Profile on Gabby's election week

Monday, November 14th, Gabby walked in the door and sat down on our colorful round poof in our small living room. I asked, “How did it go?” and with an awkward and uncomfortable voice, she responded with the dreaded, “We need to talk.”

Gabby Blaire Slaasted is a junior at the University of Minnesota majoring in Speech Language Hearing Sciences, which she chose based on a list of careers for her personality type generated by the Myers Briggs personality test she took freshman year one night. Gabby is a part of the sorority called Zeta Omicron Pi, which is home to a beautiful tall brick house on 5th St. in Dinkytown. The sorority makes up about 150 girls, but only 42 live in the house. She lives about two blocks away on the top floor of a triplex, which is pretty much a large attic. She shares a quaint room with very slanted ceilings with her roommate, me, Paige Margaret Puntillo.

Freshman year, Gabby joined the “University of Minnesota Class of 2018” Facebook group shortly after she received her acceptance letter and decided that Minnesota is the right school for her. Like many other first year students, she immediately began online dating for her first, college dorm roommate. “I didn’t want to take my chances with a random roommate,” she had said to me a long time ago. She posted a fun, sweet, and a little quirky message on the Facebook page in search for a roommate. She ended up finding me, and we went through the typical lets-be-roommates questions. After she asked, “Do you party?” I asked, “Are you going Greek?” She responded, “I’m not your typical sorority girl, but I guess I don’t know much about it.” Behind the entire stigma Hollywood puts behind sorority life, it was hard for a high school girl to imagine what Greek life is really like.

After thinking long about it, she decided to try it out and register for sorority recruitment, also known as “Rush,” and I opted out of it and took the life of a God Damned Independent, known as GDI and pronounced “Geed.” However, despite our online selecting odds and our rival Greek versus GDI lives, we became the best of friends and forever college roommates… until junior year.

On Monday, November 14th, Gabby had just got back from her weekly Monday night sorority meeting. Every sorority has required Monday night meetings where the girls must dress in business professional outfits. On this Monday, the purpose of the meeting was to slate new leadership positions in the house. Gabby had been telling me that day that she really wanted the position Chapter Development. “I’d get to work alongside the president and alumni to organize alumni events and also facilitate rituals inside the house,” she explained to me. “It is an important position, but it isn’t one of the executive positions, so it won’t be too much for me to handle,” she said. Unfortunately for Gabby and her roommate, me, that Monday night meeting didn’t go as planned. Her sorority sisters didn’t vote for her for Chapter Development; instead they slated her for New Member Educator...

“I didn’t even fill out a platform for New Member Educator!” explained Gabby who was both flattered and defensive. I asked her if she was happy or mad about it because I was confused by her multifaceted attitude. She went on, “Well that’s why we need to talk. New Member Educator is one of the live-in positions.” In her sorority, similar to others, there are a handful of executive positions. These positions are required live-in positions meaning whoever is elected in those five spots are required to live in the sorority house during their time on exec. “I think New Member Educator would be an amazing position, and much more suiting for me, which is apparently why everyone slated me, even with out a platform that I swear I didn’t fill!” she explained. I kept saying “No.” in between every one of her few pauses. “It is an amazing and highly regarded position. I would get to be the leader, teacher, mother figure, and confidant to the new members of the chapter as they learn about the sorority and what we stand for.” “No, you’re not moving out,” I said. With tears forming in her eyes, Gabby went on, “It is the perfect position for me; more so than Chapter Development. I only ran for that because it was a good, non-exec position.” I told her she’s not moving out, and with frustration she said to me, “You would be the only reason I don’t do this.” In shock and frustration, I replied, “Yeah and that’s a good enough reason. Besides it’s not because of me, it’s because of a commitment you made to me. We are roommates, and have been since freshman year and will be until we graduate!” I stormed off into our room. If she gets elected on Sunday, she would have to move out of our shared room, move into her sorority house, and leave me behind for the second half of our junior year.

Until this point in Gabby’s college career, she had done an amazing job of finding a nearly impossible balance between her sorority sisters and her GDI friends. She has sorority obligations like Monday night meetings, philanthropy, and fundraising events. And then she has fun, non-mandatory, events like Formals and Date parties that she would never miss. Every so often when her sorority has a “pairing party,” which is an event with a single sorority and fraternity held at the fraternity or a local venue, she will go to that too. Sometimes during the week she will hang out with a couple of her sisters, and on occasion she finds herself at a typical frat party on a Friday or Saturday night. But along with all of those events and occasions, she spends a lot of her time with our friends and me, especially because at the end of the night, she always comes home to me. We do homework together in our room all the time, we eat dinner together, we go out together most of the time, and we do fun things on the weekends together like exploring new places, going on urban adventures, or going back to places we can’t get enough of like Duluth, MN. Our friendship isn’t perfect, but we balance each other very well. We fight like sisters but we are as close as best friends come. We have a very similar sense of humor, clothing style, taste in guys, and typical best friend matching qualities, but one difference between us is how Gabby goes with her gut and does more things on a limb, and I do things closer to home and take less risks. This trait that Gabby has, is what scared me the minute she got slated for New Member Educator.

