Pinned

Runlulurun explains Greek dating rituals—as in American college fraternities and sororities, not as in the land of Plato and dolmas.

There were three or four levels of commitment that were recognized by this ritual. The first equated to going steady with a guy in a fraternity. If you were “lavaliered” that meant that the guy had given you a charm of his fraternity letters to wear. Basically it was like wearing a guy's class ring in high school.

The next level was that you were pinned ... this was a more significant step. In this instance, the guy would give his girlfriend his fraternity pin to wear along with her own sorority pin.

Sometimes people would announce if they got promised to a guy, which was usually represented with a teeny tiny diamond ring. (Sometimes this step was skipped)

And the motherload, the Holy Grail for most of sorority girls in college everywhere (at least in the 80's): the engagement.

There's also singing, candles, and sisterhood.

I'm a feminist freak citizen who went to the University of California at Santa Cruz as the '80s rolled over into the '90s. UCSC had more students who joined SAGE—Students Against Greek Establishment—than we had in our handful of off-campus fraternities and sororities. Perhaps, with all that, I should find her account troubling or unappealing, but in fact I find it strangely delightful.