October 1st at 4:15 A.M., which was a Saturday morning, Tazmyn called me on the phone.
"Eva, meet me at the Beta house in 17 minutes," she said before she hung up the phone.
It was going down, I thought to myself. I washed up in the sink real quick, put on a tee shirt and a pair of wrinkled jeans. I grabbed my keys and ID card and jumped in my car.

The sun had not yet risen. It was dark and cold outside. I was the first person at the Beta house. I looked at my watch. I had woken up and got dressed and made it to the Beta house in 9 minutes. Should I ring the bell? All of the lights were out. Two minutes later the twins arrived. Arcadia and Seneca, supermodels in training, even looked gorgeous at 4:26 A.M. The twins were followed by my old roommate Ashley, who was followed by a small girl with glasses named Jannette. Last but not least, just as the Beta's opened the front door after having us wait in the cold, Carmen was dropped off by a guy.
The Beta's quickly rushed us in the house. No sooner than we got inside Ursula got up in Carmen's face and started screaming at her.

"Are you crazy?" she yelled.

"I'm sorry am I late?" Carmen asked.

"Please tell me, are you crazy?" Ursula shouted.

"What do you mean?" Carmen asked in a meager voice.

"You are so dumb. I am sorry we chose to invite you. You had someone drop you off at the Beta house at 4:30 in the morning, a guy at that, a Greek guy at that, you might as well advertise to the world that we are planning a line. Man, I don't want her here. I'm serious," Ursula said.

The Beta's retreated to the bedroom and emerged a half an hour later. Every time we tried to talk among ourselves a voice shouted back.

"Shut up. Did we tell you all to say anything?"

Were these the same girls who had been so nice to us the past two weeks? I had never seen the Beta's like this.
Forty-five minutes later they emerged.

"Carmen, you have been given a reprieve. You can stay. But if you f' up again that's it," Connie said.

Tazmyn handed each of us a clipboard and a pen. I looked at the paper. It was a Beta Gamma Psi Pledge Application. Now was the time.

"Fill out the application," Tazmyn said. I read the application closely. The top portion of the application included general information, name, address, G.P.A., and other information. The bottom portion of the application was more detailed.
Have you ever been a Betafish before? the application read. A Betafish is what the Beta's called their pledges. I checked no.

Are you a Beta bloodline? I checked yes.

If you checked yes, circle appropriate relation, The application read.

I circled mother and sister.

The next part of the application was a two paragraph anti-hazing statement.

The Sorority of Beta Gamma Psi does not condone hazing. Hazing includes paddling, forced exercise, forced chores, forced work, forced errands, the giving of monies outside of monies directly required for intake, the forced ingestion of food or drink, or any mental or physical cruelty inflicted by members of Beta Gamma Psi to Beta Gamma Psi pledges.

If you witness hazing, you must report it to the faculty advisor for the Alpha Chapter of Beta Gamma Psi and you must also report it to the Eastern Regional Chapter of Beta Gamma Psi. If you are a victim of hazing, you must report it as specified above. If you witness hazing or are a victim of hazing and fail to report it, you are in violation of your Beta Gamma Psi intake oath and will be subject to punishment. Punishment may include failure to be accepted into the organization, immediate suspension, or you may even be permanently banned from joining the sorority.

By signing below, you acknowledge that you understand the anti-hazing oath.

I took a deep breath and signed the anti-hazing statement. It all seemed so ironic because I knew the Beta's hazed and I knew that it was going to get worse. I had already been subject to forced errands such as babysitting and donating money to various causes. I was scared. I could handle a few things but I hoped things didn't get too bad.

"Does anyone have any questions?" Cassidy asked.

Leave it to Carmen to ask a question. Hadn't she been in enough hot water that day?
"This form says that the payment for intake is $650 but you all told us we need to have $800? Which is it?" Carmen asked. Ursula rolled her eyes at Carmen's question.

"What did we tell you?" Ursula said with a sassy attitude.

