Sorority Rituals - Reflections On Rites of ... - Mari Ann Callais

next four years. You are no longer a freshman baby anymore, now you are really a college
student.
Many of the women referenced the freshman and senior years specifically. Several of the sorority
women explained ritual and what it meant from the senior year perspective:
I think that ritual means different things to different people and that everyone takes
something different from it. Ritual is like a poem, you can dig into it as much as you want
and find what ever you want from it. A lot of seniors tell me that by the end of your senior
year, you have taken so much out of ritual just because you have had so many experiences
and that it means more to you than it did as a freshman, sophomore, or junior. You see
the seniors get teary eyed when they recite our purpose and you know that these words
have meaning to them. It’s because they have had experience when they have dealt with
the meaning of those words and they really understand why they are there.
The need for ritual and a better understanding of the role of ritual seem to develop as the
participants became older and were possibly looking for more from their sorority experience:
I think that especially for the older women, ritual means so much to them…for them, the
whole sorority is purely based around ritual but for me, there are other aspects of the
sorority that are just as equally important. I think that as I get older, ritual will become the
most important part of the sorority.
One of the younger participants said “I am not really sure what kind of role ritual plays in my life
because I have only been a members for one semester, so I don’t know what role it plays yet.”
person:
Several of the participants indicated that understanding ritual is not the same for every
A lot of understanding ritual has to do with as you get older . . . with 110 members, there
are 110 different opinions. Last year was my third year in the sorority and I thought ritual
was great, but as you look around the room during the ritual ceremony, you see some of
the members who are just like let’s get this over with because I have other things that I
could be doing.
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