It takes a lot to ruffle my feathers. I’m a pretty easy going, easy-to-get-along-with person for the most part. But Monday night I was offended.
Let me give a back story to begin. I was a sorority girl in college (BIG SHOCK, right!). I clapped, sang, and rushed with the best of them. I celebrated with sisters over candlelightings, did my phone duty like a trooper, and hugged and cried over broken hearts. I went to long, hot chapter meetings, took part in philanthropy events, and wore my letters with pride. That all being said, when I graduated, my association with my house was severed. I stayed in touch with less than a handful of women. Not that I didn’t like a lot of them, but I tend to make a few very deep friendships and then have a lot of surface acquaintances. I didn’t move to Chicago so I was automatically excluded from the social events that many alumnus attended. I assume for that reason I didn’t get emails about Homecoming events. When our chapter was in trouble, I heard through the grapevine…not through our National or an alumni chapter. I actually sought out the National organization and updated information and finally got on an email list several years ago. I get periodic mass emails now, but nothing personally reaching out to me. You need to know all of this to understand why yesterday bothers me so much.
Two weeks ago I got a random email from the new Director of Development at the sorority’s foundation. She was planning to be in St. Louis and wanted to meet to talk about was happening with the sorority on an international level, as well as the exciting initiatives planning leading up to the Centennial Celebration in 2013 and to hear about my experiences at my chapter and the sorority’s newest programs. Yes, I can read between the lines and knew that this was a fundraising pitch. However, the optimist in me truly believed there might be more to it…maybe there would be a place for alums to get involved that didn’t mean just writing a check. Maybe there would be a plan in place for an alum chapter here in the area. Maybe they were even thinking about colonizing a chapter in the St. Louis area.
We met at Starbucks near my work. The young woman was nice enough, cute, in her late 20s. She had gotten there early to get us a table. Obviously though she was originally from the St. Louis area, she hadn’t spent a lot of time in North County to know this wasn’t necessary. She had her coffee already, so I grabbed a cup and walked over to introduce myself. (Now I never mind buying my own coffee, but when your purpose is to try to grab cash from me, you could at least offer to spend $2). We made small talk and she asked some questions other sorors with whom I kept in contact. She mentioned our “national president” who was actually president of my chapter while I was in college. We chatted about how beneficial sorority life was for playing the political game at work in our real lives. During our conversation I wondered how she chose to email me and not be in contact with other alums in the area. It was clear she didn’t know a lot about me other than the university I went to and the era I graduated. She hadn’t even looked at what my degree was because she didn’t know the field in which I worked! Finally, I guess she filled her quota of superficial fluff and she brought out her flip book to show me what was going on nationally. We have 108 chapters now, thousands of members and the goal is to make the sorority “the sorority of first choice” on campuses nationwide. Yada yada yada. She flipped through information about our national philanthropy. She talked about the scholarships that national offered. About five flips in she came to my folder. A nice blue folder that had a notepad and a pledge sheet in it. Gosh, I could fill out the pledge sheet right there and give it to her right then and there. There were even 15 different options on how I could give. I took a deep breath and swallowed. After all this woman was fairly new to the organization (and BTW wasn’t even an alum from my sorority!) and she didn’t realize just how brash what she was doing was. I politely told her I would take the sheet home and talk to my husband about it (like Klucker has any clue to what our finances are) and that most of my charitable monies are already committed to other organizations (this part was true.)
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge proponent of charitable giving. I send money to my alma maters, both undergraduate and graduate. I donate to other charitable organizations on a regular basis. I would even have considered writing a check to them on the spot had there at least been (1) some acknowledgement of how crappy they’ve been to alumni or (2) this girl had done her homework better and knew something about me and didn’t make me feel like I was a name she pulled from the alum directory because I have the magic Dr. in front of my name. I assume that’s how I got on her list, maybe in her mind, or that of National Dr.=$$. I guess many of them aren’t educators.
