Julia has started college at the state university in Minneapolis, and her most cherished goal is to be accepted into the Epsilon Iota sorority. Though only a small fraction of the student body belongs to sororities, and Mr. Ray is unimpressed with them, Julia becomes obsessed with joining one. She shares the glories of sororities with the family: parties, living in the sorority house, sisterhood. She makes sorority life sound so exciting and full of fun that it gives Betsy an idea. She and the girls in the Crowd will start their own Deep Valley High School sorority.

This becomes the primary social preoccupation of Betsy’s junior year in high school, mostly because Joe Willard begun courting Phyllis Brandish. Betsy had planned to go with Joe this year, and is stunned by the news that he is unavailable. A sorority is the perfect antidote, so she, Tacy, and Tib plan rituals and activities to transform the girls in the Crowd into a sorority that they will call Okto Delta (Eight Devils).

Sororities and fraternities developed in the mid-1800s as a way for college students to learn together about a wider range of topics than could be studied in the classroom. Initiation rites were modeled after classic communal groups including the ancient Greeks and Romans. Now called Greek life, many sorority members can live together in chapter houses and their operations include a full slate of philanthropic, social, and recreational activities. Modern sororities use social media and technology to assist with recruitment, share word of their events, and raise money.

Okto Delta inspires the boys in Betsy’s high school Crowd to develop a companion fraternity, Omega Delta, although Tony refuses to join and becomes sidelined a bit from the Crowd this year (taking up with some of his wilder friends and even a “perfectly awful girl” – p. 229, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1995). The two groups enjoy a full slate of gatherings during the year until it becomes apparent that other high schoolers besides Tony are finding the groups to be exclusionary and a bit snobbish as well. Their members miss out on social invitations and key school committee assignments and Betsy is not asked to compete in the year-end Essay Contest. Lesson learned, everyone is rather relieved when the groups disband.

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On the history of sororities and fraternities, see: https://fsl.appstate.edu/history-of-greek-life