Lengthy Thoughts Regarding the Deranged Sorority E-mail

At this point, most of us have seen (and enjoyed!) the "deranged sorority girl" e-mail posted on Gawker. Even Jon Stewart mentioned it not once, but twice! on his show this week. I tend to avoid Internet jokes/memes/things such as this, mostly because I have this feeling that eventually, when the power goes out like in that show "Revolution" (I don't actually watch this program, but the many promos I have seen seem to indicate that it's about the power going out across the world) we're all going to look back on this Internet-age and think, "Wow, what a colossal waste of time!" I tend to avoid these things. But the other day, one of my own sorority sisters posted the link on her own Facebook wall, and of course the words "deranged" and "sorority" immediately caught my eye! Who doesn't love a good crazy sorority girl story? Let me tell you, I have actually encountered several deranged sorority girls in real life, and they are a hoot!

Don't worry, this is not a blog post in which I will say, "But! But! We're not all like this! Because SISTERHOOD, and love, and friendship, and fostering relationships in the Greek community." I really don't think I have to defend sororities. We're doing just fine without your approval, you angry, jealous losers. (Ha ha, just kidding...maybe!) I'm writing this blog post because it seems to me that the conversation has derailed, and we need to get it back on track. Until this point, it's been all about, "This girl is awful!" and "Will DG shut down this chapter?" (Update: this afternoon, DG announced that it has accepted her resignation! More on that in a minute.)

Like many of you, I have seen this girl's Twitter account, in addition to the e-mail. And whooooa there, it is not pretty! She sounds like mean girl at best, and a real racist! If I ever had the misfortune of meeting her, I imagine she would probably tweet something along the lines of, "ugh what's the point of being tall if you're too ugly to be a model #fatpeoplesuck. #yolo" I don't know the girl, and I'm certainly not going to defend the horrible things she has said. However, I will say that we all need to drop the attacks on her immediately or prepare to live with the consequences, the most notable of which will be the resulting Lifetime movie. This movie will probably be amazing(ly horrible) but also maddening, because it will basically be an un-funny version of "The House Bunny" with lessons for suburban moms about what happens when you let your daughter wear a denim mini-skirt. (Spoiler alert: they turn to binge drinking, sexting, and finally, a hell-spiral of Internet notoriety!)

Now that we have movies on the brain, I'mma get real for a second and talk about a movie that actually reminds me of this e-mail situation. It's called "A Few Good Men." Ever heard of it? Well in case you are too AWKWARD and WEIRD to have heard of this film, it's on TNT pretty much every Sunday afternoon, peasants. In fact, it was on just the other day, which is probably why I am thinking of it now. And yes, I think it is extremely relevant to the Deranged Sorority Girl e-mail debacle. Here's a little refresher on the plot, from good ol' Wikipedz:

Lieutenant Junior Grade Daniel "Danny" Kaffee (Tom Cruise) is an inexperienced U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps lawyer who leads the defense in the court-martial of two U.S. Marines, Private First Class Louden Downey (James Marshall) and Lance Corporal Harold Dawson (Wolfgang Bodison), who are accused of having murdered a fellow Marine of their unit, PFC William Santiago (Michael DeLorenzo), at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, which is under the command of Colonel Nathan R. Jessup (Jack Nicholson).

Santiago compared unfavorably to his fellow Marines, had poor relations with them, and failed to respect the chain of command. He went above his superiors to bargain for a transfer in exchange for blowing the whistle on Dawson for firing a possibly illegal shot towards the Cuban side of the island...Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Andrew Markinson (J.T. Walsh) advocates that Santiago be transferred immediately for safety reasons before the request gets out, but Jessup says that this would set a bad precedent which could cost lives...Jessup orders Kendrick to ensure that Santiago shows significant improvement on the next evaluation report...Naval investigator and lawyer Lieutenant Commander JoAnne Galloway (Demi Moore) suspects [accused murderers Downey and Dawson] were carrying out a "code red": a euphemism for a violent extrajudicial punishment.

In the course of the trial, it is established that "code reds" are standard in Guantanamo Bay as a means of enforcing discipline and getting sloppy Marines to follow procedure.

Kaffee...manages to unnerve Jessup by pointing out a flaw in his testimony. He had stated that Santiago was due to be transferred off the base for his own safety in case the other Marines sought retribution, but also stated that Marines are honorable men who always follow orders – thus if the other Marines were ordered to leave Santiago alone and always follow orders, then Santiago would have been in no danger whatsoever and would not have to be transferred. Under heavy pressure from Kaffee and unnerved by being caught in one of his own lies, Jessup furiously declares, "You can't handle the truth!" He then dismisses Kaffee...ultimately confessing that he did order the "code red." As Jessup angrily justifies his actions on the basis of national security, he is arrested by Ross. Ross informs Kaffee that he will now have Kendrick arrested for Santiago's murder.

...Dawson and Downey are found not guilty regarding Santiago's murder; nonetheless, they are dishonorably discharged for having caused Santiago's death through their "conduct unbecoming a United States Marine." Downey does not understand why they are being given dishonorable discharges, but Dawson accepts the verdict, and explains to Downey that they had failed to stand up for those too weak to stand up for themselves, like Santiago. 

There are a few key lessons here.