"$800," Carmen whispered.

"Then $800 it is," Ursula really couldn't stand Carmen, which is why I didn't see why they had even chosen her to go on line.
"The form needs to be updated. The extra money goes towards buying your paraphernalia-if you all cross over," Connie explained.

"Oh and I should mention that we will need the money as soon as possible because I am turning in the applications to the Registered Student Organization office on Monday morning. We take checks, cash, etc. Will anyone have a problem coming up with the money by Monday?" Cassidy asked.

I noticed Ashley take a deep sigh. The twins opened up their check books and started to write checks, as did Jannette.

"If you all give me a ride to the ATM I can pay today," Carmen offered.

"I have my debit card with me, I can pay cash also," I said.

Ashley was the only one that didn't say anything. As the Beta's were writing receipts and taking checks from the girls who were paying I whispered to Ashley.

"Ashley, do you have your money?" I asked.

"Yeah, well sorta. I have $600 in the bank and I mean that's it, that is like all of my money in the world. I could probably try to get in touch with my dad and have him send me a Western Union but you know he is in Japan on business so I will have to go buy a calling card to make an international phone call," Ashley explained.

I remembered Ashley telling me that her father worked overseas sometimes.

"Look, I have $1300. I took out a student loan last week. I will let you borrow $300, that way you will still have some money in your pocket," I said.

Ashley leaned over and gave me a hug.

"You are so sweet, thank you Eva," Ashley whispered.

"Well, well what do we have here, sisterhood or cliques forming already," Tazmyn smirked.

I didn't know whether she was joking or serious so I just didn't say anything. I had learned that it was better to just not say anything rather than to risk saying the wrong thing.

After all of the monies were collected we all were sent back to our respective homes and ordered to pack. We were instructed to call our immediate family members, i.e. mom or dad and let them know that we would be busy; but that we were fine and not to worry if they could not reach us. We were told to pack all of our school books, computer disks, anything that we might need because we wouldn't be seeing our homes for a minute. We also were told to pack several formal outfits, and casual clothing that we could wear to class. We were also given a list of things to buy or bring. The list included four sweat suits, two purple and two black, clean socks, a flashlight, a black permanent marker and other assorted items. I felt like I was preparing to go to summer camp. I was so freakin' excited. Here it was. I was finally about to officially go on line to become a Beta. Awesome.

We were instructed to return to the Beta House at 8:00 P.M. that evening. We were told to walk or to take a taxi cab. I guess it would look pretty obvious if all of our cars were seen at the Beta house. It was raining outside when we arrived.
Ashley and I shared a cab to cut expenses. Carmen and Jannette must have lived closer to the Beta house because they walked. The twins strolled up at 7:59.

Ashley rang the bell.

"Come on, I know they are in there. It's freezing out here," Seneca squealed.

Let me take this opportunity to tell you about Seneca and Arcadia in detail. They were fraternal twins. They were very tall for women. They were about 5 foot 11 each. Seneca wore her hair in a short hair style cropped around her face and Arcadia had very long straight hair, which I later found out was a fusion weave. They both had modeled before, on runways and in print. Seneca was a psychology major and Arcadia was an electrical engineering major. I think that Seneca was close friends with Connie.

The twins were both very smart. They had very high grade point averages, 3.8 and 4.0. I couldn't believe how good their grades were. That meant that they had gotten an A in almost every course. Was it their looks that made a teacher never give them anything less than the best?

"I'm not saying anything. I'm keeping my mouth closed," Carmen said.

Carmen was about five foot seven with wavy black hair that went to the middle of her back. She was very attractive, and kind of quiet. Sneaky. Not someone that I easily trusted, and not just based on what Ashley had said about her, something about Carmen just seemed phony. Carmen was very outgoing and from what I knew about her from the campus gossips she had quite a reputation. She was disliked by both males and females.

