Why do fraternities and sororities retain their appeal while other forms of collective life weaken? Katie Gatti Tassin, a former University of Alabama sorority member, argues that they sell belonging without challenging the hierarchies that make belonging scarce. This is cultural criticism from inside an institution that bundles friendship with class advantage.
- Membership can be expensive: one Alabama sorority estimates annual dues and in-house living at $19,898, including room and board.
- Tassin’s own network helped her into a selective student PR organization and later job opportunities. The mechanism was informal recognition and “cultural fit,” not a centralized patronage operation.
- She also challenges the sales pitch: research she cites found no causal Greek salary premium, and universities’ claims about members dominating elite professions are overstated.
- Conditional acceptance—dependent on money, conformity, and exclusion—can leave loneliness intact beneath the rituals of togetherness.
The strongest distinction is between solidarity and access. A club can offer genuine kindness and useful connections while reproducing the system that keeps those advantages unavailable to others.
Tassin’s turn toward socialist politics grows from that contradiction: belonging should be scalable, not a subscription whose value depends on keeping people out.