1. Everyone knows that Jessup is the real villain in the story. It's not the two dudes who murdered Santiago with the rag, and it's not even Kendrick. Downey and Dawson physically murdered Santiago. But that's because Kendrick told them to do it, and that was because Jessup told him to do it. Jessup is the bad guy. And Becks, our electronic letter-writing friend, is no Jessup. She is a Lt. Kendrick, at most. I have seen some blogs incorrectly stating that E-mail Girl is (was) the president of her chapter. Not so. She held a leadership position (most likely one that made her responsible for Greek Week) but she was not calling all the shots. So why did she order the Greek Week code red? It's unlikely that she is the only person in her chapter who cares about Greek Week. If she were part of a chapter that ignores Greek Week, she would have been sharing a pitcher with the Sigma Nus and Instagraming photos of her nail-art, not rage-typing her feelings. Somebody expected this girl to get Greek Week in order. I'm not saying she got a direct order to send that e-mail, but girl needed she had get her chapter full of Santiagos in line. Problem is, at least one girl at Guantanamo couldn't keep her mouth shut, and now people are all, "Goodness gracious! Shut down Guantanamo!"

2. People, aren't we forgetting something? This girl wrote a crazy e-mail to her sorority sisters. She did not, however, write a crazy e-mail to Gawker. Somebody leaked that e-mail. And then, somebody else published it. Gawker's little tag line is, "Today's gossip tomorrow's news." So does Gawker consider itself a place where "journalism" occurs? The sorority e-mail breaks a big ol' bucket of these things. Here's an excerpt from a run-of-the-mill Statement of Ethics:

We should be especially sensitive to the legitimate privacy concerns of ordinary citizens who are thrust into the news: innocent bystanders, witnesses, victims, relatives, heroes, whistleblowers and minors. We're in the information business, and that means we want details and background and facts. But the value and relevance of publishing such information as names, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, ethnicity and past behavior should be weighed against compassion for the individual.

If my family were planning some sort of reunion event and I got stressed out and sent an angry e-mail, in a billion years I would not expect a cousin or uncle or grandparent to forward said e-mail to Gawker and ruin my life. It would be extremely uncool of that family member, and extremely inappropriate and unnecessary on Gawker's end. I don't really think this is any different. Wouldn't the world have been better off without this unfortunate incident? Aside from a funny video, what have we really gained? Certainly less than that girl has lost.

3.

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

To clarify, I am not likening Greek Life to being in the military. Not in any way, shape, or form. Juuuust so we're clear.

This afternoon, the sorority's national office posted this on Facebook:

As mean and frightening as this girl probably is, I sort of feel for her.

During junior year, I - along with a sister-friend - got in a tiny bit of trouble with Sorority Law. I was having a rough semester. Major family issues. The sorority activities distracted me from it all. My sister-in-crime and I decided to celebrate a recent accomplishment by having a cocktail (seriously, one drink) before an event - an event that we planned! An event that we were in charge of.

In. charge. of.

Well, somebody called the Fun Police, and we got called into the sorority version of The Hague. Apparently, someone got mad (nay, jealous!) that we had made a pre-event toast. She put on her snitch pants and tried to take us down. I remember being called in for a meeting with a couple members of the executive board and one of our adult chapter advisors. I was told that they considered banning us from the semi-formal, everything was unacceptable, blah blah blah. But the worst part was when they said, "We have noticed that you haven't been yourself lately. Is everything okay? We're worried about you."

This is what I consider an area for improvement in the Greek community.

There are some groups that do the whole no-snitch, protect-our-own thing really well. Usually it's bad, because it's when someone gets raped or shot and no one talks, and I am not in favor of that sort of silence or loyalty. And obviously, if E-mail Nazi had been hazing girls or actually kicking them in the genitals, that should get reported. But - as far we know - she did not do either of those things. She sent an e-mail. Now, she's being ridiculed all across the Internet. Her picture is on all sorts of blogs with very harsh captions and comments. If there were ever a time a girl could use 100 close friends, it would be now. But she just got kicked out of her sorority, because they were embarrassed.

Would anyone have cared if DG had issued a statement that said, "We regret that an e-mail was published, and that the e-mail contained some iffy language and some questionable judgment. Obviously, our sisters over at the University of Maryland have been staying up a little late working on their Greek Week dance! Take care, everybody!" Not really! The whole thing would have blown over in a couple of days. But they had to save face. Every other sorority's national office probably would have done the exact same thing. It's puzzling to me, with all the sorority girls that go into PR, that no one has realized the pointlessness in this reaction. Announcing that the member has resigned doesn't erase the e-mail. It just shows that nobody is guarding the wall.

If E-mail Girl is really a Twitter-loving racist, the chapter shouldn't have let her in - or given her a position on the board. But they did, so they should be standing by her.

Anyway, this is still funny:

Michael Shannon Reads the Insane Delta Gamma Sorority Letter from Michael Shannon

Greek Mythology

The circumstances that led to my freshman year of college at the University of Miami were not ideal. Let's be serious, they weren't awful, either, because I got to go to college (and a good one, according to lists!) and that's not something to take for granted or whine about. But the reasons I ended up there were not as much part of a thoughtful decision-making process as they were based in disappointment and adolescent decision-making skills, or lack thereof.

I only applied to four schools: University of Miami, Mizzou, American University, and Northwestern. Here are the criteria I used to assess schools:
1. Is it Northwestern? (If yes, then YES. If no, proceed to following questions.)
2. Is there a journalism program?
3. Is it decent?
4. Is there an on-campus Jamba Juice?
5. Do they sell those shorts with the name of the school on the butt? (I have no idea why this was important to me but to this day I have several pairs of shorts with school names written across the butt region.)

