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

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Ritual is very much something that I try and incorporate into my daily life. It’s a high standard and it’s not an easy thing to obtain, but you try your best and your goal basically is just do a little bit more the next day. You can’t expect to execute every principle mentioned instantaneously, it just doesn’t happen. You have your shortcomings, but you just try and get a little bit better each day. Some participants indicated that ritual could provide guidelines, a road map, by which to make decisions and to live their lives: I think of some parts of ritual in everyday behavior more than other parts…honestly, if I am looking to try to make a really big decision about something, I look at my religious values, I look at the values that my parents taught me and I also look at the things my sorority tells me in my initiation ceremony. That is for something that is a really big decision . . . as far as what I am doing day by day, I think that the ritual that we do in our chapter meeting probably influences me more. I don’t sit down and think every day well if I do this, what’s going to happen? Let me think back to initiation. I think more along the lines of it becomes part of your everyday values system and you do the chapter meeting ritual more than initiation. So I think that different parts influence you a lot more but ultimately you see it all as ritual. Others view ritual as guidelines for improving their chapter: Ritual gives us a sense of purpose and a kind of a guideline of how to live and how to try to improve our chapter. The only way to improve your chapter is to improve your members because the quality of the chapter is dependent on the quality of the members. Ritual also reminds us that we need to help each other and that we should not be judgmental of people…ritual kind of reminds you that as much as you would like to think that you are perfect sometimes and that you couldn’t possibly do something as stupid as maybe somebody else has, that everybody needs improvement. You need to try to help each other rather that criticizing each other because you know it’s what we are there for to help each other, not to attack each other. Several participants recognized their role in furthering the ideals set forth by their sorority’s rituals: The way I act when I am out, I always remember the things in our creed and the things that go on in ritual and that I am representing my chapter. 108
I think that ritual has made me a better person because I look to the people that initiated me as role models. They represented the ideals of our sorority and they displayed that behavior. Our initiation ceremony has a great deal of impact on my behavior because I try to abide by pretty much everything that the ceremony says. You can’t always follow everything because it is impossible, you would have to be a saint, but I try to stay focused on abiding by the values the initiation ceremony tries to show. Some of the sorority women indicated that the ideals expressed in the sorority ritual were the same or similar to values that they had acquired elsewhere (in their family or in a religion, primarily), but that the sorority helped reaffirm those values: Ritual is most definitely incorporated into other aspects of our lives. These aren’t abstract principles that you wouldn’t find anywhere else, they are principles that society values. For example if you see two sisters argue about something and its kind of stupid, you’ll see somebody else kind of be like, wait now remember that our ritual basically says calm down, you are sisters and whatever it is you will work it out… this is not the end of the world and you will speak to each other again. Ritual just kind of makes you stop and pause and not say things that you shouldn’t. Even if ritual was never explained to me, I think that I exhibit what it means day to day in the way that I behave and how I interact with people outside of my sorority. These are things that you supposed to carry outside of your sorority. I like our ritual because it is very much about personal growth. The purpose of most Greek women’s organizations is to better the people that are in them. It is not some organization to get all of your money and to exploit you. It is for you to grow as a person. I wouldn’t say that I carry the initiation ceremony around in my head and refer to the rituals whenever I face a moral dilemma or a question of some sort. I would say that going through our ritual which is in affect a sort of simulation of some moral dilemmas that a lot of women my age face has made me more capable of responding to those situations in a manner fitting to my chapter, my national affiliation and my own morals. That is why I joined my sorority. I wouldn’t say that my initiation ceremony had a 100 percent impact on my behavior, but I would say that I was a different person post initiation and post pledging because if I had just done the initiation ceremony without everything else that I was required to do, I don’t think that it would have had the same impact. I do believe that joining my sorority and then going through our initiation ceremony has changed my behavior in some ways for the positive. 109
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SORORITY RITUALS: RITES OF PASSAGE
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful
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for teaching me that a group of peo
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TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ......
