I wanted to get a more personal story stemming from the college experience. So much of the college experience is influenced by Greek life, so when a girl from my hall told me this story I had to write it down. The context is that we talked about why we decided on USC and what extracurricular activities we are involved in. We then started talking about the Greek system at USC and I asked if she rushed and got this story in return.

“I didn’t rush at USC because of this story my sister told me. There was this girl uhh let’s call her Victoria. She was a junior at a university in the South. I assume University of Florida. Anyways, it was the end of junior year and elections were going on for the girl who would be the president the next upcoming year. Victoria made cookies. Victoria made signs and posters. Victoria… haha also slept with half of the neighboring frat houses, but that was “in order to establish a social connection with the top frats on campus” as my sister says. She goes to U of F, proud as fuck of it too. I digress, Victoria did all these things to claim her spot as president of said sorority and she would have won too. That’s of the girl she ran against hadn’t rigged the whole race. The other girl, Amber had some of her sisters take a few votes from Victoria. Ya, beats me why they still did it the old school way with paper and junk. It seems like you could do it with an iPad or something. But ya her sister took a few votes away from Victoria, it turns out she was only short by a single vote. After, losing she went crazy, gave away all her stuff, dropped her Major… they should’ve known she was going to commit suicide. All the warning signs, ya know? She hung herself from the chandelier in the center of the sorority house. The tale goes that around Election Day, she comes out from hiding and runs the show. Sometimes she throws things or locks doors. I think my sister said something about locking all the members out of the main sitting room where they do all the voting. She’s just really pissy about dying and losing I guess. I didn’t want to deal with any crazy bitches though. I’m not trying to die for some “sisters” if that makes sense.”

I think this story, besides its digressions, turned out to convey a hidden side of Greek life in college. It was interesting to hear and explore. It made me think about how ghosts only appear if they have a bad death, and Christianity says suicide is bad. Being a Greek affiliated house, I would assume it was founded under Christian values.  Also, the ideas of poltergeist and a woman ghost were examined in this story. There was some humor in the fact that Victoria plays tricks on the girls, but isn’t a harmful soul. Embodying the classical motif of the female ghost, the idea of Victoria haunting a sorority seems reasonable.