I did not get into Northwestern. I applied early decision and they shut me down via e-mail. I was the editor-in-chief (and founder, thank you very much) of my high school's newspaper. Northwestern did take another girl from my class. She did not write for the student newspaper, but one time she wrote an "editorial" for the actual newspaper about how much she hated our high school. She wasn't very nice.

When I found out about Northwestern, I decided that the best way to exact revenge on the Wildcats would be to make a rash life-altering decision. Since apparently all of my hard work was for naught, might as well go somewhere warm and enjoy life. That was the exact amount of thought I put into where I decided to attend school. Yes, I visited the campus and it was nice and everything, but rational thinking had nothing against anger and betrayal. I had been a very big fan of "Gilmore Girls," and this show had been very clear about this: If you work hard and don't have sex in high school, you will be rewarded with admission to the college of your dreams! I learned this from Season 3, Episode 16, in which both Rory and Paris are presented with the option of rounding the bases with their respective male partners. Paris has sex and Rory does not, and then Paris gets rejected by Harvard and Rory gets into Harvard and Yale. So, logic.

I knew that I was in for an adventure the moment I got the letter giving me the name and phone number of my freshman year roommate. Now, I think we can all agree that a person's name does not have everything to do with how a person will turn out, but it also doesn't have nothing to do with it. For example, I am pretty sure that someone named Amber is three times more likely to become a pole dancer than someone not named Amber. Similarly, someone with the last name Butts is probably more likely to become either a tortured youth-turned serial killer or a stand-up comedian than someone with a last named like Johnson.
So a person named something like Esmerelda Sandwiches is likely to have some character. For the sake of anonymity, we'll go ahead and say that this was the name that appeared on the letter. I freaked out, and of course my mom was all, "You know nothing about her! How can you make assumptions based on a person's name?" I knew better.

After a summer of doing almost nothing except tubing on my friend's lake and yelling at my mom, it was time to move down to Coral Gables. Here are the most important and/or memorable events from my first few days on campus:

- I stepped out of the airport and into a haze of humidity that would set the stage for three and a half years of bad hair.

- One night, after a dorm shopping trip to Target, I was walking into the dorm building with my mom and I dropped a Target bag full of feminine products in front of at least one male student, because the Judy Blume embarrassment phase of my life did not start until college. This actually also set the stage for a hilarious future incident at a sorority event, where I again dropped something out of my purse and then got called into the sorority war crimes tribunal, because apparently only really drunk people drop things.

- I met Esmerelda and her family. She was a nice girl, but she came with a really obnoxious boyfriend, a person I soon came to hate, hate, hate. He looked like one of the dads from "Teen Mom." He was very Central Florida, and I mean that with the most negative stereotypes in mind. I hated him because he decided he preferred to call me "Blair Bear" whenever he visited (which was often) and also because he thought that it was acceptable to call Esmerelda 15 times in a row on a regular basis. He would never leave a message. He would just keep calling. She would leave the room to brush her teeth or take a shower, and the phone would ring and ring. One day, I finally got sick of it and I picked up after call #8 or so and yelled at him, "SHE IS NOT HERE. LEAVE A MESSAGE AND MOVE ON." As roommate situations tend to go, Esmerelda and I went through a period where we weren't really talking. But then she and her shithead boyfriend broke up, and her sorority sisters took her out and got her drunk. She came back to the room really chatty and told me that after that day when I picked up her phone, the boyfriend had said to her, "Don't you ever let that bitch talk to me like that again." He is a prime example of why Stand Your Ground laws are a terrible idea.

- One of the most traumatic days of my first week at college was Freshman Service Day. This was probably at least four or five days after I got to campus. I think my parents had gone home at this point. I was already having a pretty bad time, but I still really wanted to make friends. I wasn't really into parties (and even if I had been, I didn't know anyone and I lived on a "substance-free floor," and activities there were generally limited to guitar-playing and prayer circles) so I figured a community service day would be a great opportunity to make friends more like me. That morning, I went to the breezeway with my t-shirt and my shorts and my sneakers, ready to take on the world! I was given a registration form and began filling it out, only to notice that the required age was 18. I was 17. I skipped a grade in elementary school, which was mostly positive, but the repercussions of being young really started to come into play around this time. My parents had gone home, and even if they had been around, there was no way I was getting parent permission to go on a community service outing. So I lied. I wrote "1988" on the year line and got on the bus. We were randomly assigned a community service project. Some people were painting, some were, I imagine, singing songs with Haitian children in an air conditioned building. I was part of the team assigned to plant trees in a swamp. And although it was early in the day, it was still Miami in August. I had not really adjusted to the whole dining room thing, so I probably had a granola bar and a water bottle for breakfast. It was a billion degrees and I was hungry, which resulted in me getting very lightheaded and dizzy. I think I fell down, and there was some commotion about getting me medical attention. So I of course started panicking, not because I was scared of collapsing in a swamp, but because I had lied about my age, and if anyone found out, I would surely be kicked out of college forever! I politely said that I was fine and sat in the shade, silently terrified that at any moment, the community service police would come and tell me that they knew what was up. In the end, no one found out and I doubt anyone would have really cared if they had. Turns out, you can do a lot of stupid things in college without getting kicked out.

