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    Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities
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    Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities
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    Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities
    Audiobook12 hours

    Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities

    Written by Alexandra Robbins

    Narrated by Alexandra Robbins

    3/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    With a new Preface, Afterword, and Updates

    "Alexandra Robbins rips into the secret, sordid underbelly of sororities."--Vanity Fair

    Updated ten years after it is original publication, PLEDGED by Alexandra Robbins is as timely today as it was when first published. With salacious breaking news about fraternities and sororities shocking the general public (and members themselves) PLEDGED exposes what really goes on behind the facades of some of these Greek organizations. Robbins, an investigative journalist, went undercover as a sorority sister; her expose is a breathtaking narrative of tumultuous breakups, fights, drunk driving, stalkers, cover-ups, predation by faculty and staff, theft, rape, and an abundance of drugs and alcohol, and much, much more. As one reviewer said: "You have to read these shocking true stories" (YM).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateAug 11, 2015
    ISBN9781478906766
    Unavailable
    Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities
    Author

    Alexandra Robbins

    Alexandra Robbins, winner of the prestigious 2014 John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism, is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including Pledged and The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth. She has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, and other publications, and has appeared on numerous television shows from 60 Minutes to The Colbert Report.

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    Reviews for Pledged

    3/5

    346 ratings21 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A nonfiction expose of sorority life at an unnamed college, primarily through the experiences of four girls over one school year (first edition published in 2005). The author also conducted supplementary research (26 pages of endnotes!), attended sorority-related meetings, and interviewed past and present sorority members. All I can say after reading this book is that I am *so* glad that the large university in Texas that I attended did not have sororities and fraternities while I was there.
    • 1/5
      Since Robbins attempts to portray her novel about sorority life as research, I will treat it as such. This review is how I would critique any written piece claiming to be research. Lucky for me I’m taking two classes this semester dealing specifically with proper research procedures.

      1.Lack of Randomization. Robbins follows around four sorority girls. Four, out of thousands in the country. Although Robbins has reasons that she cannot follow more girls (prohibited by most national sororities and kicked off of a few campuses), this does not mean that her sample of 4 girls (all at one university, three in the same sorority) can be generalized to sorority life across the country. It cannot even be generalized to their university, let alone their sorority specifically. Right here, this point, delegitimizes her entire book as a valid research. But of course, that is not what Robbins is after, she is a journalist, a writer. Her goal is to sell books. If she wanted to do research, she would likely work in the background at a university, not parading around as a nineteen year old (something she proudly admits in the introduction as something not all people in their late twenties can do). Furthermore, perhaps four girls who allow themselves to be selected for such a project agree to participate because there is something they don’t like about the sorority. Unknown.
      2.Data acquisition. I have issues with her methods. I don’t really mind that she went undercover, I think interesting things can come from it. But at what intervals did she interview her subjects? Were they equal intervals? How many times did she contact them? I don’t know, because she doesn’t tell us. (BIG no-no in research studies.) She does tell us that the girls would contact her when they were upset. It is any wonder, then, that the information she got from them was damaging to the sorority? When I’m upset about something, I turn to who I think I will get the most sympathy from…if these girls were upset about something in their sorority, and they happen to be part of a ‘research’ project about sororities, it makes sense that is when they would talk to Robbins. But when something was going great, perhaps they chose to celebrate with their sisters, or simply didn’t think to tell Robbins. We don’t know, because Robbins doesn’t tell us. Once again sacrificing legitimate research techniques to create a sensational best-seller.
      3.Experimenter/Researcher Bias. Although Robbins claims she set out to write a ‘truthful’ book about sorority life, I have to challenge that a bit. She seems to be out to show what she deems historically white Greek organizations as the worst thing a girl could be a part of. She glosses over the positives that Greek life might bring (like service and philanthropy) to dictate that every sorority girl drinks, is loose, and likely doing drugs. To not be accused of my own bias, these are her words, “The blondes, the super-thin, the rich, the promiscuous, and the girls who smoke marijuana are separated and recognized as being distinctive, nonoverlapping groups.” (116) Basically, you can find whatever you want. If you want to see thin, party girls in a sorority, they are there. If you want to see the student body president or girl who’s working to pay her way through college, you can find that as well.

