I attended a sorority philanthropy event last week where a successful wedding dress designer and business owner, Janelle Berte, came to speak about how she built her business and moved her shops from LA to Lancaster, PA and Manhattan.

Unfortunately, the invites only went out to sororities, but truth be told, I snuck in five friends who wanted to come just to hear the business aspect part of it. I’m pretty sure those five and I were the only ones listening. 

Since the room was obviously segregated by sorority chapter, each one chose to have side conversations throughout the whole presentation… Oh wait, except for the part when girls modeled the dresses and Berte gave out free wedding planning books (worth $50, we got them free, I think that have been most girls’ motivation). 

The chatterboxes included the Chi Omega chick that ran the show… I’m pretty sure she was made of plastic, she walked like her limbs were stuck and her skin tight, short-skirted tweed suit didn’t move when she moved (my friends were calling her Barbie). 

I mean, any girl will get excited to talk about her preconceived wedding plans, but a little respect for the woman might have been nice. Half of those girls are marketing/advertising/business majors anyway; you’d think they would have cared.

That’s not to say that many girls here at Penn State are not career-savvy. Go find my previous post on career aspirations; seven out of ten on that list are females, and those aren’t small goals. 

But after this event, I lost a little bit of that faith I had when talking to the more intelligent of Penn State’s women.