Jannette was probably the quietest of the group. She wore glasses but was not a nerd. She was nice and friendly and always spoke. She was well dressed but didn't flaunt a lot of designer clothes or purses like the rest of us. She seemed like a really nice girl. She was from Georgia and she had a slight southern accent. Jannette was about five foot five. She weighed about 145 pounds and she had a nice shape. She was thick, but not fat. She wasn't someone that you would look at and call pretty, but she was decent in the face.

We waited in the rain for nearly twenty minutes. We were freezing our asses off sitting on the porch. Finally, Tazmyn opened the door,

"Why didn't you all just open the door? It was unlocked. This is your house now."

We knew the door had been locked because we tried it. They were just screwing with us. Connie and the other Beta's were standing in the living room laughing.

It may seem like only 4 Beta's were involved in the pledge process-Tazmyn, Urusula, Connie and Cassidy. There were other Beta's in the sorority. Let me explain how the pledge process works. Just like any other organization, there are committees. Certain members of the sorority express an interest in being on the new member intake committee. The sorors who commit have the time and desire to play a very active role, because bringing in new sorority members is a lot of work.
Overall, all of the sorority members play a role, but there are a select few that work harder than the rest. Tazmyn, Ursula, Cassidy and Connie-the super seniors, were 110% all about Beta Gamma Psi. They loved the organization and were very dedicated to it. They were all graduating at the end of the semester, so essentially, this would be there last time in charge of an undergraduate Beta Gamma Psi line. They had all been at Carver at least 5 years and it was time for them to move on.
The younger Beta Gamma Psi members for the most part were trying to reclaim the normalcy of their pre-Beta life. Some of them had experienced a drop in their grades while pledging, so they were studying a lot. One member, Shandel, was on the basketball team, so she was always busy.

We often heard the old school Beta's refer to the missing members as the "shell shocked" Beta's. They said the girls were shell shocked because they had gone through so much pledging that they didn't know if they liked being around them or not. Ursula joked that they needed time to "desensitize."

After drying off and changing into our sweat suits we were shown to our sleeping quarters. We were all going to be sleeping in one room in the Beta house. Talk about mental torture.

"Here is your room," Cassidy opened the door to a very large 2nd floor bedroom. The Beta house was huge, they didn't have to put us all in one room, but they chose to.

Ashley looked around the room in dismay. The room had two twin bunk beds on each side and a futon in the middle of the room.

"This room is small, how are we all supposed to live in here?" Ashley asked.

"Girl, this is good. Shoot, you should have seen how it was when we pledged, tell them Ursula," Cassidy laughed.
"They had us up in Greenwich, you know the dorm. We were all in one dorm room and it was 8 of us in the beginning. We had sleeping bags. The first few days it was fun like a slumber party but after three days we started hating each other," Ursula chuckled.

"Ohmigosh Ursula, remember we had a fight over the curling iron," Cassidy giggled.

"Girl, look at my arm," Ursula laughed as she pulled up her sleeve.

"This girl hit me with a curling iron, I am scarred for life," Ursula pointed at Cassidy.

I envied how they fondly reminisced about their time pledging. The whole getting burned with the curling iron didn't sound cool, but they seemed to be such good friends. Sisters. I couldn't imagine if me, Ashley, Jannette, Carmen, Arcadia and Seneca would every be like that.

We settled into our new living quarters. The Beta's decided that Jannette and Arcadia would sleep on one side in the bunk beds, and Ashley and Seneca would sleep on the other twin beds. This left me and Carmen without a bed. I wondered why Carmen and I ended up bed less. Could it have been because we were the only two pledges who had pissed off the Beta's at one time or another? Carmen and I were told to take turns on the futon. We could luck up and get a bed if we scored more pledge points than our pledge sisters for certain events. Carmen just didn't learn.

"Can I just sleep on the couch downstairs?" Carmen asked.

"No, you can't just sleep on the couch downstairs. You all are in one room for a reason, to bond, to become one, to become sisters," Ursula explained.