- After all of this, I was pretty desperate to make friends. Miami starts school earlier than a lot of other universities, so of my high school friends, I was the first to leave the nest. Everyone else was back in Michigan, hanging out at the lake and watching "Laguna Beach" marathons and having a grand old time. No one knew what I was going through, and it wasn't fun. Just when I had all but given up on the idea of a fun college experience, I met a girl at one of the orientation events. We'll call her Kate. It turns out that she was also having a terrible time! But she was cooler than I was and was not living on a substance-free floor, so she invited me to parties and we sort of became friends, although it took me a while to figure out whether or not we were actual friends. I thought maybe she just took pity on me. When Kate stopped in the breezeway to sign up for sorority recruitment, I didn't even think twice before signing my name right below hers.

Aside from my friends from college, most of my friends - from high school and otherwise - did not "go Greek." But they seem to have a lot of ideas about Greek life. I have to admit that I sometimes feel like I have a tremendous amount of power, being able to confirm or deny whatever crazy thing they ask me about being in a sorority. But I also want to be honest about the whole thing, so here are some common rumors/questions about Greek life and my responses to them:

1. When you go through rush (which we will call "recruitment," because that's what Miami forced us to do) you are forced to choose between eating a donut and eating a bowl of ice cream, because this says something about you.

I have NO idea where this happens, but I wish it happened at Miami. The only refreshment I remember from recruitment is copious amounts of fruit-flavored carbonated beverages. Like strawberry-flavored Sprite - things like that. Every sorority had this stuff, and someone would hand you a plastic cup of pink Sprite whenever you walked through the door. This was happening an average of three sororities a night for a week. Maybe you need all that sugar shooting through your veins to convince you that the coordinated outfits and songs were somehow normal.

Recruitment was not really my favorite, but it wasn't awful. Again, it was August in Miami, so I had a little trouble getting my hair to look nice, but other than that, it wasn't too stressful for me. I knew where I belonged and where I did not. I did not belong, for example, in the hot blonde sorority. Most of my friends only went there the first night and didn't get asked back (not that we really cared or wanted to be there). I, however, was there multiple times, which was a nice self-esteem boost at an otherwise scary time for me. The first night, I connected with a girl because we were both in high school IB programs. She was nice (and brunette!) but when she introduced the video slideshow ("This is a slideshow of us and our boyfriends") I knew it wasn't the right place for me. I also knew I did not belong in the sorority that seemed to be limited to short Jewish girls. I am almost six feet tall and Presbyterian so that criteria alone rules me out.

It came down to two sororities on the last night. Both had good reputations (meaning joining either would have been a social boost for me) and so it really came down to the final night, and one girl being a bit eager. On the last night of recruitment, the sororities assign certain girls to talk to certain potential new members in order to convince them to pick that sorority. I really liked both sororities, but the girl assigned to talk to me in one of them just seemed like she really wanted me as a sister. And at the time, I was feeling like kind of a loser. I lived on the weird dorm floor, didn't really have friends (aside from Kate and my roommate Esmerelda) so I didn't really get why she wanted me so much. Meanwhile, the other sorority was nice, but I kind of got this vibe like, "Hey, we like you, but do what you want. We will survive." I guess I went more for the hard-to-get thing. I certainly didn't want to be the coolest girl in the room. So I made my choice, and they picked me back. I remember opening the envelope and seeing the name of the sorority I wanted, and everything seemed like it was picking up. Kate ran over to me and showed me her card, which had the same name. Kate transferred schools about three months later.

2. Joining a sorority = paying for friends.

I really hate this one. Have you ever joined a sports team? I bet you had to pay money for part of that. Have you ever gone to summer camp? I bet your parents paid for that, too.

I reject the idea that joining a sorority is just a fancy way of paying for friends. You don't pay for friends. You pay for social events. Well, most of the time.

Because of some inclement weather in the first few weeks of my freshman year, "Bid Day" (the day you join your new sorority for a picnic or something) had to be rescheduled. It was rescheduled for the day of the Miami/Florida State football game. I won't go into too many details, but our sorority - as well as some others, to a lesser extent - got put on probation. Alcohol was involved. The rest of the semester, we were limited to participating in "dry" events, meaning events where absolutely no alcohol would be present or allowed. The dry thing didn't really upset me too much, since as I mentioned, I wasn't really into parties. But the execution of this rule was much worse than it sounded. Our first social event with a fraternity was a dry event at Dave & Busters. The fraternity we paired with was also on probation, and so someone thought it would be funny to have some sort of jail-themed event. So we just ended up at Dave & Busters, in costume, on a really rainy and gross afternoon. And we were supposed to pay for our own games. Dave & Busters was at an outdoor mall near campus, so I think my friends and I just ended up leaving and getting frozen yogurt.

3. Speaking of drinking, isn't that all you do?

There is definitely drinking involved, but in all honesty, I think a bigger part of sorority life is the competitive charity work that seems to be unique to be unique to the Greek system. Every fraternity and sorority has a designated philanthropy, or cause. The sororities and fraternities raise money for these causes, and a lot of money. There are statistics about how much charity money Greek organizations raise, but I won't find those or share them because that is boring. The exciting thing is the way in which Greek organizations go about raising this money, because it is insane.

I call it "competitive charity work" because usually, charity projects and fundraising are part of some larger, more selfish goal, like winning a contest in order to get a social event with a certain fraternity or sorority. Greek Week is a good example of this. At Miami, Greek Week raises money for cerebral palsy research and care. It also rewards a sorority with a giant trophy. Part of Greek Week when I was at Miami was a blood drive. The blood drive was not really related to cerebral palsy, but I guess someone figured that as long as something had Greek Week points attached to it, there would be a good turn-out. They could have had an organ drive during Greek Week and girls would have been lining up to get their kidneys extracted.

