Maybe you’ve seen yaks about it, heard chatter about it or been directly affected by its abstract presence, but the stereotypes in our Greek community revolving around one “tier system” have simply got to go.
For those of you who don’t understand (in which case, I either applaud your ability to focus on what’s really important or urge you to get out from the rock you’re living under), the so-called tier system is built on the belief that, in Fraternity and Sorority Life, there is a totem-pole style ranking of coolness or widely-known reputation from one sorority or fraternity to another.
It’s the idea that there is a social standing, some might say, of how various greek organizations fare to one another. That, my friends, is a load of garbage.
The tier system serves no positive purpose to our community because it stands to degrade the organizations that fall lower on its spectrum and inflate the egos of the organizations that reside higher. This totem pole of status makes the ones that stick near the middle waste into irrelevance.
You know the scene in “Mean Girls” where Janis Ian looks around the cafeteria and points out to Cady Heron the tables and where those groups sit in the grand spectrum of high school? Yeah, that’s basically what the tier system is doing to the Greek community, and frankly, it’s so 2004. The tier system is a debunked, pointless and offensive addition to our community and we need to dispose of it immediately.
And here I was, thinking we had graduated high school — or am I mistaken?
I am always hearing people talk about the tiers. It’s not uncommon that a fraternity of a so-called lower rank would try to do things to catch the attention of a sorority of a higher standing. Some even value their events by how many girls of a higher standing were in attendance. It is when people fall into the traps of this system that others start to get hurt.
This can happen when new members of a fraternity or sorority get wind of the kind of “standing” their organization has in the grand scheme of things, and allow this to affect their self-esteem — whether this inflates their egos or makes them feel bad about themselves. Either way is detrimental to the people as a whole.
It isn’t fair to make the girls who do attend a fraternity’s events that identify with one of these “lesser” organizations feel less welcome because the boys are waiting around for someone more important to come.
At the end of the day, these organizations are meant to group similarly-minded people who have the capability to develop incredible friendships and relationships. They were not created to make a food chain out of the social scene and try to define who can mesh with who.
People who buy into the idea of the tier system are the ones that deserve to be hurt by it. Sorry that you’re so insecure about your social standing that you need to start dictating the standing of others, but you need to leave the rest of us out of it.
Frankly, if you have even so much as heard of the system in the first place, you know where your organization stands in its ranks. If you don’t like that, then either get out of your organization or do the sensible thing and stop letting talk of the tiers bother you. To indulge in the system is to endorse it, and that’s definitely not what this school needs.
So grow up, kids. High school is over.