Observing her attitude and mood this week, I learned that this pickle she found herself in, tore her apart. She was very conflicted because she wanted to be excited but she didn’t want to leave me. At her sorority house, I learned that many girls in her sorority would say, “Don’t let a lease stop you from taking a leadership position.” Or, “This is so perfect for you, don’t let a lease for one semester hold you back from this experience.” But while she was having conversations like those at her sorority house, she was hearing comments of disbelief and regret from her housemates such as, “Why would you leave us just for a sorority position?” or “We will never see you, and things will be different.” On top of that, she had conversations with her actual roommate, me, that went everywhere from supportive and understanding to yelling and crying with flying emotions.

Thursday, the 17th, late at night, Gabby picked me up from the airport. We had a pleasant conversation and I could feel that she was genuinely conflicted. “I want to be excited for this position, but I don’t like that it means I would have to move out,” Gabby said. I told her that I understand that the position would be really cool along with the experience of living in, but that I hope she doesn’t get it. “I would feel so bad to leave you if I get it, but I don’t know, I’m really kind of hoping I get it,” Gabby said. I replied, “I want to be happy for you because I care about you, but at the same time I care and don’t want to lose you.” “It is only 4 months that I wouldn’t be your roommate, and we would still hang out all the time,” Gabby told me. “And if I get it I would do everything I can to find you a great girl to live with." I told her I’m willing to be accommodating and supportive if it means so much to her, but by sunrise it was already a different story.

Friday morning, the 18th, we were yelling at each other again. Gabby mentioned that she heard about a Minnesota subleasing Facebook group. I got upset and defensive and told her, “I’m not sharing a room with anyone else.“ She immediately got defensive and worked up. “Well if I move out I’m going to find a subleaser to take my spot,” she said with attitude. I told her selfishly that she should just pay rent and keep half her stuff here, but she argued back raising her voice to a yell, “Rent is already going to be over a hundred dollars more per month in the house and I can’t afford to pay double!” She was completely right, because as a broke college girl, paying $400 a month is tough; paying nearly a $1000 is completely unattainable. But I was still upset and went on, “We’ve happily lived three feet away from each other for three years, there’s no need to change it, this whole thing is so dumb! We argued back and forth just repeating ourselves. She cried because I was mad and not being understanding, but I fought with emotions because I couldn’t imagine living three feet away from anyone else, and neither could she.

Saturday the 19th, Gabby was feeling extremely horrible and heart broken that she would abandon her commitment as my roommate by accepting. The position was calling her name, and the experience of living in her sorority house is always something she longed for, but never gave thought to because of her GDI best friend; at least that’s what I thought. We of course found ourselves talking about this situation again, but this time we weren’t yelling. I was trying to be supportive, which only happened when I wasn’t thinking about my compromising living situation, and I said again, “I get it, it would be a really cool experience.” She agreed, and I continued, “I know that you’ve always wanted to live in the house and that this is an opportunity to experience that.” Offended by my comment Gabby said, “I really want to be New Member Educator, but I do not want to live in the house at all, but if that’s what I have to do for this position then I guess I will.” I said back, “I don’t necessarily think it’s your hidden agenda, but I know you want to live in, or else you wouldn’t be doing the position. You didn’t even want it to begin with.” Now really offended, Gabby went on and on defending her “real” motives and how this position means so so much to her. At one point she said, “ZOII (Zee-Oh-pie) doesn’t mean any more to me than you do, I’m not choosing to move out, I’m choosing a really amazing position.” I snarled back, “If you had zero desire to live in at all, I know you would not even think about the position.” Frustrating and probably avoiding the conversation escalating into a screaming match, Gabby just left the room. In my mind I won the conversation, but she would definitely argue against that because she doesn’t like being wrong and definitely doesn’t like being questioned.

Sunday morning, the 20th came sooner than Gabby or I was prepared for. It was Election Day, and she got ready in an empty room because I was at work. She felt sick to her stomach as she got dressed and fixed her left over makeup from the night before. She told me this after I got back from work. She told me after she shared the news that she’s officially New Member Educator and moving out.