This was a part of Greek life that I really embraced. Causes were sort of my thing. In high school I was briefly a member of the Save Darfur club, and I my editorial about Sudan won some sort of "honorable mention" in a statewide student journalism contest. (So screw you, Northwestern University) Sophomore year, I became friends with the girl in my sorority who held the position of philanthropy chair. She was planning to move on to bigger and better things (she eventually became president) so I told her that I was interested in her position. Around that time, a new fraternity scheduled its first philanthropy event. My sorority's philanthropy chair told me that I could be in charge of handling it on our side, I guess as a way to prove myself before assuming the position.

I am an extremely competitive person. In middle school, I often got in trouble on the basketball team for being too violent. It's why I generally hold back in sports, now. I maintain that I could be really good at volleyball, but I'm afraid of trying too hard because my competitive streak could resurface.

And resurface it did during this philanthropy event. I have no recollection of what charity this fraternity was trying to support, but dammit if we weren't going to not only win, but kick every other sorority's ass. I read the fraternity's rulebook cover to cover, multiple times. I had a binder, and I assigned girls to activities. If they didn't show up on time, I assigned girls to call them and tell them to get their heads in the game.

In reading the rulebook, I discovered something interesting - an oversight, essentially, on the part of the frat guys who wrote the rules. Although the event was primarily a fundraiser for something (orphans? save the tigers? WHO KNOWS) there was also this second part, which involved canned food donations. I noticed that the fundraising components of the week had assigned point values (100 points for 1st place in the singing contest, 50 for 2nd, etc.) the canned food donation part had no point limits. It was simply one point for every can of food donated. One night at chapter, after the doors had been closed and the room was quiet, I stood and delivered the news: we were going to gather every canned good in Coral Gables and we were going to WIN.

Someone leaked it and a sorority that was really desperate for a social event went to Wal-Mart and bought a thousand cans of tomatoes. We got 2nd place. I was named philanthropy chair. Apparently no one else was even in the running. Either no one else wanted the job, or they just knew I was not to be messed with.

As soon as I took on the position, I had to get to work planning our own philanthropy event. In the past, the event had just been a tennis tournament, which was super boring. Some of the other sororities had pool parties and I don't know, pole-dancing competitions, so we needed to up the sexy-factor. We turned our tennis tournament into a week-long event in which fraternities would compete in the same way we competed in their events.

This event lives on today, and I'm proud of that. I'm glad I have some sort of legacy. But the thing I was most proud of happened on the last night of the event.

The last night had two parts: a pageant in which frat guys competed to be named king, and a date auction. Let me first say that the date auction was not my idea. I am not really a huge fan of auctioning off girls for money. Charity money, but still. But at that point, I was all about the dollar signs. We hadn't reached our fundraising goal yet, and I was determined to do it during the date auction.

The date auction works like this: we auction of dates with groups of girls, and fraternities bid on those dates. So for example, one group could be Sally, Emily, and Joann taking you on a beach picnic. Fraternities bid, and the highest bid gets the date - the money goes to our philanthropy.

The worst part about this was that I had to come up with the groups and the order. I had to decide which group would go first and which group would go last. The girls in the beginning were assigned smaller things, like picnics or lunch at the Rat. Then as the auction went on, the dates would get more desirable - because the actual dates would be better, and they would come with our most eligible, most single members.

I knew that if we were to reach our fundraising goal, we needed some big spenders to show up. We're talking hundreds, sometimes thousands, going into these events. By the time I was philanthropy chair, I was a second-semester sophomore. I knew people, I had friends. I had learned things. I knew that there was a guy from one of the fraternities who, although sometimes unreliable in terms of attendance, liked to spend money, or maybe just yell out loud how much money he had. I also knew a few girls who would coax that check right out of his seersucker pants. By the third or fourth group, there was still no sign of him. But his fraternity needed him! I saw them looking around nervously, as the other fraternity in the lead won all the auctions.

And then, like some miracle, the last group of girls took the stage, and I heard the door open behind me. His frat brothers cheered, and he started yelling out bids, literally waving a checkbook in the air.

And that is possibly the exact moment I realized I had a real gift for fundraising! It is also potentially the moment I decided I needed to dedicate my life to empowering women and girls, to rectify what I had done.

Friday Night Perspective

At the risk of starting this post off with a trite statement about the world: this world is a very strange place.

Last night, I was sitting on the floor in front of the couch (yeah, I don't know why, either) watching "The Mindy Project," which I really enjoyed this week because of a few things:

1) BJ Novak! One time, evidently during a fat-faced period of my life, my awesome friend Matt and I saw BJ Novak while we were both living in New York. I'm not sure if Matt is okay with me posting this, because it sort of reveals his identity, and maybe this is a top secret blog (?) but the funny thing is that Matt and BJ Novak share a last name. They are not related. But as you can imagine, the entire night Matt had to hand people his ticket, and all the ticket people were like, "waaaaaaaaaaaaaait a second!" I can't remember if the last name thing led to this picture, or if our general awesomeness just led to this picture.

