Sorority Graduation Quotes

Her problem is with pretty,” Tennyson said. "She thinks I’ll need all these dresses in college. Like I would ever in a billion years pledge a sorority. I’ll pack a few of these to be ironic, though. I can wear them to, like, truck stops at night with mascara running down my cheeks and stuff.

I was just trying to demonstrate to the students of Rowland University that Rowland University was not infinite. It had taken me a long time to figure out what the problem was, but one day I realized that the students at Rowland University thought that Rowland University was infinite. Infinite bookstore. Infinite fraternities and sororities. Infinite sports teams. Infinite snack shop. Infinite Homecoming. Infinite graduation. Infinite prospects.

They are the ones who started kindergarten together, their circle remaining small until high school graduation. They fled town in groups of twos and threes to attend a handful of colleges all within driving distance of here. They all joined sororities and fraternities with other groups of twos and threes with similar backgrounds, only to gravitate back to this small Louisiana town, the circle closing once again. Greek letters have been traded out for Junior League memberships and dinner parties and golf on Saturday afternoon, as

one in five, she’d say, that’s how many college women will be assaulted before they graduate; 74 percent, that’s how much more likely women in sororities are to be raped, and 300 percent—men in fraternities are three times more likely to commit rape. And at least one—at least one student will die this year in a hazing-related incident.

White-supremacist-patriarchal-heteronormative-capitalism socializes us to aspire to “good Negro” status. It convince little Black girls from East Oakland to graduate from Howard—summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, to pledge the oldest Black sorority, to earn PhDs, to be in the “right” rooms…” - Melina Abdullah

the University of the South, a Tennessee liberal arts college with a handful of graduate students, known informally as Sewanee (because that’s the name of the town). The first thing you’ll notice on visiting Sewanee is that most of the men are wearing jackets and ties, while most of the women are wearing makeup and skirts. Forty years ago, most colleges had a similar dress code. Today, Sewanee is one of a handful. The majority of students pledge fraternities and sororities and social life revolves around a never-ending stream of “big-weekend” beer bashes. The biggest of them all is homecoming weekend, where students get a date and dress up for a huge see-and-be-seen fashion show that includes innumerable cocktail parties before and after. Conservative, well-heeled, and All-American, Sewanee is the perfect place for a carefree 1950s-style college education. In the words of one student, Sewanee has “the happiest college student body I have ever encountered.” No one would ever say such a thing about Bard College, a school of similar size about an hour north of New York City. Though the students may find happiness there, too, it is well hidden beneath a thick veneer of liberal artistic angst. Bard students, it seems, carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. If there is an oppressed group anywhere to be found, Bard students can be counted on to buy T-shirts, sell buttons, and organize protests on its behalf. As for clothes, you would be hard-pressed to find a Bard man who even owns a jacket and tie. Nor would the typical Bard woman be caught dead in a dress—unless it was paired with combat boots. Jewelry and makeup worn in traditional ways are nonexistent, but there is plenty of spiked hair, fluorescent hair, tattoos, and piercings protruding from every conceivable body part. As for football and fraternities? Take a wild guess. The biggest social event of the year at Bard is called Drag Race, where everyone dresses in drag and parties nonstop.

To the neighborhood’s satisfaction, Yvonne lasted only two years at Seattle University (though Freddy graduated with honors). She did well academically—thanks to how bright she was, not to how diligently she applied herself. And she dutifully joined the prestigious Alpha Kappa Alpha black sorority. But then, as an antidote to that conventional social scene, she got in with an older black crowd that included Patti Bown (later well known as a pianist) and spent much of her time, as she had in high school, in the jazz clubs—and also in pursuing a love affair, the last she would have with a man. Moreover—and without really needing the money, but attracted to the thrills—she set up an inventive fence operation in which she sold (at a 50 percent commission) the booty some of her navy friends won while gambling aboard ship. Yvonne enjoyed the edgy secrecy of moving in and out of disparate worlds, some of them clandestine, some of them proper. And that included the gay world. While still back in New Rochelle, she had managed to connect with a few very discreet lesbians in the surrounding towns, but when she set out to explore gay life in Seattle, she soon found that there was little to explore.