Greek Life: A Balanced Network Yet an Unjust System
http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2014-12-17/greek-expectations-do-frat-partiers-expect-sorority-guests
In this article titled “Greek Expectations: Do Frat Parties Expect Sorority Guests to Offer “Payback”?” published in California Magazine, Sonja Hutson from UC Berkeley writes about how the Greek System is symbolic of gender norms in society. She points out that sororities are forbidden from hosting mixers/parties, and thus fraternities have to set up, clean up, and spend money on alcohol multiple times a week. She recalls that she and her friends felt this could create a dangerous expectation for sorority women to be in debt to the party hosts. While she had presumed that such an expectation would be subconscious rather than conscious, she had a disturbing conversation with a fraternity brother: she brought up the topic, and he responded, “Well, we do spend a lot of money and put in a lot of effort, so I mean…”
Sonja then writes, “Parties create an obvious power dynamic between the fraternity men and sorority women that mirrors the system of male dominance we see across our society. This microcosm exemplifies the subtler societal pattern because an exchange is based on gender. Exchanges center around the meeting of men and women, as opposed to people partying with people. The labeling and grouping of males and females put the focus on gender rather than other aspects of a person. And such a focus exacerbates existing gender norms.” This paragraph reminds me of how we learned about network exchange theory. Given three nodes, whose links between them must add to 1, our intuition tells us each node should have a value of 1/2. However, the node in the middle has the most power, as it can choose between either of the outer nodes, but they can only link with the middle node. Thus, we realize that the node in the middle would get 2/3, for example, and the two nodes on the end each only get 1/3. In terms of Network Exchange Theory, the fraternities, being allowed to host mixers and parties, are the middle nodes with more power, and the sororities, forbidden from hosting anything, are the outer nodes. It is evident that the Greek System is thus promoting inequality, and women and men feminists must work to make the Greek System more just so that each fraternity/sorirty has ‘equivalent node values’.