I think judging people based on their looks alone is pretty much the definition of shallow. I’m not saying that we don’t all do it at times.
But girls are not going to pledge a sorority based only on this video. There are three or four days of parties where they interact with the girls.
I don’t think judging people by their appearance is shallow at all, but that is probably because I took a course in nonverbal communication in college, where we were taught that it is human nature to interpret physical cues in order to predict behavior. I have found this to be true a majority of the time (but not always) over the course of my lifetime.
On the racial diversity issue, do we think just the national attention (the negative publicity basically) will adequately rectify the situation and it will change over time? I tend to think change has begun and will continue in the right direction. There will still be under-representation due to SES, other factors, and well just human nature, but there will be at least enough of a shift in diversity within the greek system at U of A so that it approaches looking like the equivalent at other large public universities. Agree or disagree?
As someone wrote up-thread, legacies are a complicated issue at some schools where there may be more legacies wanting to pledge a house than the number of pledges allowed by quota. And they may be legacies of that particular chapter, not just the sorority in general. I think this has a huge impact on limiting all sorts of diversity within the system. Therefore, I want to get rid of rush and just randomly assign pledges to houses. Everyone gets a spot. Legacies become less important and eventually meaningless. And we get rid of “tiers” of houses.
Sounds like time for a Sorting Hat! (Of course, now I’m imagining what the Slytherin recruiting video would look like.) >:)
That is not a very big shift. Ohio State and Penn State, two big public schools not in the south but with similar percentages of white undergraduates as Alabama, have what appear to be still highly racially segregated sororities, based on the photos on chapter web sites.
I think that a few of the houses are making an effort to change things. It looks like there are 50-60 black women in the houses, and they are not evenly divided. Are those houses going to get to 10-12%? Yes, I think so some day. Some of it may depend on how strong the traditionally black sororities are. If those houses shrink or close, more black women will head to the sorority row houses.
^ I would be happy to get rid of the recommendations as well as any preference for legacies. However randomly assigning girls to a house make no sense to me. It would be the same as living in a dorm where students are randomly assigned. I can not imagine much cohesiveness or sisterhood in that.
I have mentioned before on other threads that the college I attended was about 30% Greek, but that there were 2 groups of non sorority women who had formed their own social groups that were well known on campus. One group lived in a block of rooms in the dorm , the other group rented a house. They had cutesy names for their groups, inter mural teams, matching T shirts, etc. They were nice and friendly to others but they did not invite anyone else to be part of their group. And so what? They had a right to socialize as such with whom they wanted.
One discussion here has been whether self-segregation is a positive at college. I see it as a negative.
I like to imagine we can be friends and “sisters” with those that don’t look just like us and come from very different backgrounds.
I was friends and sisters with a lot of people in college who did not look like me and came from different backgrounds. Some were in my sorority and some were not.
Randomly assigning students to a cohesive living group is more or less what schools with residential colleges do. Well, I don’t think it is actually completely random: at Yale they try to make each house a representative slice of the class, at Harvard students form their own small groups after freshman year which are then assigned to a house. (I don’t know what the process is at Rice, or at the schools that have begun to implement this without being built for it, such as Princeton and Williams.)
It seems to work out well and foster fellowship.
At Dartmouth, the D-Plan and the resultant shuffling of living situations is probably part of what makes pledging a fraternity, sorority, or non-Greek house so appealing: it’s a home for a few years, whether or not you live there. Part of Dartmouth’s new plan to revamp their social structure is to create residential colleges that provide more stability and fellowship without going Greek. It will be interesting to see what effect is has on the houses.
@Hanna, BTW, Dartmouth does primary rush the Fall Term of sophomore year, not in January. 
There is a Winter Rush in January, but it is much smaller and not all houses participate in it every year. I think it is a really smart thing to delay rush for a year, so that kids have the opportunity to actually meet and decide where they would like to rush and who they would like to bid based on some actual knowledge of each other.
Wow. Now we’re just getting petty. Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel superior.