2) On The Mindy Project this week, we were again dealing with BJ Novak's character's best friend, who happens to be a woman but who more importantly happens to be Cassandra in one of my all-time favorite movies. True story, I went to a summer camp that was this movie, although my mother would probably say that is an exaggeration. Uh, it is NOT. To clarify, I am talking about the Christian camp I went to for a couple summers, not the all-girls-North-Carolina-summer-camp-years which were earlier in my life and emotionally scarring for different reasons. The Christian camp was a weird combination of religious kids, kids who were probably caught drinking or smoking marijuana the week before school ended, and WASPy kids like myself whose families bought into the fact that this was a state-of-the-art camp with several water slides, cabins designed to look like train cars and airplanes, and a bunch of other random crap that I'm pretty sure God does not endorse, let's be honest. All of the camp counselors were ex-drug addicts who had found Jesus, but they still weren't very nice. If you haven't seen "Saved!" please do so immediately.

3) The line, "Sleepless in Seattle, the second-best romantic comedy the Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks ever made" really spoke to me, because "You've Got Mail" is my all-time favorite movie of ALL. TIME. EVER. ON THIS EARTH. And probably for deeper reasons than any of us could understand. I think in addition to the love story component, I really enjoyed the year 1998 and remember it as a time of innocence. When I was in New York during that same summer of Matt and BJ Novak, I walked from my little dorm room in the West Village up to what I thought was the exact location of the last scene of "You've Got Mail," like as a pilgrimage, but the last time I watched the movie I realized I was several blocks off. There was no DVD player in my dorm room that summer so there was really no way for me to check. Sigh. One day.

I was enjoying this episode of "Mindy" until I noticed that there was a noise coming from the office area of the apartment. Sometimes there is this creaking noise that's just from wood being old or something, but I finally noticed that this noise was happening much more frequently and it sounded a lot more like...dripping.

Well it turns out another ceiling in my life is useless. First the office, now my home. Earlier on, I mentioned some of the day-to-day struggles of working in a building that is old and owned/used/abused by people who have no respect for the law, limited understanding of Western bathroom etiquette, and/or mixed-up ideas about what professional roof-fixers can accomplish in inclement weather. The excitement of all of this reached a critical point when I walked into the office one morning last week to find the ceiling on the carpet. I of course cleaned it up and landlord negotiations are ongoing, but for the time being, I put a plastic tarp down on the floor and some Home Depot buckets in the spots where water tends to come in. The precipitation in Chicago has been interesting lately, so it's sort of hard to predict what is going to happen at any given moment. Yesterday it rained, then miniature ice-knives shot out of the sky, then it snowed.

I'm obviously not pleased that a portion of our ceiling is out right now, and that our maintenance guy feels that he needs to repeatedly lecture me about how useless it would be for him to replace the ceiling tiles before our landlord deals with the root of the problem, which was actually my exact argument for taking preventative action about three months ago. But I don't enjoy dwelling on the issue. A few people have stared up at it for prolonged periods of time, asking, "When is that getting fixed?" "Are they gonna fix that?" "Are they gonna do something about that?" I just say, "yep, working on it" and change the subject. The girls - the teenagers who use the space for homework, workshops, and the other things we do there - don't care that much. They notice it and agree that it is less than ideal, but they know it's not the end of the world. You want to know why?

Tonight we had the second part of our financial literacy workshop. At first I was so, so mad at them. Most of them were late and we had guest speakers. Of course it was fine, and we ended up having great attendance, but I was frustrated because everyone is always late. And also there were Home Depot buckets where our cute rug was supposed to be. It's annoying! For our workshops, we are using this curriculum from Kenya because it's geared toward girls who live in slums and don't have any experience with managing money. Some of the girls in our programs have parents who use banks, but many don't, and none of them (except the one we helped open an account) use banks themselves, or have any experience with savings, budgets, etc. The entire theme of tonight was savings. We discussed seven steps to saving money, and identified the three key reasons we save: personal/family reasons, emergencies and problems, and future opportunities.

Each of the girls was given a notebook so they could write answers during the workshop. One of the questions was, "What was a time in real life when savings could have helped?" I changed it to, "could have or did help," so the idea is to think of a time when you either needed money for something and didn't have it, or were able to solve a problem because of savings. I asked the girls to share their examples. I called on the first girl to raise her hand. She shared that in Iraq, her mother liked to spend money but her father liked to save. Her mother wanted to buy a new car, but her father didn't want to spend. So they saved the money. Then their neighborhood got destroyed by bombs and they had to leave. "It's a good thing we saved our money," she said, "because we had to leave everything else behind."

There is your perspective for the evening, everyone! Try watching "Real Housewives" now and I guarantee you will feel empty inside. In all seriousness, that's exactly why I'm not letting a little lack-of-ceiling get me down. I hope you can go forth and take this same attitude to the slacker landlord situation in your life. Back to what I said in the beginning, this world is a weird place. It's weird that on the same planet, I can be angry that the ceiling is leaking, the Housewives can be angry that their friends are suing them for a designer shoe line or something, and a 17-year-old girl can be angry that her home has been destroyed by war.

We should not stop dealing with our minor problems just because there are much bigger problems in the world. I don't think I should accept that my ceiling is leaking because "at least I have a ceiling," and such. But we should remember to pause before turning every little problem into the end of the world. Maybe when my office has an unintentional skylight I will reverse my position on this issue, but until then: chill. out.

RIP sweat pants

Maybe it had something to do with the Costco cold medicine, or maybe it's because I haven't looked for a new apartment for two years. I'm not sure how it happened, but I recently convinced myself that apartment-hunting is fun.

