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Holding another chapter meeting just twenty-four hours after the last one would never be a popular thing to do. For most sorority girls, chapter meetings are like dental examinations, or going to church, or hanging out with your rich maiden aunt because she’s got to leave the lake house to someone in her will. It’s a necessary act that you don’t necessarily enjoy.
I understood the sentiment. These were young college women who also had priorities like studying, exercising and watching Supernatural marathons on Netflix. Chapter meetings could be grueling, with endless debates and Robert’s Rules of Order and pin attire (which required that sorority members get dressed up for chapter). It was like visiting your rich aunt: you had to show some respect when you went.
So there I stood, in front of fifty slightly pissed-off, confused, grieving Debs. With a heavy heart, I informed them that I, Margot Blythe, was going to be their temporary Chapter Advisor.
About twenty-five hands went up. About twenty-five cell phones were whipped out. Yes, there was some overlap between the two groups. I calmly and patiently answered everyone’s burning questions. Yes, the date party was still scheduled to occur. Yes, the t-shirts would still get ordered. No, I didn’t know which DJ would be playing at the date party. Yes, I agreed that the Tri Mu Bowling Tournament was a ridiculous waste of time. Yes, we were still going to attend as a chapter and show our Panhellenic support.
I’m not going to lie, the questioning got a little intense. I blessed Liza McCarthy’s memory for having the stamina and courage to face down a chapter of Debs every Monday, week after week. I thanked them ahead of time for their support and friendship and invoked a quotation of Mary Gerald Callahan’s that I’d always loved: ‘A Delta Beta sister is steadfast, in times of sorrow and despair when things look bleakest, at the end of days, when evil and corruption shall reign over the earth.’ That seemed to make everyone feel better.
Then I sat down in my chair off to the side of the Chapter President, Aubrey St. John, who resumed conducting the meeting.
An impatient hand from a willowy, almond-skinned sister in the front row was called upon. ‘I’d like to know if the chapter has any contingency plans for this week.’
I looked up, confused. I had just announced that I was the chapter advisor in Liza’s absence. Wasn’t that the contingency plan?
Another hand shot up. This one belonged to a curvy girl in a pretty emerald dress. ‘I heard the Betas were on total lockdown.’
Lockdown? I knew the death of a sorority row Chapter Advisor was newsworthy, but I didn’t think it placed every chapter in imminent jeopardy. Just ours.
The first row girl nodded. ‘The Epsilon Eta Chis have instituted the buddy system.’
Another young lady in the back with a pixie cut and a deep Southern accent chimed in. ‘The Moos aren’t even accepting mail this week.’
There was a gasp throughout the chapter room. ‘But what about their online shopping deliveries?’ someone cried.
Miss Pixie Cut looked forlorn. ‘They’ll be delayed. Can you imagine?’
Chattering and murmurs spread throughout the room. I stood, addressing the chapter once again. ‘Ladies, I’m sure that the police will speak to each of those chapters and reassure them that whatever tragedy we endured here will not be repeated elsewhere.’
Fifty sets of eyes fixed on me.
‘Margot.’ Aubrey cleared her throat delicately. ‘I’m afraid that what the chapter is discussing is something altogether more … threatening.’
I was thoroughly confused. What could be more threatening than a sudden and unexplained death?
Aubrey explained. ‘It’s fraternity pledge prank week.’
Ah. That made a whole lot more sense.
Every year in the fall, Sutton College fraternities competed against each other to outwit, outsmart and out-prank each other. Local legend has it that long ago the pranks were committed fraternity against fraternity, mano a mano. But when the Iota Kappa house burned down following an unfortunate incident involving flaming kegs, the Interfraternity Council decreed that henceforth, no pranks would be committed against fellow fraternities. But the damn IFC didn’t say anything about sororities.
Since then, the fraternities still battled a war every fall, sending their pledges into skirmishes of prank-offs on the sorority houses. I guess if no house burned down, the IFC was cool with it. Most of the time, the pranks were annoying. Occasionally, they were hilarious. Like the time the doors and windows of the Tri Mu house were boarded up from the outside. (Although the fire department didn’t think that was so funny.) Or the time that the Tri Mu composite was photocopied and spread across campus with ‘GOT MILK?’ written over it. To this day, I know absolutely nothing about who may have possibly perpetrated that brilliant prank.
‘Other sororities are instituting buddy systems?’ I asked the chapter.
‘And curfews,’ a voice from the back added.
‘And no mail,’ the pixie cut girl emphasised dramatically.
‘Are the pranks that bad now?’
The chapter nodded almost uniformly in the affirmative.
‘But it’s not unsafe, is it?’ I couldn’t imagine fraternity pledges doing something that would physically harm a sorority sister.
That was considered way more seriously than I would have liked. A sister in an unfortunate shade of yellow raised her hand. ‘There was that Gamma who had her eyebrows shaved off.’
That speculation was dismissed by the social director. ‘She blamed a fraternity prank. But her little sis goes to my big sister’s tanning salon. She said that was totally an at-home wax job gone bad.’
Fifty heads bobbed in comprehension.
‘What about those Tri Mu pledges that went to the hospital?’ It was the girl in the emerald dress again. Seriously, I had to ask her where she bought that. My skin would look fantastic in it.
The chapter was curiously silent on that front.
‘Was it a fraternity prank or not?’ I asked.
Eyes met across the room in nervous and clueless ways. Obviously, no one knew for sure, one way or another. I decided to let it go, but the thought that the fraternities might be out of control unsettled me for the rest of the meeting.
I asked the chapter officers to stay behind after closing rituals, which occurred faster than I’d ever seen them. The ladies and I flew through the chant and the poem, scared that someone else might drop dead. Thankfully, everyone stayed upright, which was a nice testament to Delta Beta stamina.
I rearranged some chairs for me and the five officers. As in every Deb chapter, there was a Chapter President, a standards and morals director, an academic director, a social activity director and a pledge trainer. The officers reflected the five pointed star of the Delta Beta crest, with each point standing for a character requirement of a Deb woman: leadership, ethics, scholarship, civic life and telling other people what to do.
Some of the officers I had met the night before and as the meeting went on, I was most impressed with their composure and maturity. The President, Aubrey St. John, was particularly impressive. A poised young lady, she spoke well, had superb posture and seemed to immediately grasp almost all of my needs. I could tell I would rely on her greatly as the days went by.
I was also very impressed with the standards and morals director, or, as we Debs shorten it, S&M. I’ll admit it. I knew who she was before I even arrived on campus. When she’d pledged Delta Beta two years earlier, the news had been trumpeted throughout the alumnae associations and in the alumnae magazine, The Busy Bee. She was Callahan Campbell, a