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

Some of the participants described ritual as strictly a ceremony and that, outside of the
time spent in the actual ceremony, it did not have an impact on their lives. Several of the
participants indicated that they felt that the ceremony was boring and had no relevance in their
lives and that it was just one part of their sorority experience. More often, however, participants
provided indications that the majority of the members in their chapter did not understand the
meaning of the ritual ceremony. For those members who don’t understand the meaning of ritual,
the ceremonies seemed to be something that was a part of their sorority experience, but was not
connected to their life outside of the ceremony.
While most participants who referenced ritual as impacting their behavior provided
specific reasons for that connection, as detailed in above sections, others acknowledged the
impact of ritual but did not connect it to a specific reason. They seemed to realize that the
symbolism of the ritual ceremony represented, in some ways, the growth process of “real life,”
even if that understanding was at a level of which that were unaware. That is to say that they
internalized the symbolism and allowed it to affect their everyday behavior, even if they didn’t
understand how the two concepts fit together.
It is most interesting that the participants’ answers seemed to fall into three distinct
categories regarding the impact of ritual on their behavior. For most of the sorority women, a
clear distinction existed. Either they believed that ritual impacted their behavior or they believed
that ritual did not impact their behavior. Other participants realized, upon reflection, that the
values expressed in the ritual did impact their behavior, they had just never realized it prior to the
research questions. Eisenhart’s (1990) idea of acquiring a peer group culture, or “drawing to their
own situation, and condensing its meaning for their own use” applies here in that “condensing its
meaning for their own use” takes on a significant role in this process. For ritual to impact the
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