Support Our Girls

By Julian Baker
February 25, 2019

WASHINGTON - Somebody says to me on a cloudy day in January in the nation’s capital,

“That’s a protest, right?”

We’re looking at Potomac Park. It’s a parking lot behind Tonic Restaurant on the corner of G
and 21st streets. There are 1500 college-aged women there. They are divided into 12 groups, all
of which have specific dress codes. They are all chanting and cheering and singing and dancing.
They have signs and posters and pins and buttons and they have bullhorns.

Ordinarily in this city, a protest of this size goes on once or twice a week. The Covington
Catholic protest clash has just happened four blocks away from here. If you’re reading this in the
first half of 2019, I apologize, because you likely already know what the Covington Catholic
saga is, without me having to explain it. But you live in Trump’s America, so I know you will
understand that this scandal will evaporate in less than three months. Like a TV procedural that
should have been cancelled ten years ago, America’s writers are busy coming up with new
storylines that will dwarf each scandal that precedes it. In one week in January of 2018, the
“shithole countries” comment was replaced by the news that Sebastian Gorka had a warrant for
his arrest in Hungary during his time in the White House, which was replaced by the first Trump
government shutdown, which was replaced by Andrew McCabe resigning from the FBI.

So you’ll forgive me if I go on a tangent. I need to properly explain this Covington thing to those
who will, inevitably, have been subjected to a series of other traumas that shake loose the details
and drama of this particular one. Bear with me. To you, in the semi-distant future, here are the
details:

The Covington Catholic incident happened at the Lincoln Memorial, four blocks away from
Potomac Park and Tonic Restaurant. A group of MAGA hat-wearing teens confronted a smaller
group of Native American protestors. A viral video of the showdown went up online and became
another moment to talk about what Trump has done to our country. To some people, they saw a
group of shithead 14 year-olds mocking a Native American because their president, a
professional 14 year-old, calls Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” twice a week on Twitter. The
shitheads from Covington stood there and mocked Nathan Phillips, an elderly Native American
veteran who was there for the Indigenous Peoples March.

Of course, in the polite company of Fox News, its unacceptable to call a 14 year old white boy a
shithead. As a former 14 year old white boy, I can tell you that I was a shithead and I certainly
kept the company of shitheads. I went to an all boys prep school in Maryland. I can spot this
brand of teenage bravado from a mile away.

But right-wing Facebook memes got the chance to spin this story too: Phillips, like the president,
didn’t fight in Vietnam, despite dubious initial reports indicating that he might have. As if that
matters. Meanwhile, a group of Black Hebrew Nationalists, who also don’t matter, were shouting
at the boys from across the reflecting pool. If you live in DC, literally none of this matters,
because if you get on the Red Line at 3 pm, you will encounter all three groups separately
engaging in their rhetoric (read: yelling a lot).

But what a shock to those not prepared for it.

We know that this thing in the parking lot is not one of those things. It’s not the women’s march
and it’s not filming for ​Handmaid's Tale ​(Hulu doesn’t come to town for another two weeks). In
fact, it’s not a protest at all. At least, not an ordinary one.

This is sorority bid day at the George Washington University.

Eleven of the aforementioned twelve groups are the sororities that make up GW’s Panhellenic
Association. Sigma Kappa’s uniform is lavender sweatshirts with mountains printed on them,
puffy hats, and ski goggles. Their theme is 1980s ski. Alpha Phi wears bell bottom jeans and big
bright sunglasses. Their theme is 1970s. And so on.

The twelfth group is the freshman girls. They are, once somebody with a bullhorn directs them,
supposed to rip off their uniform sweatshirt, revealing underneath the shirt of the sorority with
whom they will spend their next four years. They will then run to their group and join them, take
pictures, and leave. They will march as a single file group, 75 at a time, chanting and singing and
holding signs through campus on their way back to their sorority houses.

This parade will be noticed at GW, of course. Noticed and derided.

The GW Hatchet reported that the number of freshman who rushed a sorority in 2019 dropped by
40 percent from last year. At GW, greek life has also been hit with scandal after scandal. Last
February, Alpha Phi made national news when their house was featured in a racist Snapchat
featuring a banana. Chi Omega kicked half their members out in a tangentially related move
because of a Facebook post. The world is getting smaller and student life at GW is shrinking
with it.

“I’m not sure people have a reason to join Greek life at this school anymore, especially since it's
in the spring now,” says freshman Lila Jerome, who decided not to rush a sorority this year. Lila
is referencing the school’s decision to push recruitment from the fall to the spring, a nakedly
transgressive move that showed an immediate drop in greek life.

The process ​is ​grueling. It involves meeting with eleven sororities in two days. Girls are given a
uniform. They are not allowed to wear perfume. This year, for the first time, freshman girls were
allowed to use the elevators in the Marvin Center during recruitment. Previously, they had to use
the stairs. A freshman wrote a ​Hatchet ​op-ed (never a good sign), saying that sorority
recruitment is “damaging for women” and is a “grueling and toxic process…[which is the]
antithesis of the organizations’ claims to empower women.”

“I guess she didn’t get a bid,” said a senior I know in Kappa Kappa Gamma.

And well, I guess she probably didn’t. But everyone else in this parking lot behind Tonic ​did ​get
one. And to them and everyone else, this thing is a homecoming. It's a culmination of the process
and a celebration of college womanhood in contrast with DC’s tired old gray male energy.
Meanwhile, the fraternity men had a good year. Don’t they always? Their recruitment numbers
rose slightly from last year. The men didn’t have any scandals and they didn’t have to defend the
merit of their process to anyone. The male fraternity member at GW is, now with Trump in the
neighborhood, more likely than ever to be a red hat-wearing person. Those Covington kids
could, in 3 or 4 years, join Beta Theta Pi at GW.

This is not to say most GW fraternity men love Trump. Yet. Most of them, like most GW
students, despise Republicans and came to GW with the purpose of getting as many of them out
of this city as possible. But most of us (it should not surprise you that I’m in a fraternity) are
white, most of us are wealthy, and all of us could have, in a parallel universe where we lost the
only thing that separates us from them, our political values, found ourselves in the background of
that protest. Or in the front row. Or on the ​Today ​show defending ourselves. And this country
would have defended us. Trump and Kavanaugh say it’s ​hard ​to be a young man today. Despite
what parts of this country pretends to believe, a large group of white boys is still more palatable
than a large group of any other demographic.

Look at the Sigma Chi bench on a warm Thursday afternoon, look at the beer cans and listen to
the music, look at them throwing a football across traffic, and then consider the idea that if they
were anything but 95 white boys, that scene wouldn’t exist.

And so, for the women on campus, there seems to be attacks from all sides. There is a clear
contrast between the sororities and the fraternities. The sororities set up task forces and respond
to the ​Hatchet ​for comment and lambast racist comments on Facebook. The fraternities, for
better or for worse, tacitly ignore all of that. It’s not their fault. Their president sits three blocks
away, twiddling His thumbs.

It is that contrast which has driven the Panhellenic Association to a secluded parking lot on its
biggest day of the year. It is no longer held on the National Mall (like it was during the Obama
era) or in the centrally located Kogan Plaza. The government shutdown (a tough coincidence)
and poor winter lighting is to blame for the former, but what about the latter?
“People in Gelman and the other buildings complained there was too much noise and that there
were too many of us.” says a senior in Pi Beta Phi. “That never would have happened our
freshman year.”

“That never would have happened in Obama’s DC,” I say in jest. She’s wearing a denim jacket.
Their theme is ‘90s.

“But honestly,” she continues, “who fucking cares?”