BTW, that young African American woman I referred to a few pages ago is full pay at Bama. She didn’t need any generous scholarships to be lured there. She chose it over several more “prestigious” (on CC anyway) schools. She wanted a big thriving university in a warm part of the country where she could excel academically AND have fun. She got it, and she’s thrived there.
And I know plenty of other OOS families (black and white) who are full pay at UA. Believe it or not, a lot people can AFFORD it. Just like a lot of my neighbors can afford to send their kids to all kinds of pricey schools, public and private, in-state and -out. (Sadly, I don’t happen to be in the same position!)
Seriously, all this talk of recommendations and legacy (or not) pretty much parallels the entire elite college admissions discussion. Folks, there’s elitism, in many forms, everywhere. When I read that some sociopath from an elite private boarding school was admitted to Harvard to study theology of all things (would love to read all the letters of recommendation he received!), I’m reminded that no university is perfect. They all have their mechanisms for including and excluding “undesirables” because that’s what humans like to do.
And, please, that Yale sorority video looked plenty silly to me. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, LOL.
“I like to imagine we can be friends and “sisters” with those that don’t look just like us and come from very different backgrounds.”
I got exposure to MORE diverse types of women / interests / backgrounds through a sorority than I would have if left to my own devices in my own dorm or major (which were both small).
But yeah, honestly my friends are probably reasonably “conventional” in dress / appearance. Some might be preppy, some more bohemian, some more creative, some more athletic/sporty, but no, I would probably not be attracted to someone (male or female) with, say, sleeve tattoos or who was grossly overweight and not well kept.
Of course, when someone says they are put off by the girl in designer clothing, or the girl in pearls and a sweater set, that’s … different somehow. It’s ok for them to be turned off by how she dresses.
Those are things she can readily change.
She can’t change her ethnicity or socioeconomic background, and it would be difficult for her to change something like obesity or tattoos.
Why should she change them, though? If she likes pearls and sweater sets and Lilly Pulitzer, what’s it to anyone else?
And tattoos are not something you’re born with - you make conscious decisions to get them.
There are larger people who are well kept up, though, and larger people who aren’t.
Generally speaking, I do tend to hang around people who at least pay some attention to their appearance beyond pulling on the least-dirty sweatpants. That doesn’t mean they are fashionistas, but they typically aren’t cat-lady-sweatshirts either. That’s a “thing” we might have in common - oh, that’s a cute outfit you’re wearing, where did you get it, etc.
“Sounds like time for a Sorting Hat! (Of course, now I’m imagining what the Slytherin recruiting video would look like.)”
That’s pretty much how Notre Dame does it. No greeks as is the case with a lot of Catholic colleges. Kids get pretty randomly assigned to a dorm as freshman and typically stay in that same dorm for all four years.
So your dorm pretty much functions as your smaller social unit rather than a frat, eating club, residential college, etc.
Lol sororities are more than dorms
People seem to think if you randomly throw people into a dorm or a Greek house then they would become friends. Both of my kids lived at their Uni’s largest dorm freshman year, yet most of their friends from freshman year joined Greek life. I would have to think that they would have socialized with same group of people with or without Greek life at their Uni.
Both of my girls like to go out and care about how they look, so they wouldn’t necessary be friends with people who don’t care coral is the new red this year, no matter how hard an institution wants to try to make them co-mingle.
D1 was made to room with a girl who wore combat boots and liked to sit in the dark. D1 and the roommate managed to live together, but there was no lasting friendship.
We love to talk about diversity, how great it is, but how many people actually have a wide circle of friends outside of their SES or hobbies? I know I am so busy with work and all that when I have time I want to be with people who I can relate to.
This sounds cheesy, but we all remember the show “Cheers.” The theme song was “Where Everybody Knows Your Name.” The idea of walking into a room where one feels comfortable and at home, where ever it maybe, is very comforting. We tend to seek out people who are like us, but we think it is wrong for our kids to do that.
There are some over the top wealthy URMs. They send their kids to black colleges and then to top tier professional graduate schools. They only socialize with each other, and their students probably spend more money on Jimmy Choo shoes than most white kids.