      Going back to issue number one—inability to be generalized—I didn’t find that I could relate to many of the situations these girls found themselves in. Several chapters were dedicated to hazing (and implying that every organization hazes), but I was not hazed. Does that mean it doesn’t happen? No, because I, unlike Robbins, cannot speak for every person in Greek life. I also was not lied to during the pledge process, nor do I feel I was judged based on my wallet or really my looks (anyone who knows me knows I lack all form of style—this was deep into my toe sock phase). I was never pressured not to study in order to party, and remember the house having several study nights. But that’s just me.

      I knew that I could not have an opinion on this book without reading it, and I encourage you to do the same. Don’t take my word for it, whether you are pro or anti Greek. But you should take into consideration what I feel to be fallacies in her logic.
    • 2/5
      The author can't write very well, and she has nothing insightful to say. Nevertheless, the topic (a slightly sociopolitical look at sororities) is interesting enough to make the book readable.
    • 3/5
      I have mixed feelings about this book. I'm a sucker for an exposé, even if it is sensationalized a little bit. That being said, I just don't know how much of this was true, to any degree.

      As I was reading, I got the distinct feeling that she just wove together entirely fictional stories based on the hundreds of sorority sisters she interviewed. (Which, I'm curious how she swindled so many of them to agree to interviews when there is an entire chapter in the book about the Nationals war on media and how they're forbidden to speak to journalists..)

      She did seem very slighted in her view of white v. non-white sororities. She played up everything catty, nasty, illegal and vicious that the 'traditional' Greek houses (white) did but downplayed them enormously when it came to all the multicultural houses. (The paper bag test, excuuuuse me?!) I think all the sororities have their pros/cons and am not really a fan of them myself.

      Quite a few reviewers on here have been slamming the author pretty intensely (how funny that they usually say they were sorority members themselves), saying that it isn't just those on Greek Row who participate in shenanigans. Robbins reiterates that exhaustively throughout the book, so I have a feeling that the negative reviews were largely written by people who didn't actually finish the book.

