HOW IS SORORITY
CULTURE
REPRESENTED
THROUGH CLOTHING
AT UBC?
E
ach year the eight sororities on UBC campus hold an
annual recruitment, known as Formal Recruitment,
designed to attract new student members. ‘Tours’ is
the first day of Formal Recruitment in which Potential
New Members (PNMs) are introduced to each Chapter
to get to know the women of each sorority and to better
understand their values. Through this mutual selection
process, PNMs will receive a bid, or invitation at the
end of Formal Recruitment, to join one of the eight
sororities. The first impressions that PNMs have of the
different sororities are mediated through what is known
as a tours outfit, a standardized ensemble worn by all
sorority members, consisting of a t-shirt and a pair of
shorts. Although this outfit is fairly uniform across all
sororities, each sorority has their own take on the outfit
that expresses and advertises who they are to PNMs.
Our research group was interested in how materiality
influences the sorority’s ideal image to the PNMs and as
such, we narrowed our focus to explore what wearing the
outfit meant to AOΠ members in terms of its perceived
function, as well as how they felt emotionally and
physically when wearing it.
25