Thirty Hillsdale College women embarked on a new adventure with campus sororities this month.
“When you pledge an oath to that house, you’re giving your word and integrity to it,” said senior Clint Westbrook, a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. “It should be a big deal.”
For a handful of women, this year has also marked the end of that journey. To date, four members of the Pi Beta Phi Fraternity have resigned since September.
“I don’t recall this ever happening before, but our sisterhood is stronger than ever,” said Pi Beta Phi president Maggie Martin, a junior. “It hasn’t affected that at all.”
This is not a new phenomenon. In the past four years, more than a dozen students have resigned from Hillsdale Greek houses.
There are different words for these resignations. When a fully active member decides to resign from the house, they are deactivating. When a member going through initiation decides not to complete it, they are de-pledging. And members who resign for other reasons can also receive alumni status.
Students decide to resign from Greek houses for many reasons, including finances and time management.
“I have a lot of good friends who are Pi Phis and I have nothing against anyone in the house,” said sophomore Ellen Georges, one of the women who deactivated this year. “It just wasn’t what I expected it to be.”
No house has been exempt from deactivation. In the last two years, more than half of the Alpha Tau Omega house had to resign from active status.
Four years ago, several members of Delta Tau Delta deactivated.
“For us it was a very specific situation because we were re-chartering,” Westbrook said.
After being kicked off campus in 2003, the Delts began the process of rebuilding the fraternity in 2007.
Westbrook said the fraternity was pulling men from different parts of campus together, which created a group that did not always agree on how members wanted the fraternity to look.
“There were guys who wanted it to look one way and others that wanted it to look another way,” he said. “The most basic thing you need in a Greek house is a common vision.”
Senior Parker Fox, a former Delt, said it was the lack of that common vision that caused him to deactivate.
“In most of the deactivation speeches, pretty much all of the guys said, ‘I don’t want to go along with or I don’t see a direction we are going,’” he said. “That’s ultimately why I left.”
At least 10 Delts deactivated around the time he did, Fox said. Some of the guys had even had a hand in bringing the fraternity back on campus.
Westbrook said he sees deactivating from a fraternity or a sorority as much more than just dropping an extracurricular activity.
“The uniqueness of a Greek house is that you become a part of something,” he said. “I’m a Delt at home. I’m a Delt in classes. I’m a Delt when I’m hanging out with friends. You don’t have an identity in other extracurricular activities.”
But when Fox joined Delta Tau Delta, he said the organization he’d joined did not meet the standards that had attracted him.
“For me, the Delts were pitched as something specific, but when I joined, that wasn’t what it was,” he said. “It was kind of a sinking ship to fix, but I respect people who thought otherwise.”