      Overall, the writing was dull and relatively lifeless. The last page of the book says you can go to her website for updates on the 4 girls she "followed". You cannot. Her website functions similarly to a former Geocities debacle and has no updates on anyone/thing.
    • 5/5
      In this expose into sorority life, Robbins went undercover as an undergraduate to rush, and ultimately join, a sorority. What she found was disturbing, to say the least. She experienced an alcohol soaked, catfight-intensive life, in which young women constantly competed with one another for male attention. What is more surprising, though, is that so many of the young women in sororities seemed to be miserable. Clearly, Robbins is very, very critical of the sororities she followed in this book. That said, she's much less critical of the individual sisters. Indeed, she stresses the promising future and intelligence these women have apart from their sororities. In completing her study, Robbins surveyed both traditionally white and traditionally African-American sororities. She concludes that historically black sororities have stayed far closer to the sororities' purported missions of sisterhood, philanthropy, and scholarship than have majority-white sororities. Still, she finds problems and racism in both Overall, Pledged was a fascinating read that seemed to accomplish its goal of sympathizing with sorority sisters, while excoriating the larger organizations. Robbins ends her work with some suggestions for improving sorority life, such as delaying rush until after the freshman year so that students can experience more of college life before they decide if they want to join the Greek system. Whether these would change much, I'm not so sure, but I found this book interesting, and was especially taken with the stories of the four young women Robbins followed over the course of a year.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I'm seeing a lot of bad reviews of this book here, but I thought it was pretty interesting. Sororities are so far removed from my college experience that I was curious about the inner workings of them and this book provided that, and managed to put a human and reasonably likable face on girls I would never have expected to not hate, frankly. I'm sure it doesn't mirror everyone's sorority experience; I don't think it attempts to. I think it did a decent job of describing particular girls' particular sorority experiences, good and bad.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Well, I am certainly still glad I didn't join a sorority. I learned a little bit about the difference between white and black sororities. And that the sorority system is messed up. But other than that, it wasn't so interesting. It almost felt like something I would read for a class.
    • 1/5
      Pledged is yet another book I found sitting on top of my dumpster. Unlike the others I’ve found, this one actually belonged there.Alexandra Robbins wanted to write a book about sororities, but was unable to get any access to interview and study them. She was ‘left with no choice’ and, despite the fact that it conflicted with her journalist ethics, she went undercover at an undisclosed school to find out what sororities were really about.I had so many problems with this book . . . first of all, she did a terrible job giving examples, basically every time she gave examples. In one portion of the book, she was attempting to show that there was a real lack of privacy in sororities. The example she used was that of a girl walking out of a room, hitting her elbow on the door, saying, “Ouch!” and then another sister saying, “Honey, are you OK?” That was her big example of how no one could do anything without everyone knowing about it.I’m not fan of the Greek system, but I found some of her conclusions pretty dramatic. She went on and on about all the drinking that goes on in sororities — but we’re talking about college! That shit goes on regardless of whether you’re affiliated with a Greek organization or not.Most of the book was incredibly redundant. The 384 pages could easily have been whittled down to 200, or even 150, and still had the same impact.The only interesting part of the book was when she went into the segregation of the Greek system and talked about the self-identified “historically white” sororities. I had to ignore her writing though and just focus on the facts, because she was basically tripping over herself to show how very, very liberal and post-racial she was. For example, she attended a ‘stepping’ performance and went on and on about how she was the only white person in a crowd of 10,000 and how stepping was like ‘the black version of Stomp’. She also described in the people in the crowd as ‘bopping their heads and swaying to the music.’ Bopping, eh?Overall, I did not like this book and would un-read it, if that were possible.
    • 3/5
      My college was without fraternities and sororities so everything I know of them comes from anecdotes related to me by friends, tv shows and movies. Robbins goes undercover and follows four women through rush and their first year of being members of a sorority and Pledged relates the changes good and bad that occur for them as a result of their participation in “Greek Life.” What she relates is behavior appropriate to the Jerry Springer show, but fueled by even more drugs and alcohol and cast with pretty people. It was sort of entertaining, but I am not sure that I got that much out of it. On the other hand, I am not entirely sure that the experiences described by Robbins are entirely confined to “Greek Life.” Perhaps the degree to which these young women were affected by eating disorders, experimenting with drugs and hypersexual activity might be unusual, but this sort of thing is rampant among college-aged students even without the pretence of these problems being confined to fraternities and sororities. Young people want to fit in and therefore they are terribly exposed to making poor decisions. When fitting in is the single most important thing in their lives, unless the majority or close to the majority of students in college are more concerned with academics than socializing, changing sororities and fraternities will be without much effect. A more interesting book to me would be one concerning why these young women and men feel compelled to injure themselves and what parents can do before they go to college to give them better skills to deal with being away from home for the first time. Pledgedcontained few surprises. I appreciated some of the recommendations Robbins makes for cleaning house toward its end, but disagreed with some of the recommendations as well. I don't intend to go into what those were because I don't want to spoil the book.
