A sisterhood of bigots

The national leadership of Delta Zeta sorority has made it known (NYT) that only skinny Caucasian airheads with a "dedication to recruitment" are welcome as members.

Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits.

To their credit, half the remaining members at the DePauw campus quit in disgust. The rest... well, I guess they'll fit right in.

DePauw's response here. Delta Zeta's response here.

Fortunately for Delta Zeta's preferred class of members, those strict membership standards don't seem to extend to tiresome matters like not being a criminal, or passing a drug/alcohol screening. After all, it's not as if they'll ever have to apply for a job.

Online Athens, of Athens Ga., reports that 1 of 3 students arrested in 2006 were Greeks, with Delta Zeta the second-leading sisterhood of collegiate crime. In Ohio, the sorority has been suspended from campuses due to abusive alcohol-soaked hazing practices ("Activities of Sororities Stir Concerns...". Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 10, 1990). And in Texas, Delta Zeta seems to be very successful at recruiting cokeheads. Of course, this sort of thing doesn't matter to Delta Zeta sisters, as long as your daddy can pony up the bail money and "fix the charges" whenever those tiresome police bother you about stuff like that. Silly police! Don't they know that they're only supposed to arrest fat people, and brown people? Like, OMG, y'all !!!

I guess if you want your skinny white daughter to be a drunken, coke-snorting airhead with a criminal record, by all means have her rush Delta Zeta. At least you'll know that she won't become friends with anyone who isn't just like her.