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

80,000 women join sororities. On most college campuses, sororities are the largest women's
organizations and offer one of the few opportunities that women have to govern themselves.
“The National Panhellenic Conference enters its second century with a membership of twenty-six
women’s fraternities that represent a total of 3.5 million initiated women. These NPC member
fraternities have installed more than 2,900 collegiate chapters, which are located at 630 college
and university campuses” (National Panhellenic Conference, 2001, p. 5). It is my hope that
scholarly research on the impact of sorority ritual on the behavior of college women will lead to
an increase in understanding their perspective and providing resources that will assist their
development.
Meaning of Rituals to Sororities
If ritual is an important aspect of sororities, it is key to examine the concept of ritual and
what it means to sororities. Since the focus of this study is Greek letter sororities, it is important
to understand the meaning of ritual in the "Greek" context. Driver (1991) states:
Ritual belongs to what the ancient Greeks would have called techne, the root of our words
technical, technique, and technology. Ritual is a sort of technology because it is a method
(a time-honored one) for accomplishing something in the real world. The techne of ritual,
however, is utterly different from modern technology. Its field of action is not an
objectified physical world, but a divine, human, animal, or vegetative cosmos of mores,
moralities, and mutual relationships (p. 47).
It could be argued that rituals in sororities were established as a way to keep everyone the
same and, in some respects, this could be true. Nuwer (1999) explains:
Early female societies served a fairly defined purpose. They provided members with a
sense of identity. In each other’s company, members could talk and laugh with little
restraint, discussing books and poems, reading their own essays and poetry, and building
a support group. They shared secrets and ideas. And like other fraternal groups, sororities
created elaborate rituals, designed badges, and shared secret phrases (p. 149).
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