    • 3/5
      I'm afraid this book confirmed all my worst fears about sororities: cloistered, closeted, fearful, cult like and suffocating. I feel lucky that this was never an option for me at colleges I attended. This book revealed nothing about sororities that I missed (misogyny, racism, classicism, constant judgment, no time for study or scholarship or individual achievement...)
    • 4/5
      I thought this was a very interesting, well researched book about a subject that always was rather curious about.
    • 2/5
      I couldn't keep the characters of "Amy," "Caitlin," "Sabrina," and "Vicki" apart. This is not necessarily because all sorority sisters are the same, but because Robbins failed to capture who the girls really are. She was able to capture the girls' agendas, but not their inner selves. As such, their girls' thoughts, actions, and dialogue all seemed relatively similar, which is to say that the trotted around from event to event and from boy to boy.That said, I found this book fun to read the way I find Gossip Girl fun to watch. Does it say anything new? Not really, unless you didn't know that sometimes people can be mean and exclusive. Did Robbins sensationalize her findings or narrow her scope in a way that her results were bound to be amusing? Perhaps. Does it make for a good rainy day read? Absolutely.
    • 3/5
      This was a little hit and miss for me. It was a well written book, and very informative, but not as scandal packed as I expected it to be. I admit to glossing over certain parts of the more boring aspects of the book - and there were quite a few of them. I enjoyed reading about the lives of the four girls in the book, and I definitely wanted to know more about each of them, but I guess the undercover nature of the book meant that Robbins could only write so much about them. All in all I actually think this book would have worked better as a novel! The endless writing about the history of sororities and all the meetings she attended just left me feeling a bit bored.This was an interesting insight into the life of Sororities. Sometimes I was amazed at how shallow the girls were - and if you knew me, you would find that statement very funny indeed! Overall, I rate this an average read.
    • 4/5
      My mom, in an attempt to turn me against sororities, picked up Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities at our local public library. At first, I was hesitant about picking up the book because I didn’t like the fact that my mom is trying to make decisions for me. I chalked it up to the fact that she just wants me to be well-informed and picked up the book this morning for after-TAKS reading.Robbins introduces us to Vicki, Caitlin, Amy, and Sabrina and immediately I began to identify with a certain trait or aspect of each of these girls. I experienced their highs and lows and I found myself wondering why in the world being in a sorority is such a prestigious thing and why we still allow hazing and Greek life deaths to still occur. I do understand that there are some good things that come from being in a sorority. Many girls found jobs with assistance of their alumni sisters.This is book is very eye opening and I would recommend it to anyone who is embarking on college shopping. Now I understand why my mom is anti-Greek and why, at every college, she asks about how dominate Greek life is.I haven’t made up my mind on Greek life yet. But I do plan to look at it on a college by college basis.
    • 3/5
      I tried reading this but I couldn't get into it. The parts about sororities and fraternities in general were interesting along with some of the sociological observations made. However I had a tough time sympathizing with the characters, they just all seemed to be pretty shallow and self-absorbed. The book was written pretty well and it was apparent that the author had done her homework.
    • 4/5
      An in-depth exploration into the life of three sorority girls. Confirmed by belief that sororities are filled with shallow, air-headed twits. Good to know I didn’t miss much by not joining one.
    • 2/5
      Great for those who think sorority life is the same as seen on MTV. I was a little bored in parts, possibly because I lived through it. Overall an honest portrayel.
    • 1/5
      Newflash: Sorority women are no different than your average college student. All the issues that these young women deal with are issues that college women in general deal with - peer pressure, drinking, relationships. To make these issues seem exclusive to Greek life is misleading. For every one story of a Greek experience gone wrong, you will find a thousand women who cherish their collegiate experience and are still active in their organizations to this day either on the international/national level or as collegiate advisors. Why doesn't someone write something about them?
    • 3/5
      This book I feel depicts a fairly accurate picture of Greek Societies in general. Many people will object to this statement but at least at the college I attended many of the things happening to the sorority girls in the books happended to sorority girls in my school. I think that some of it is hype and are things that are occurring in the female college population as a whole. Not just sorority girls or female athletes. College is a stressful time especially for teenagers who have only been away from home long enough to attend summer camp in many cases. Good book
    • 3/5
      I was never a sorority girl--never wanted to be--but this gives you an idea of what it's like--pretty much what i thought it was.
    • 3/5
      Despite Robbins' claims that she has no interest in making generalizations, that is in fact what she does. She takes the experiences of four women on one campus and from there extrapolates what she believes are common threads in all of Greek Life. Throughout the book we follow Robbins as she narrates the lives of the four young sorority women. This narration makes it feel that you are reading a novel, which on one hand is nice, but on the other is odd in a work of non-fiction. Between stories of the ladies, she inserts random facts about Greek Life, some true, some not. Robbins said that she wants to make the Greek system better, but I'm not convinced that this work actually makes any steps at all in that effort.