To celebrate their “southern heritage and strong historical background,” some KA chapters host formals where guests go in full Civil War regalia, with the men in Confederate uniforms and the ladies in full “southern belle” hoop skirts. “Old South is the one formal that all sorority girls want to go to,” according to one excited blogger on a greekchat.com forum. “Who wouldn’t love to dress up like Scarlett O’Hara and have her size waist and Rhett Butler’s shoes under their bed!!!” says another.
However, some interpret the event less as a frothy costume party than as a relic of a darker era. KA members, though, were quick to defend themselves, citing the innocuous origins of the tradition in the 1930s when a brother was inspired by General Robert E. Lee’s “honor, chivalry and gentility,” and the idealization of southern “class and dignity” in “Gone with the Wind.”
Yet certain members of the general public continue to find Old South weekend objectionable, as did a predominantly black neighborhood in Athens, Georgia, where a KA chapter of the University of Georgia tried to relocate its house. “It is racial and it doesn’t feel good,” says a churchmember. “It hurts people’s feelings.”
Despite reassurances from KA that “there is truly more to the story than is being printed in the papers,” if it were up to some, these belles might have to hang up their ball gowns.