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CHAPTER V: SUMMARY, DISCUSSION, REC
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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Each year th
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The member groups of the National P
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hopes of the founders rather than t
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ceremony is complete, that person i
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80,000 women join sororities. On mo
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issues, and topics …that formerly
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when do we use it? How do we use it
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the sorority experience has on the
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The lack of information concerning
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of the NPC member groups, and to co
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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE Thi
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Ritual Ceremonies and Symbolism in
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Robson writes further: In a world c
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strengthened by encountering differ
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student initiated and created to au
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Gradually, however, they took over
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Following the founding of Kappa Alp
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efer to themselves as "service" org
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Alpha Xi Delta Fraternity Lombard C
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What Is Ritual? In order to explain
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theorist/researcher in the area of
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Ritual as a Rite of Passage Underst
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we are and giving meaning to us wit
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am I? Well, as I see it, I am a per
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Value Congruence Research conducted
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the majority of authors . . . have
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To better understand Gilligan’s F
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only women, all with varying opinio
Page 67 and 68: member transitions to a leader/role
Page 69 and 70: development. The isolation period a
Page 71 and 72: Gilligan’s point that sex differe
Page 73 and 74: undergraduate members. Understandin
Page 75 and 76: not an option. Actual observance of
Page 77 and 78: Role of the NPC Research Committee
Page 79 and 80: the chapters were part of large nat
Page 81 and 82: where I was able to travel based up
Page 83 and 84: a whole. I piloted the interview qu
Page 85 and 86: These categories were reflective of
Page 87 and 88: participated in my sorority ritual,
Page 89 and 90: sorority women was a cognitive asse
Page 91 and 92: In addition, only one participant w
Page 93 and 94: school. Sixteen (31%) sophomore par
Page 95 and 96: itual among themselves outside of t
Page 97 and 98: was founded in 1978. Their average
Page 99 and 100: chapters ranging in size from 150 t
Page 101 and 102: participants’ feelings about the
Page 103 and 104: A few of the participants expressed
Page 105 and 106: Several of the participants related
Page 107 and 108: One of the participants explained w
Page 109 and 110: During new member education, you le
Page 111 and 112: Women’s Development within the So
Page 113 and 114: Comments from several of the partic
Page 115 and 116: When I first joined my sorority, I
Page 117: the participants referred to other
Page 121 and 122: The reasons that the participants g
Page 123 and 124: This study included both private an
Page 125 and 126: internal value system or they know
Page 127 and 128: sorority women’s length of member
Page 129 and 130: when an 18-year old woman joins a s
Page 131 and 132: ehavior of sorority women, it must
Page 133 and 134: * The level of responsibility and /
Page 135 and 136: to evaluate sorority women and the
Page 137 and 138: they are and what role ritual has i
Page 139 and 140: numbers vary from chapter to chapte
Page 141 and 142: that those ceremonies can bring to
Page 143 and 144: Butler, E. R. (1990). Initiations r
Page 145 and 146: Kuh, G. D., & Arnold, J. C. (1992).
Page 147 and 148: Pennington, D., Zvonkovic, A. C., W
Page 149 and 150: Taylor, S.E., Peplau, L.A., C Sears
Page 151 and 152: APPENDIX A CONSENT FORM 141
Page 153 and 154: APPENDIX B PROFILE QUESTIONS 143
Page 155 and 156: APPENDIX C INTERVIEW QUESTIONS 145
Page 157 and 158: general? What would you say that th
Page 159 and 160: APPENDIX D (LETTER TO THE GREEK ADV
Page 161 and 162: APPENDIX E NATIONAL PANHELLENIC CON
Page 163 and 164: six months doing literature researc
Page 165 and 166: common knowledge similarities--the
Page 167 and 168: Correspondence II To: Shelia Barnes
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I truly appreciate your guidance an
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Application for Exemption from IRB
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VITA Mari Ann Callais was born in 1
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Sorority Rituals - Reflections On Rites of ... - Mari Ann Callais

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