Dear Trident Staff:

I wanted to share with you a response and a challenge to the feature on "lost si
sters" that appeared in the summer 2009 Trident. I do not have any expectations
that you will print this letter in a future Trident, nor do I harbor any hope th
at you will share it with any other Tri Delta staff or volunteers. However, it s
truck a nerve with me, bringing to the surface a facet of my Tri Delta experienc
e -- as well as, I suspect and fear, many past and many future sisters' -- that
should not be neglected or discounted when you discuss the notion of "lost siste
rs."
I believe you will agree with me, judging from the tone of the article, that no
"lost sister" intends to become that way when she first pledges her loyalty to T
ri Delta. However, I'd like to propose that not all "lost sisters" are lost by c
hoice, but rather at some point dismissed or disregarded by their sorority; that
the reality of the "lost sister" is not always the sister's fault but sometimes
the sisterhood's; that sometimes the "unbreakable tether" to which you refer is
severed not by the Tri Delta woman but by Tri Delta.
I was initiated in October 2002 into the Gamma Nu chapter of Delta Delta Delta a
t Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. We were small in number but mighty in spiri
t. We were a hodgepodge of different backgrounds and personalities, a mosaic of
diverse faces and life experiences, and we sought every year, above all, to add
to our numbers girls with whom the timeless ideals of the sorority resonated as
strongly as they did with us. We always knew that we were unusual -- that our sc
hool was smaller than other schools with strong Greek systems (Westminster had a
round 900 undergrads and nine houses during my chapter days), that we were small
er than other chapters, faced a different sort of leadership reality, that our g
irls looked different, had different interests and different income levels from
the stereotypical sorority girls. As my collegiate years unfolded, I saw a parad
e of field consultants and collegiate district officers pass through, offering u
s fresh new ideas tested and approved in chapters unlike our own but very much l
ike the chapters we read about in the Trident each quarter. Each field consultan
t, I noticed, sounded more urgent than the last, particularly during my junior y
ear, when three field consultants visited us, one of them for two weeks. Yet the
y insisted that, though we were small and visibly struggling, though we had fail
ed accreditation twice, though we had struggles we must address, we were in no d
anger of being closed. Our struggles that year worsened to the point that we put
it to a tearful vote of whether we should surrender our charter. We almost unan
imously refused to give up, and we rallied around the core of our values, the id
ea that each of us was a Westminster Tri Delta for a reason and all of us valued
the sorority above gold, above rubies, above just about anything else in our co
llege experience. We wanted our chapter to live on, to enjoy a long and prospero
us life in which all of us would come back for rush as accomplished and loyal 20
-somethings, in which we would return for Pansy Brunch as sassy old ladies still
sporting the stars and crescent over our hearts. That was in March 2005. On May
7, 2005, Gamma Nu was closed.
What followed the initial grieving period, that dazed weekend we received the ne
ws, that hysterically tearful Circle Degree two days later in which we all strug
gled through a final refrain of "Alpha Theta Phi" liberally punctuated with sobs
, was the toughest time of our lives. For me, it was akin to a death in the fami
ly; in fact, I was less upset when I lost a grandparent that fall. We fought aga
inst the news for a long time, unable to believe this was happening, before we f
inally made the unspoken collective decision to limp through the remainder of ou
r college years and cope with our painful new reality as best we could (some far
better than others). Four years later, some of us are still coping. The fond me
mories of our chapter days are easier to recall now, more sweet than bitter, but
we have alumnae from the time of the chapter's closing who are still unable to
talk about our closing.
Many of us from those years still harbor an anger EO probably cannot comprehend.
EO's representatives who arrived that summer to assist with the chapter's closi
ng were amazed that any of us were still speaking to one another, convinced that
our chapter was rent by hatred and a totally lost cause in terms of sisterhood.
It is not our own sisterhood that suffered, really -- that remained, and two of
my closest friends to this day are my two closest pledge sisters -- but rather
it was our connection to the sorority, the framework for our sisterhood, that wa
s all but destroyed. I threw away my application to be a field consultant. We st
opped signing notes to each other "Delta Love" and started signing them "Gamma N
u Love." We stopped wearing our pins, and some of us never wore them again. You'
ll occasionally see us wear our shirts or display a Tri Delta license plate fram
e, sing an old serenade song at a wedding for a Gamma Nu sister or gather for an
afternoon dessert reception during Westminster's alumni reunion, but virtually
never will you see any of us at a local alumnae chapter gathering or see our nam
es on a check for alumnae dues or a list of new Life Loyal members. Regardless o
f the rationale for our closing, many of the women who were collegians at the ti
me of our closing felt and to an extent still feel cheated, lied to, screwed ove
r by an organization to which we'd given our hearts. The sorority turned its bac
k on us, we feel, something personified by a visit I paid to EO in January 2006
during a Christmas break trip to Texas; seeking closure, I made it abundantly cl
ear to my tour guide that I was a member of a chapter the Fraternity had closed
eight months earlier, only to be greeted by a blank stare from a staff member wh
o had no idea that another chapter had been closed, another group of girls' hear
ts broken. With that, I turned my back on the sorority, as did many of my sister
s.
I finally did muster up the courage to visit an alumnae chapter gathering in my
native St. Louis a year after graduation. What I found there astounded me. When
I mentioned that I was a Westminster alumna, one by one the women spoke up. Some
, mostly elderly women who had long been very involved with the alumnae chapter,
expressed their continued disappointment and sadness at our chapter's demise ju
st 12 years after they'd attended our installation. Others, younger and older wo
men alike, told me that they, too, were alumnae of chapters that had been closed
. I couldn't understand how they could pay their alumnae dues to an organization
that had cut short the legacy of the sisterhood they knew. I couldn't understan
d how they could just accept it and move on and continue to make any concessions
to the international fraternity. I didn't want anything to do with Tri Delta be
yond my sisters. I appreciated the chance to speak with women who understood why
I was still hurting, but I never went to another alumnae chapter gathering, nor
have I sought out an alumnae group while I pursue my master's degree at Missour
i, nor will I likely become an active alumna wherever I land after graduation ne
xt year.
Before you intimate that "lost sisters" have chosen to be lost simply because th
ey can't be bothered to keep up with the fraternity, and before you make some im
passioned plea for them to come back, consider that some of them may have been d
eeply hurt by the fraternity. In fact, if you have current contact information f
or women who were at the time collegiate members of chapters you have closed (I
might suggest Arkansas/Little Rock and Princeton, both of which met their demise
the year we did, both of which had members who contacted us to commiserate), I
would recommend talking to them and seeing how they feel about the fraternity. N
ot that I believe for a second that you will, but if you did, I would bet you my
badge that many of those women would tell you they want to be lost -- that they
, like me, are satisfied to keep their sisterhood on the chapter or pledge class
level because they know the fraternity once chose to stop giving a damn about t
hem and are more than happy to return the favor.
I understand your hopes of getting back many "lost sisters," but please understa
nd that there are some you never will -- not because you won't find them, but be
cause they won't come back if you will. There are some wounds that never quite h
eal. Losing your chapter is one of them.
Sincerely,
Mary Poletti
Westminster/Gamma Nu '06