i don’t think it should be based on physical appearance or like major or anything like you want your sorority to be like a diverse group of people you would think but apparently not
So once i was actually in the sorority i started noticing some red flags pretty quickly but kind of ignored them for a little bit but basically people in sororities at least my sorority got very clicky very fast and if you didn’t get into one of those like groups
Early then you were gonna have a hard time making friends just because like they all were already hanging out with each other and i don’t know about you guys but i am not a type of person who can just like walk up to a big group of people and start talking to them
It’s like a very daunting thing for me so if you can do that and good for you but i just can’t so it’s just like not my type of thing and also the older girls in the sorority some of them are kind of sketchy on the way they talk to people like
I didn’t personally get like super offended by this but they call like new girls like the babies and some people got mad about that like that was just an issue and basically they just caught like there’s just a lot of drama and easily irritated things like i don’t know
So after a couple months you get to do the big little process well um my girl that i wanted to be my big was transferring schools at the end of the semester but she didn’t tell me that she was doing this beforehand even though i had told her like
Several several times that hey i want you to be my big like the littles get to like kind of pick who they want and so i had written her down as who i wanted and then she wasn’t even eligible to be picked but she didn’t tell me this
So i got paired with a girl that i had never even met before and she also was going to have a twiddle who i had never even met before so that was kind of awkward and the girls were really nice but we didn’t necessarily like you know
Mesh because we’d never met each other we didn’t necessarily have things in common um it was just kind of really awkward like i don’t know now we’re gonna get into the part that is like the actual reason that led me to drop out of my sorority so to preface this
I need to explain a couple of background information things about what happened beforehand said that it makes sense so basically in my gamma kai group there was 12 girls and five of us all went to the same sorority including me so we were all a group of friends we all
Knew each other from recruitment and we were maintaining a friendship outside of it after being in the sorority so that was where i was you know having my group of friends because like i said earlier everything’s really clicky so it’s hard to make other friends as well
They like to say that they’re open to talking to everybody but it really is a hard thing to get into but anyways out of these five girls including myself another one was also my roommate my freshman roommate who i had been friends with for 10 years prior to this like we
Grew up as friends and i’m not going to say their name because i’m not going to um expose people or like bring up drama i’m just sharing my experience for those of you who might be going through something similar or who are going to go through recruitment and want some information on
Like the other side of it and because a lot of information is just like oh greek life is so fun oh my gosh oh my gosh but there actually is kind of a dark side to greek life and i just want everyone to be aware before they get into something that
They’re not fully ready to deal with so anyways everything with this group of friends was great for about a month or so i was we were hanging out all the time going to games and everything um but then i started to notice that we were hanging out less and less and then
All together we just like stopped hanging out and we’d had a group chat previously that we all texted in to like hang out meet up and you know get dinner go to do different things and i realized on their snapchat stories that they were still all hanging out without me okay
So obviously they had created a group chat without me and this started to make me really sad and lonely and i was just like wow like my friends don’t want to hang out with me so eventually um it was irritating me enough that i asked my roommate i was like
Hey like what’s going on why are you guys hanging out without me i’ve seen it on your snapchat story like why am i not getting invited like why am i being excluded and and when i asked her this she basically like stared at me for a minute
And then she was like well we don’t really want to be friends with you anymore so we’re just not hanging out with you we made a group chat without you and we’re hanging out without you because we don’t want to be your friend anymore and so i was like extremely confused
Because it’s like first of all i don’t know what i did like i didn’t do anything to make anyone mad at sleeps as far as i was aware um and no one had ever said anything to me to say like oh that bothers me when you do this or oh
Like why did you do that i don’t like that blah blah blah you know what i’m saying like usually if somebody has a problem they’ll be like oh hey i don’t like when you do that explain so that never happened so i was just really confused
So i asked my roommate um to text the other girls and ask them to come down to our room one at a time so we could just talk i wanted to do it one at a time just so it wasn’t like overwhelming and we could have a really calm conversation
Um instead of like you know when you have a lot of people who are in emotional states it could get like heated easily but um they didn’t decide to do that so to my surprise when they showed up at the door there was all three of them at the door
Plus my roommate in the room and they were staring at me with their arms crossed like a pouty little toddler and they just like had the most angry face that you could possibly have like it was it’s actually kind of funny thinking back to it how like aggressive they looked standing in our
Doorway um but basically i was like okay well i’m just i’m gonna try not to cause any more problems i’m not gonna escalate the situation i’m just gonna let them in so they like stomp through the room and go stand up against the counter in our room
So if you don’t know how like university of kentucky’s dorms are set up there’s like a common space with like a kitchen counter area and then there’s like a little table and then like you have your bathroom sinks here so i was sitting at the kitchen table here
