Better call the media. A bunch of attractive white women just took a selfie of themselves being attractive and white.
Hold the presses while we investigate this breaking story.
Seriously- over 300 posts on this topic?
Better call the media. A bunch of attractive white women just took a selfie of themselves being attractive and white.
Hold the presses while we investigate this breaking story.
Seriously- over 300 posts on this topic?
There are a lot of things you can do if you really want to change things. If jonri ruled the world.
1.UA PanHel rush now takes place before classes start. You have to register to participate in advance. You have to send in recommendations ahead of time. If you are successfully pledged, you can transfer the majority of your eating plan to your house. jonri changes this: Freshmen are randomly assigned to dorms. (No differentiation as to cost for amenities or location.) Rush is moved back to second semester. You canât move in or eat in the house until your sophomore year. NO recommendations from alumnae members are considered. Recommendations from current members are.
I think the way Rush is structured now is part of the problem. How many young African-American women know white women who belonged to majority white sororities well enough to ask them to write recommendations? Read the threads right here on CC about how to get into a sorority at Alabama and youâll learn, as I did, that recommendations are important. IMO, itâs going to be a heck of a lot tougher for most African-American young women to come up with recs from alumni members of Alpa Phi or Kappa Kappa Kappa or whatever than it is for most young white women. If alumnae recs play any role at all in the process, they stack the deck, not only against African-American women, but also against young women whose parents didnât go to college, immigrants, and children of immigrants.
When you add in the fact that âlegacyâ members get a slight bump and that having an older sister who already belongs to the sorority gives a much bigger one, the process becomes even more problematic. How many African-American Rushees are going to be legacies or have older sisters who are house members?
Stack the deck again against young women who attended âminority majorityâ high schools. I know my exposure to Greek life is way out of date, but when I was in high school, your high school rep was definitely of interest to sororities. Girls from my high school had better odds of getting into state flagship houses which had sisters who had attended the same high school. If houses donât have any African-American members, the African American girls who have the best chance during Rush are those who attended majority white high schools and were well liked by their white classmates. These are the Rushees the sororities can actually find out something about.
When Rush is pushed back to second semester, some of those going through Rush may have made friends with those from different backgrounds. And which sorority will accept ALL of the friends theyâve made will become more important. And, even if youâre the only non-white at a Rush event, itâs a heck of lot easier if you go through the process with some friends you know like you for you.
If the Rushees have been on campus for a semester, they may actually know some of the current members of a house and discussion of whether they should be pledged will focus on things theyâve done in college. 'I think we should pledge Alycia. sheâs on the track team with me and sheâs really, really nice." And if we are going to assume some other stuff we might not think should matter doesâŠâDo you know sheâs dating ___, the star of the basketball team?â Or stuff that maybe some folks think should matter: 'She got a 3.75 first semester. Thatâll help our median GPA!!"
To the extent that some of this is about âpresentation,â how you dress, how âwell groomedâ you are, etc., young women who want to join have some time to âlearn the ropes,â to find a mentor maybe a year or two ahead who can take them shopping for the 'right" look or teach them how to apply make up or whatever. Many young white women who enroll in "Bama probably know other young women who can give them advice as to what to do to make it more likely youâll be admitted to a sorority. Maybe fewer African-American enrollees get this sort of helpful hand, Once theyâve arrived on campus though, itâs more likely they can find out these sorts of things if they want to know them.
^^âSeriously- over 300 posts on this topic?â
The 300 posts are why/how things change. People are uncomfortable with a video. They ask themselves, why? Dialogue is started. Info about UAâs very recent past is filled in. And people start to suggest ways to effectuate genuine change.
Iâd be discouraged if there WERENâT 300 posts on this topic.
@jonri, thereâs an abundance of off-campus housing available, including several places within walking distance of campus, at UA. Obviously, the closer the properties, the more expensive they are, but theyâre still about the same price as the nicest on-campus housing.
A lot of this is about class, IMHO, as much as race. I know of at least one African American student who successfully pledged a very nice Panhellenic Association (i.e., traditionally white) sorority last year. Sheâs thin and beautiful, and her dad is a surgeon. Sheâs also a genuinely nice and charismatic person. She will, no doubt, attract other students (regardless of their race) to that sorority. More power to 'em, I say.
