A good first impression is important in any setting, so it’s only natural that a decent amount of preparation goes into making an outstanding first impression. After I decided to participate in formal recruitment over the summer, there was a lot on my to-do list. Though most of it was based upon what I’d hoped to find in a sorority, I did often contemplate dying my hair platinum blonde and buying an equally blonde Chihuahua with a pink studded collar.

While this may have gotten sororities to fight to the death to recruit me if I were Reese Witherspoon in the iconic movie, Legally Blonde, I managed to obtain a bid at an untraditional sorority, by the media’s standards. I did so without bleaching my hair. In fact I dyed my hair blood red and shaved half of my head. By Hollywood’s standards, I would be the type of person that the sororities torment.

But Alpha Omicron Pi must have not consciously allowed me to join their sorority. They must have something much more devious up their sleeves, right? After all, every sorority girl is a professional bitch. After all, “they threw bologna at us while we sang Celine Dion songs” like in Sydney White so I must have been accepted merely to be hazed and ridiculed until they become tired of me. Formal recruitment is the most prominent form of hazing at Iowa State.

Prospective sorority wannabes wake up at five o’clock each morning simply to cake on their makeup and wear frilly dresses just so they can fit in with the sororities on campus. While the prospective members have to plaster a constant smile on their faces throughout the whole process, this isn’t one sided. While these wannabes wake up early and get home late, current members of these sororities wake up even earlier and don’t go to sleep until much later.

With the influx of girl who participated in formal recruitment this year (more than six hundred) it would be natural that the girls who didn’t participate in this event would feel left out. However, this often is not the case. “At first I thought that my roommate and my two suitemates would hate me and never talk to me, because they all moved in early to go through formal recruitment. They had a whole week to hang out with each other, before I even moved in. I thought that I would be the loner in the dorm because I was the only one who wasn’t in a sorority. But after roommates came home from a long day of formal recruitment they all stayed up until midnight just talking with me, even though they had to wake up early again the next day,” said Katie Thielmann.

But sororities aren’t all about hazing, right? What about the drinking and the partying?

Sorority girls aren’t the stereotypical bitches portrayed in movies. Sorority girls have values that our imbedded in each of their chapters that set them apart from the “traditions” that are depicted in movies. Every sorority girl has gone through new member meetings so everyone knows what is expected of them and the consequences of doing something that doesn’t represent their sorority well. Choosing a sorority isn’t all about which one has your favorite animal or which one’s colors look best on you. It’s about which one feels most like family to you as an individual.

Although most stereotypes aren’t true for the sororities at Iowa State University, the Greeks still run the campus like they do in the movies. However we don’t rule with an iron fist, nor are we overbearing. We run the campus with our philanthropies and our activities that bring Greek and non-Greek members closer together.