From the headline of this story, I was anticipating a look at how the long-standing stereotypes of sororities as catty, snobby, and slutty may be camoflauging a feminist reality, which was what I experienced as a sorority member in the late 90s. Unfortunately your coverage didn't exactly break any new ground -- by focusing on the atmosphere at a renowned party school you overlooked a lot of the well-rounded sorority members nationwide who are scholars, leaders, athletes, actors, artists, and philanthropists. Perhaps these sorority women, in defying the stereotypes, are somehow too dull to cover in your article?

That is perhaps what saddened me most about your story -- Why did the pioneering "feminist" sorority you covered have to be co-educational? Is it somehow less feminist to have a women's group composed of women, and more feminist to admit men to the organization and then proceed to call them sisters? The American sorority movement developed to provide support and community to the pioneering female college students of the 19th century. Although female college students are no longer in the numerical minority on college campuses, there are still social inequalities and fields where women are still breaking ground. As long as that is the case, having a single-sex environment where women can find support is, to my thinking, very feminist.

My experience in a sorority in the late 1980's was wholly dedicated to partying and being told what to do every moment of my week, with fines for not attending these ridiculous events. It didn't care that most of the members were receiving financial aid, working, and were the first members of their families to attend college. It didn't care about social issues or, later, the Iraq war. It didn't care about making us better people or, more importantly, stronger women. It was a place for a group of middle-class white girls to gather and party.

My sorority was not alone. This was life in the 1980's and early 1990's. I hope sororities and fraternities become more enlightened and open to a more diverse population. We discussed diversity, but never recruited anyone outside of our social circle. I support groups, like the Zetas, who don't just talk about doing something, but go out and do it. It's a small step in the right direction.

And, to respond to the first letter, my sorority likes to talk about all of our accomplished members, but we never did anything to help get them their. That they did on their own.

Good luck to 'em, I say!

When I was at Camp Trin in the 80s (and no, it's not all that affectionate a nickname!), I was a member of the Alpha Chi chapter of DKE. Same frat as Bush pere and fil, and lots of other stuffy folks. Except that our chapter went co-ed in the early 70s, just after the college itself. I found it a really useful experience to live around women, and to have them in positions of authority and just as friends, rather than always as sex objects - eye-opening for dumb 19 year-olds... Many of my 'siblings' male and female, are still amongst my closest friends in the world.

While we did, indeed, party a lot, we also had a high GPA, and a lot of varsity sports team captains. But mostly what we had was the need to escape from what the Official Preppy Handbook described as 'good-looking preppy devil-may-careism'. Probably the one unifying factor between DKEs in those days was that we had hardly anything in common with a lot of other Trinity students.

Sadly, in 1989, the international finally found out what we were doing, and sent some Yalies along to tear the letters off the front of our house, just like in the movies. They told us, sadly, "you guys just don't know what you're missing in a single-sex environment". Uh-huh. The house is still there, now re-organized as the Clio literary society, though I haven't been back in a while, since I live in London now.

I think it's interesting to look at the origins of most women's Greek organizations. In many cases, it was a group of women, often the only women, at a given university banding together in solidarity. These women often took a lot of flack from the men in academia, and they were pioneers, looking to other women like them for support and acceptance.

In the history of my sorority, Sigma Kappa, the founders were five women, who in 1874 were the only women at Colby College. These were women who were interested in academics, sprituality and sisterhood. One of the women was the valedictorian of her class, but because she was a woman, she was not allowed to give the valedictorian speech, but was instead relegated to giving a greeting to her classmates in Latin.

As a self-proclaimed feminist, I struggled with certain aspects of the sorority experience. At its best, I think any sorority has a lot to offer women who are looking for growth and leadership opportunities. At its worst, it can be debasing and demoralizing, but as with most experiences, you put into it and take away from it what you want.

While I think it's interesting to hear a modern day sorority come out as feminists, the sorority as feminist movement is nothing new.

As an Arkansawyer currently enrolled at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, I'd've loved to hear a little more about the sorority chapter there that was mentioned in passing as being disbanded. I found no reference to it on the university's website, so my guess is that passing comment is correct--still, I'd be curious to hear more about it.

I thought the article would be about the Tri Delta sorority.

I also don't agree that a conventional sorority is automatically non-feminist.

I was at camp trin trin, in the mid eighties (released in '88) and in a way it saddens me to read that the dominant culture at trinity hasn't really improved. in fact as a freshman I wrote in the campus newspaper that there wasn't really much alternative culture around the campus which prompted a cartoon as me as luke skywalker taking on the greeks dressed as darth vader. there were (and presumably still) places for hope, though. WRTC, the La MaMa theatre arts program (which I was in the first year of) judy dworin and the theater/dance department, the literary writing major, and in general a staff and faculty that is much more liberal than the student body it teaches. DKE was a pretty cool place at the time (if you were a dead head, which I wasn't) but at least it was trying to distance itself from from the classic greek ideology. kudos to ZOE for moving the dialog forward.