After we settled in the best we could, we went downstairs to have a meeting with the sisters. They handed us all purple spiral notebooks. We were told that these were our pledge books and that we had to keep them with us at all time. They tried their best to explain to us how the pledge process was going to work. We had to live in the house. We were not to tell anyone in the world that we were pledging, not even out parents. We would receive pledge points for attending events and by completing certain "sisterhood" challenges and events. If there was an event, and one of the pledges didn't attend or couldn't complete the challenge, then we would all lose points. We would also get points by answering random questions about the sorority, by taking tests and quizzes and by going above and beyond to help sisters.  

Essentially we needed 1500 points in order to take our Beta Gamma Psi membership exam. No one could take the test until every pledge sister had 1500 points. At that time, we would take the test and if we all were successful, we would be initiated. They gave us no indication of how long the process would last, but I assumed that we would cross over before the semester ended.

It was determined that Cassidy would be our dean. This was cool because Cassidy-although she had her moments, was the nicest of all of the Beta's.

It sounded a bit Fear Factor like, but I was down with it. At this point, the Beta's were still being somewhat cordial yet trying their best to be intimidating. Keep in mind, that the Beta sisters were scholarly women from upper middle class backgrounds. They would try to be mean and monster like, but deep down that wasn't who they really were.
After a brief ceremony among the Beta's and pledges, we were officially sworn in as pledges of Beta Gamma Psi. Cassidy gently pinned our pledge pins on each of us one by one. My time had come. I was officially on line.
The first week of pledging was demanding and fun. Fun, and the word pledging in one sentence? In the beginning the pledge process was fun.

Beta Gamma Psi wasn't like a lot of those other sororities. You know the ones that when their pledges are on line they want them to look crappy and wear bad clothes and have their hair looking a hot mess. We were expected to look and act as we normally did. There were a few rules. We couldn't be seen socializing or eating in public. We were to go to our classes and if we weren't in class, we were supposed to be at the Beta house. In between classes the only places we could be seen without losing points was the computer lab or the library.

Living in a room with five other girls was a nightmare. The Beta's would not let us use any of the other bathrooms. We had to share one bathroom, so everyone was taking 5 minute showers. Getting ready was a challenge. Girls would fight for mirror space to do their hair and make-up.

It was early October and homecoming was coming up soon. The first week of pledging we did a lot of fun stuff. We helped the Beta's practice for the step show by rewinding their music. We all worked together on a large wooden prop that we painted to be used for the step show.

The mental and physical cruelty started to creep in slowly but surely. For instance, we couldn't eat until they told us to eat. When we did eat they controlled what we ate. That first week we would be working on step show stuff until 11 P.M. We would be hungry, tired, wanting to go to bed and still hadn't ate anything. Then afterwards they would tell us we could order one large pizza. You do the math, 6 hungry girls, 12 slices of pizza.

We were steady gaining pledge points by learning Beta Gamma Psi history and through our hard work preparing for the step show. Some of us were losing points. Carmen lost 10 points for falling asleep while watching the sisters practice for the step show. I can't say I blame her. Do you know how boring it is watching someone do the same 4 minute routine over and over and over, and hearing the same music over and over and over? I admit, the Beta Gamma Psi sisters were persistent hard workers.

Thursday of week one. After a week of studying Beta material and helping them with the step show, we were awakened by Cassidy.

"Get up, get up, put on your black sweat suits and meet us in the living room. Oh yeah, and bring your flashlights."
I had been asleep on the floor when Cassidy came to awake us. I looked at my watch. It was 3:15 A.M. We had just fallen asleep at 1:30. Were these people crazy?

We all scrambled to get dressed and we met the Beta Gamma Psi sisters in the living room. The crazy Beta big sisters were dressed in purple jogging suits.

*This web excerpt does not represent the actual paragraph style or typesetting of the book. Certain sections have been spaced different to make for easier web reading.