Eight federal prosecutors and 23 sorority women learned this month that political plums once bestowed may be revoked without ceremony. Pledged to service and sisterhood respectively, the U.S. attorneys and the DePauw University Delta Zeta recruits were dismissed when their lack of partisan zeal or party girl appeal ran afoul of organizational standards.

The controversy surrounding the oustings has made these outcasts media darlings: the unswayable litigators and the unfashionable coeds.

But what is most surprising about this pair of strikingly similar scandals is not that incumbents were robbed of the positions they thought they’d earned. It is that anyone was shocked when what we knew to be at the root of the selection processes was exposed to the airwaves.

How did we think people got picked for top government jobs or sorority pledge classes? Merit? Diligence? Come on. We understand it’s not what you know, but who you know and sometimes how you look in a pair of Sevens.

In order to “re-colonize” a half-empty house at DePauw, DZ believed it needed to boost its image by purging the deadweight. Loyalty to current members was abandoned in favor of courting the pretty and popular. The 23 members placed on “alumnae status” included all who weighed in above size 10, the only black member and two of three Asians. DZ bid each woman goodbye with a $300 check to cover the difference between sorority and campus housing.

The Department of Justice was equally discreet, resorting to behind-the-scenes maneuvering and blatant party politicking.

The sisters and the lawyers joined organizations that rejected them when they failed to morph into sorostitutes and prosti-cutors.

Caught with their fingerprints on the ax handles, both guilty parties chose the classic defense of blaming the victims. The Bush administration suggested the fired attorneys were incompetent. DZ’s national executive director insisted that the dismissed sisters weren’t committed to recruitment. Though the prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the president and the women at the whim of the sorority, we expected a little more integrity.

The resulting media frenzy might cause some heads to roll. This is encouraging. DZ’s removal from the DePauw campus (where the Greek presence is more than 70 percent) and calls for the resignation of Attorney General Gonzales suggest that times are changing. We may be more image-conscious than ever, but we flinch when exclusionary practices are revealed.

What is the moral of these stories? Slim down, suck up and sell out? Or dare one hope that these events encourage our own social organizations and employers to honor their principles, placing sisterhood and public service ahead of politics.