It only took about three days before I remembered that it's actually the worst, primarily because it involves dealing with realtors. I can confidently say that rental agents are at the very top of my list of "worst people ever." Come to think of it, landlords are actually somewhere on that list now, too. I was okay with landlords until last week, when I walked into my place of business and found the ceiling on the carpet. The apartment landlord is much better, although a few months after moving in, I called to tell the management company that the ceiling was falling (maybe it was foreshadowing?) and was told that this was "part of the loft experience."

Rental agents are, from what I can tell, part of an awful subculture of weirdos who will do anything for commission. I have never met a single rental agent who I could place in an outside environment. I cannot picture these people having friends, because they don't seem to know how to have a normal conversation. I can't picture them having families because I think they're actually zombies and zombies don't have families, they eat human guts. In this case, eating human guts = luring someone to an "apartment showing" of an apartment that was rented 24 hours prior, and then producing no other suitable apartments.

The apartment thing was not the highlight of my weekend, but it was definitely not the lowest point, either. It was a fun weekend, don't get me wrong. But I'm still in shock from a very specific incident that occurred on Sunday, when Boyfriend made me change so I wouldn't embarrass him/myself in public.

Me: Are we going to the grocery store?
Boyfriend: Yes.
Me: Okay, let's go.
Boyfriend: You still have to go put pants on.
Me: But these are my pants.
Boyfriend: No. Wait, really?
Me: *SHAME* *HORROR*

This is approximately the moment when I decided to turn things around. After all, I am going to be receiving a major award in March...

...

...and that means from this day forward, no more sweatpants in public. Unless I'm walking the dog, maybe? Let's keep that exception. It also means healthy eating and exercise! I don't think I ever went grocery shopping for real food after the new year, which means that in recent days, I have been following what I have now named, "The YOLO Diet." It consists mostly of ice cream. Not that I only ate ice cream, but ice cream is definitely the most consistent item in the YOLO Diet. PS, a trademark is in the works for that, as well as maybe a book. It will be co-authored by every scene where Miranda eats cake out of the garbage on Sex & the City.

I'm not sure when my love affair with sweat pants began. I remember one time in middle school, a cooler girl from an older grade wore tie-dye sweat pants to school. I think they were fleece pants that she made in "Skills for Living" class - side note, because knowing how to sew fleece pants is an essential skill? Taking into consideration the demographic, they probably should have taught the boys how to hide marital infidelity and the girls how to convince their parents to continue supporting them through countless unpaid PR internships - and maybe I thought they were cool because all the older girls got to wear their homemade fleece pants to school? WHO KNOWS, my brain was not fully formed. I didn't have homemade fleece pants but I did have some lime green sweat pants, and I thought, "Meh, these are pretty close!" and then I wore them to school and I don't remember much else except one of my horrible bitch friends asking a boy if he liked me and he was all, "that girl in the lime green pants?"

As I am not one to let these sorts of things get me down, I continued my enjoyment of sweat pants in college, where it turns out, classes are at funny times and you can seriously sleep until 20 minutes before your class and then just drive on over, try to find a parking spot between all the BMWs of the Persian mafia and then just head over to the COM school with some time to spare. I was probably THE girl being singled out during all those "Ladies, we definitely want you to wear your sorority letters around campus, but um, this is recruitment, and so it's like really important that we all look our best in our letters. You know? So like, if you haven't showered, and you're not wearing makeup, and you just generally don't feel pretty, maybe just don't wear them that day, mmk?" talks. On that note though, how does that make any sense? If I'm tired and don't feel like wearing a real outfit, the first thing I am going to reach for is obviously my drawer of Greek t-shirts. Logic, k?

But I guess all of this ends here. So let's all give a big round of applause to Boyfriend for shaming me out of sweat pants. This was no easy feat.

Cold and more cold

Two days ago, I paid $3.50 to a Chicago parking meter because it's approximately negative one billion degrees outside CELSIUS, even colder in American temperature, and Rahm Emanuel printed me a blank parking sticker.

:(

Today at work, the guy who has been leaving strange comments on our Facebook page actually showed up at the office! Foreign people have a particular way with the social media. No, it's cool. My intern is Indian and she totally agrees with me. She said all her relatives in India write creepy-style online. It looks something like this:

"ok how are you.................tell me what u happen here"

Pretty much. I saw messages like this being left on our photos and I started getting nervous. Part of me thought it was probably just a nice person who doesn't speak English, but then another part of me thought it could be someone bad from some sort of dark international crime ring, and then the last part of me considered whether or not it could be the guy who runs the Pakistani radio station (the guy I reported for continuing to smoke indoors) trying to track me down and kill me.

Turns out, it was the first scenario, and it's just this nice man (I mean, as far as we know, I guess) from the Sikh gurdwara a couple doors down. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!

Actually, it was a COLD COLD COLD day in the neighborhood, and I continue to work in a building that apparently does not view central heat (or any heat, for that matter) as a priority. Inside the actual office it's not so bad, but we might as well build an outhouse in the alley because walking down the hall to the bathroom brings back some really bad memories from Girl Scout winter camping trips.

I really have nothing else to report because for the past week, or maybe couple of weeks, I was working my way through West Wing. And now I am done. I feel so much emptiness inside.

My Meetup

Ew! I just opened this blog for the first time in a while and a notification popped up, telling me that I can "tag people through Google+." Go away, Google+! Everyone hates you!

Ugh, anyway. Before I was so rudely interrupted by that notification, I was about to tell you about my as-of-now unsuccessful Meetup.com profile.