With my roommate and all three of the other girls were standing along the front counter like by the door so basically i just asked them like hey i’ve noticed you guys were hanging out without me like what’s going on did i do something to upset you i don’t understand like can you please
Explain well instead of being calm or explaining it like politely or really explaining with any kind of like actual evidence at all they decided that they were going to start yelling at me cussing at me like basically bullying me and verbally assaulting me in my room all the while my roommate who was
Supposed to be like my best friend for like 10 years is sitting at her at our table just kind of sitting there watching them talk to me like this um and so basically this goes on for about 45 minutes i asked them for like evidence of why they didn’t like me or
Like what i did to be this horrible person that they were trying to tell me that i was and their literal only evidence that they actually could give me was that i had asked them for gas money for driving them around for like a week going to different things i
Asked them for like five dollars a piece because gas is expensive and we’re all college students we’re all broke and i didn’t have a lot of money so i was like hey can we just all split this like i’m fine with driving you around but
Like i need a little bit of gas money like we’re going a lot of places and some of them didn’t have cars which is totally fine with me i was totally down to help i just needed them to you know give me a little gas money when we went places
Well apparently that didn’t go over very well for them but they never said anything to me but they also never gave me any gas money but i just kind of let it go but apparently it bothered them a lot and they didn’t have any other evidence on how
I was this bad person but they said a lot of hurtful things that i am not going to repeat because um that would get me demonetized first of all and that would probably get me flagged because they’re very bad things but basically i sat there and took this for like 45 minutes
And i was like on the verge of tears but keeping myself from crying because i didn’t want to give them this like satisfaction of like making me that upset because a bully is like a person just trying to like get a reaction out of you so basically
I like they ended up leaving and i got into the shower and like bawled my eyes out for like half an hour so when i get out of the shower my roommate’s gone she’s not in our dorm she i found out later is down in one of the other girls dorm rooms
Talking about it talking me and basically i went to my room called my mom as one does when they are extremely upset about something and you’re an 18 year old in college and it’s only like october so you ain’t been gone very long um and i just was talking to my mom on
The phone and then my roommate came back a couple like an hour or so later and knocked on my door because i had the door closed and she was basically like hey are you okay and i will admit that i was kind of snappy about this because i was
Very angry at her for not defending me and i was like no i’m not okay like why the heck would you think i was okay after that like you didn’t defend me at all we’re supposed to be friends what the f like i was angry and but yeah so i was extremely angry
With her and basically i said what i said and then i was like can you please just leave me alone like i can’t deal with this right now like we can talk a different day i just i just want to be left alone like i was still crying
So i was um kind of doing this through like sobs um and so eventually she left my room after i was like you literally need to leave me alone like i’m pissed off so leave and so then the next morning this time that like one o’clock in the morning
The next morning at like nine am i was waking up to go to a class and i saw a text on my phone from the new member educator of the sorority which is basically the person who teaches the new recruits like the pnm’s what it’s like to be in that sorority it
Teaches you all about the sorority what like the protocols are and stuff like that and they’re supposed to be kind of like a support system for new members as they like get into like full members of the chapter so i had a text message from her
Which i had never spoken to this girl outside of like our meetings and like i’ve never spoken to her just me and her so this was really weird and she basically invited me to come eat with them for lunch or dinner and it was her and the risk management person that like
Is another girl in the chapter but these are both juniors in our chapter and i was a freshman obviously um and so right away i knew something was up i knew it was really weird why would they be texting me like i don’t know them like that
And so i realized that my roommate had decided to text the new member educator who was friends with her big and tell her what happened and basically tell her that i cussed at her but didn’t tell her all of the stuff that happened beforehand okay so we
I text them back and i was like listen my story needs to be told i’m going to tell it to you but i’m not going to do it in public like i will come to the house and meet with you guys there to where we could talk in private
So i went up to the house um after my classes it was like 4pm and i went up there and told them what happened and basically they were just like well you guys just need to forgive each other and move on and like they didn’t offer me any support or any help
Or anything like they weren’t going to do any disciplinary action on these girls who had literally verbally assaulted me and were bullying me like actively bullying me that are in their chapter and that they’re endorsing as people who are going to take littles the next year and like mentor people which is
Horrible they now have littles which i feel bad for their littles um but they weren’t gonna do anything they weren’t gonna help me they didn’t even like say oh we’re sorry that happened like they just wanted it gone they didn’t want me to talk about it with anyone they didn’t want
It to be known by anybody so they basically just want to sweep issues away because they’re worried about protecting the image of their organization instead of taking care of the people who are in their organization so as time went on i was going to try to you know just make friends with other
People and get over it because i still was in the chapter like i had still already paid for the whole semester at least and i really wanted it to work like i wanted this idealized version of what greek life was supposed to be and i wasn’t ready to give up on
