Barefoot in the summer at CAU

Just 15 years ago, I was in the SCOPE/FTMS Summer program for 6 weeks on the campus of Clark Atlanta University. I honestly had hopes of being an 8th Grade Algebra teacher, so it made sense to try to become a Future Teacher of Math and Science. Thank God I found out that I couldn't handle math and science, but it was a fun summer. Thank God that I learned a lot about the good and the bad of Greek life before going to college. This experience lead me to one definite decision based on an idea that all Greeks should live by.

Those 6 weeks were my first time away from home...even though my family was a 25 minute ride down the interstate. Living in the dorms that college students live in and sneak around in. Eating that campus dining hall food -- I mean not having a lot of tasty choices in what to eat because a lot of the food was..... Meeting other students from southern GA and other East and West Coast states across the country. Learning a lot about how crazy life can be because young people in the midst of their formative years can be straight up fools. But I did make some friends there that were just regular girls like me. Not popular, not complete nerds, but just making it through puberty.

One of the highlights was being mentored by some of the college students. There were 2 guys and 2 girls. One guy and girl were just regular students who taught us valuable lessons. To this day, I can't remember the guy's name, but I remember him telling a small group of us in a casual convo, "If y'all [the couple] have to hit on one another, then y'all ain't supposed to be together." If a man or woman has to get their point across with fists instead of conversation, then they shouldn't be together. That simple idea has never left me, and I still pass that on to others.

The other guy and girl were members of two of the Divine Nine fraternities and sororities. I don't recall the guys name, but he was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha. Looking back, he fit the stereotype of an Alpha very well: scholarly, arrogant, and fun to be around. He expected a lot of all of his mentees, and we lived up to those expectations for the most part. I'd bet money that several of those young men in our program were influenced to become Alphas. The female mentor was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha. She completely fit the AKA stereotype: attractive, full of arrogant "pretty girl" attitude, excelling. She had a lot of expectations of us as well, and most of us lived up to her standards.

The Greek mentors decided to teach the 40+ students how to step. After attending classes and being enlightened to what the world held beyond our middle class teenaged lives during the day, the students were taken to on campus locations to learn stepping. Our mentor happened to have her chapter soror and Step Mistress on campus. She worked with us very hard and never made us feel bad about what were doing. They also "bonded" the 20 - 30 young ladies by making us "duck walk" from our dorm to the step practice location and back for the return. They even modified one of the pledge songs so we can sing together about striving to be number one. I'm sure that part of this experience was the first exposure to greekdom for some of the girls just like it was for me. The stepping was fun and made me want to have the fun side of greekdom, but our mentor told us about the community service, etc. so we knew it wasn't just singing and stepping.

But one night while we had part of our step practice in front of the dorm, another pivotal event happened. Our mentor, the attractive AKA, had all of us doing one of the first parts of the step routine. Girls from the Upward Bound program were looking out of their windows and making suggestions as to what we should do. Our mentor ignored the comments and kept us focused. She reminded us that all kinds of things will be shouted during a step show, and you have to remain focused to put on a good show.

The girls from Upward Bound were distracting, but then another college-aged woman came outside through the front door of the dorm. She wore a t-shirt, shorts, a head wrap, and no shoes. This young lady said she wanted to show us something. This young lady proceeded to step in front of us for 10 seconds. With no shoes. HARD. The young girls in the windows cheered wildly for the young lady who must've been an Upward Bound mentor. As she left, our FTMS mentor had the most unamused look on her face as she slowly clapped and encouraged us mentees to clap for her so we can get back to practice.

That incident was my first introduction to that sorority. That first introduction lead to my first impression: I don't want to be one of those sorority girls. Whatever the 1993 equivalent of "ghetto" was, that's what that young lady lead me to believe about her sorority. She broke a cardinal rule of Greekdom: always represent yourself to the utmost at all times because you never know who will meet you and therefore meet your organization for the first time. She was so busted that I knew I couldn't consider an org that would include a woman that steps hard on concrete inthe middle of the night. Therefore, I barely considered that sorority for even a split second when I started my long journey to greekdom.