I guess Meetup.com is a web site for losers like me who have lived in a city for almost three years, but spend their nights reading TimeOut Chicago articles about what all the cool people are doing (while eating several servings of Moose Tracks), rather than doing those things themselves. I can definitely tell you where all the great restaurants are, and where all the beautiful people are drinking old timey drinks this week. But I will be on this couch watching every single episode of West Wing and then going to bed at 10, because who wants to be out past 9 PM at this point? It's raining outside, and this weather is not conducive to cute outfits. But also thank goodness, because instead of going to the gym this week, I was watching West Wing.

The other night, in some sort of weird, Moose Tracks ice cream-induced haze, I had the not-so-brilliant idea to start a Meetup.com group. I am technically a member of a few groups on that web site, and they spam my e-mail inbox constantly. My home e-mail address has basically become a trash bin of Meetup.com notifications and Groupons for really sad things, like Botox and Edible Arrangements. I'm a member of a group called "New In Town 20-Somethings," which is a group that sounds great in theory, except that they have most of their events at fake Irish bars in Wrigleyville. I have never made a friend at a bar, and I definitely don't want to make friends who are going to want to continue to go to fake Irish bars in Wrigleyville in the future, so this group is probably not my cup of tea. So I also joined a group called "Chicago Indie Girls," because I figured that I could probably put up with some vegan cupcake parties if it means making friends who can also speak intelligently about current events, interesting movies - that kind of thing. Turns out, I am probably not welcome in this group, because there is a disclaimer in the group description that reads, "We don't care about your sorority." Fair enough. Truthfully, I also don't care for "craft night," so whatever.

So I started my own group. These other groups have hundreds of members, so I figured it would probably be easy! People probably just join them if they sound interesting, just like I did. Oh, it costs $36 to have a group? WELL YOU CAN'T PUT A PRICE ON FRIENDSHIP, CAN YOU? HERE IS MY CREDIT CARD, YOU FABULOUS WEB SITE!

I started a group called "Cheap Eats, Good Reads." Look it up. It's there. The idea is that random strangers meet once a month at a different restaurant where the average meal is under $10. I'm thinking taco places, Lawrence's Fisheries, my favorite Devon restaurants - that sort of thing. The "good reads" part is where we all come prepared to talk about something we have read. It could be a book, but it could also be an article or a blog post or something. WELL, no one has joined my group. Right now, there is just me, and I'm guessing no one wants to be the first one to join a creepy Meetup.com group where some crazy person (who apparently loves cheap food and reading articles?) is just hanging out.

If you are in Chicago, you can join my Meetup group. We will meet at Lawrence's and eat fried shrimp and talk about an article I read in TimeOut Chicago about what all the cool people are doing.

And so here is what I have to say about that.

This past Friday morning was going pretty well. On Thursday night, I was speaking at an event up on the North Shore, so I let myself sleep in a little. When you are the boss, you're allowed to do that sometimes, turns out! When I got to the office, the interns had already turned on the heater, so +5 for my mood right there, and I soon got a phone call from one of our funders, letting me know that they decided to give us a grant in the new year. Good Friday morning.

I'm pretty sure we all know where this is going. I went on Facebook and saw a post about the need for gun control. Wasn't sure why, ignored it, moved on. I don't remember exactly what I saw that prompted me to look at WBEZ or CNN, but when I did, I was horrified, like everyone else. 

During my 35-minute drive home from work, I put on WBEZ like I always do. There was an interview with a mother whose son goes to Sandy Hook Elementary School and had survived the shooting unharmed. One of the things she said really stood out to me. She was describing her son's account of the events, and told the reporter about the gun shots. She said that her son described loud noises, "because of course he has never heard a gun before."

When I heard her say that, something clicked. Of course he had never heard a gun before. 

This statement made me think about two sad things. It made think about a boy who had never heard a gun before now finding himself in the middle of a tragedy. But it also made me think about the many, many more children in this country who have heard the sound of a gun many, many times.

I keep hearing about the "loss of innocence" in Newtown, Connecticut. That's one of the many reasons this event is so tragic: children and families who thought they lived in a safe place have had their sense of security shattered. Maybe that's why everyone is saying this will be some sort of "game changer" in the debate about guns. I guess it has to be the reason, because the numbers just don't add up. In Newtown, 20 children were killed. In the past four years in Chicago, well over 250 children have been killed. We're clearly not motivated by the numbers, so what is driving people to take action (or at least talk about taking action) this time?

As modern as we are and as bad as things get, we all want to believe that there is a town out there where kids can go to school and not have to go through a metal-detector. As terrible and wrong as it is, when we hear that a child in Chicago got shot while playing on the porch, we immediately assume that it's because of gangs and drugs and things we cannot control and therefore we are helpless and should probably just stop thinking about it right now. It doesn't matter how quickly the numbers add up. We believe so deeply that this kind of violence can be avoided, as long as we stay out of the bad neighborhoods. 

So when someone forces his way into an elementary school in a nice town, where gangs and drugs can't be blamed, this belief that we have is broken. We begin to recognize that something is wrong, because this is supposed to be the country where kids can go to school and be safe. Not the country where kids can go to school and be safe because their teachers are carrying weapons themselves. The country where kids can go to school - or play on the porch, or ride a bike around the block - and simply be safe. The truth is, we should have demanded this before 27 people were killed at a school, and before hundreds of children were murdered in Chicago. But this is what has happened now. Let's not let it happen again.