Re accents, @JHS, as a Northerner (whoâs lived on the West Coast), I found there to be a wide variety of Southern accents when I visited UA. I found them all lovely, but then again I love meeting people from different parts of the country. And there were plenty of non-Southerners there too, but the staff is overwhelmingly Southern, obviously, and the Alabama accent is a very pretty one. (The president of Penn when I was a student there, Sheldon Hackney, was an Alabamian.)
UA has been a very nice change of scenery for my son. He has friends from all over the country, although most are from the South and Midwest. One of his best friends there is gay, another is Asian-American. Sadly the latterâs parents put the kibosh on his plans to room with the gay kid this year.
Life is complicated ⊠everywhere.
COME ON.
There are hundreds, maybe thousands of videos just like this. It is a recruitment video, if you donât want to join, donât join. If you donât want to watch, donât watch. They are appealing to teenage girls, not you. They are not being offensive, they are not being racist. I really donât understand the outrage.
More and more black girls are getting bids. Very few black girls are rushing, why is this the sororities fault?
I think you missed @MidwestDad3âs point, @IvyGreekLife:
Well, I can see you are both a historian and social scientist with your keen and nuanced observations on race and the south. BreathtakingâŠ
@boolaHI, was that directed at me?
Itâs the fault, in part, of the history of the sorority. It may or may not be the fault of girls who are in the sorority right now.
I think itâs important to note that there are two separate streams in this discussion. One is about how white the Greek organizations at UA (and elsewhere) are. The video in question is simply an easy to see depiction of this. The other stream is about the image of young women projected by this particular video. The idea that there are thousands of videos like this make it more reasonable to discuss the topic, not less.
No, not at all. Sorry, Lucie, that was meant for the poster right before meâŠ
Most of the black girls who do rush are getting bids. The sorority canât do much more right now than give bids.
Donât know about sorority members, but the University of Alabamaâs student body is overwhelmingly Southern. According to their most recent IPEDS data, 40% of the 2013 entering class came from Alabama and another 35% from other Southern states, with only about 23% from the Northeast, Midwest, and West combined, and another 2.5% internationals. About 60% came from Alabama and the 4 states immediately contiguous to it (Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi). So that means a strong majority of OOS students are southerners
Largest out-of-region representation would be from California (3.2%), Illinois (3.0%), Pennsylvania (1.9%), and Maryland (1.8%)
Thatâs okay, @boolaHI. This thread is moving fast!
âMost of the black girls who do rush are getting bids.â
The Marie Claire article on Crystal Stallworth from one year ago disputes this.
Letâs not facts, get in the way of a good yarnâŠ
But Lynrd Skynrd definitely recorded in Alabama. BecauseâŠ
âMuscle Shoals has got the Swampers. Oooo-who-oooo.â
The Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin recorded there too. Duane Allman was in the house band before forming the Allman Brothers Band.
Great documentary on Netflix:
@IvyGreekLife Well, when one is dealing with such small numbers, you can overstate the percentage increase, as any nominal move will seem dramatic. But, before we break out in dance and order mint juleps, here is the actual breakdown as applied to black woman, disaggregated from the total minority numbersâas reported in the Huffington Postâ
Among the final final numbers, 21 of the 2,054 women accepting bids to sororities at UA were black, and 190 were minorities. The numbers show progress, but also that more work remains. So, a whoop whoop 1%.
The sororities can do more than give bids. They can market themselves to attract more black girls to rush. I mean, clearly they do things to market themselves or this whole discussion wouldnât exist.
Obviously there are challenges with that and itâs much easier said than done. But just like most other organizations, if they truly want to be more diverse they should do more than sit and wait for members of under-represented groups to show up.
In responding to this thread I am afraid I have responded more out of reflex rather than with fact-checking. Only one African American female bid until the last couple of years? In a school of this size and diversity, with this large of a Greek presence on campus? It is embarrassing to have to say this now after my posts, but that is really shocking to me. The video didnât bother me, but that does. It doesnât look like at all what I see going on around me everyday in our local schools, the workplace, or anywhere else I go. Even if you spin it that hardly any women of color are seeking bids, that in and of itself isnât good.