It yet like i wanted that experience like that was a prominent part of what i wanted my college experience to be so i was like i’m gonna try again um but that didn’t work very well because these girls who were bullying me were very popular girls within the sorority they
Were very much in these cliques that i had talked about and started speaking about me talking bad about me just kind of putting a bad taste in people’s mouths about me or in people’s head about me before they really knew me um and so that kind of made it difficult to
Talk to people and also again it’s really hard to approach groups of people alone um so i just started to feel more and more isolated and i was getting like pretty depressed i had a lot of social anxiety surrounding everything to do with the sorority like i was
At the point where i wasn’t leaving my dorm unless it was to go to class and then i would come right back like i would literally eat in my dorm i would buy food from the store and eat it in my dorm i didn’t go to dining halls i didn’t socialize with people
I wanted myself as far away from other people as i could possibly be and that is extremely unhealthy because i was so scared of what other people thought about me and how i was being perceived and i just i couldn’t deal with it like it was literally giving me panic attacks
To think about having to go to meeting every week because i was still in the chapter basically my what was supposed to be my college family became my biggest mental health and anxiety trigger that i could possibly ever have also as time went on my situation with my roommate
Got more and more hostile until the point where it was no longer a safe situation for me and i talked to my ra and got moved at the end of the semester but that is a completely different story that i probably won’t be telling so fast forward to my second semester of my
Freshman year we were in the new year and i was going to try to make it work again i wanted this experience i really wanted everything to be the way that i had imagined it to be always in my head so i really made an effort to you know
Act happy even if i wasn’t to act positive even if i was terrified or extremely anxious i was going to push it down and hide it and fake it until i make it very much um and then covet happened and we got sent home and i was no longer
Around these people who were very anxiety triggering for me which was actually the best possible thing that could have ever happened to me i realized when i’m not around these people who give me all this anxiety i feel a lot better you would have thought i would have thought of that one
Sooner but i guess me wanting that experience kind of outweighed the logic there but basically in august after thinking about it for a couple months and going through the process of realizing hey this is what’s causing me all these problems if i take myself out of this situation
I’m going to be a lot better i decided when we went back to school that i was dropping from my sorority now i had already gone through the process of training to be a recruiter which is how i already know about all the stuff that i talked to you about during recruitment
And basically you have to go through this like two week period of um like kind of leaving where you are like not fully left until the paperwork is processed so you still have to follow all these rules and stuff um but that wasn’t really an issue i
Just thought you’d want to know in case you were thinking about dropping from your sorority you have to go through like this waiting period where it like gets processed but yeah now it is almost an entire year later um i am a lot happier of a person
I’ve managed my anxiety a lot more i feel so much better and more comfortable going to college without this extreme anxiety trigger and knowing that i actually have real friends now and not just people who are like doing it for an image and are not really there to care about
You they’re more worried about the image of their organization and of themselves um so if you ever get into a tough situation with other members of a greek organization or your own greek organization i would probably go higher up than your executive board the executive board probably won’t want
To do anything about it because they don’t want their image contorted and made to look bad and that’s what actually really scares me because you see all of this positive stuff about greek life on social media that all of these girls go through the rush process and
Join chapters and all this and a lot of them have a really good experience i’m not saying that that most people have a bad experience but some people do and they feel very alone i know i did because they’re like i didn’t know that this happened to other people
And so basically i just wanted to share my experience and tell anyone else who is struggling being in their sorority or someone who wants to see both sides of it before they join that this is a thing that happens you’re not by yourself you’re not alone you’re not the first
Person to have to go through it if anyone is going through something like this and need someone to talk to feel free to reach out to me i respond to all my comments so you can reach out to me there or you can um dm me on instagram my handle is right
Here and i would gladly talk to you about it there as well but i do just want to say to end the video be careful on what you do don’t um let anyone else tell you what your limits are because only you can know what your actual limits are and
What you’re willing to deal with what you’re willing to do as far as like any kind of hazing problems anything socially that is not something that you want to do do not do it they cannot force you to do it it is not worth being in some organization to do something that you
Don’t think is right so if you’ve made it this far in the video i just want to say thank you for listening to my story i hope it was impactful for you and helpful in some way most of my videos are not this depressing i promise um
But i do make a lot of college content and lifestyle videos and stuff like that so if that is the type of thing that you are interested in feel free to go ahead and hit the subscribe button and also give me a thumbs up it really really helps me out
And i would just really appreciate it if you want to check out some of my other college videos i’m going to go ahead and link my playlist above for you as well as in the comments down below or just pop over to my channel and click on the college videos playlist and
They’re all right there for you but anyways thank you guys for watching the video i really appreciate it and i’m gonna see you all in my next one bye guys
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