That’s the biggest part of it I think @boolaHI state schools have to cater to the needs and abilities of the students in their state. Harvard/MIT do not have that requirement.
I posted the Yale stat in response to boolahi’s claim that Yale’s black numbers are in the double-digits. They are not.
I am fine with affirmative action. What I don’t like is when people draw conclusions about what is happening based only on a stat. That a sorority may have few members of a particular demographic does not alone prove anything about the women in the house. It’s a mutual selection process that involves varied considerations and outside influences, just like college admissions do. A low black demographic without any other information does not automatically mean racism.
When discussing relative diversity, it’s pretty silly to compare 'Bama with Yale and MIT. It has a completely different admissions profile, in the first place. In the second place, somebody noted the GPA for this particular sorority. Many Greek organizations, and their university Pan-Hellenic offices, set minimum GPAs, and one would imagine that the chapters and their associated networks would work to support students who might be struggling. With that in mind, I have trouble imagining that it is terribly difficult to maintain a B- average as an undergraduate at 'Bama (with possible exception of some STEM programs), and the fact that half the young women of Alpha Phi apparently are falling short suggests that they might not be academically-focused. Every fraternity and sorority relies on a few super-achieving students (they were typically, albeit far from exclusively, pre-meds when I was involved) to keep the aggregate GPA up.
I digress. I did not observe the number of Asian students in the Alpha Phi video that one would expect from even the most prestigious clubs at Ivy League colleges. Alabama is a poor state, and it is not unreasonable to hope that its flagship public university would consider helping raise as many academically-promising students from poor backgrounds as possible a core mission. Instead, the university has engaged a national network of boosters to persuade affluent students from elsewhere to go to Alabama, on the hope of raising its Common Data Set. Videos like this would not reassure many poor students from in-state (or out-of-state), and especially poor non-white students, that they will find the campus culture hospitable. I hope that other Greek-letter organizations portray themselves as friendly to students who are not only diverse in terms of pigmentation, but in terms of interests, tastes, and affinities. I’m not asking the traditionally white chapters to welcome Democrats, but they might at least show that they have more eclectic musical tastes.
Huh? I thought UA is 30 percent Greek. 70 percent (assuming all of them decided not to go Greek for financial reasons) is NOT “the great majority.”
And, btw, they were really having to dig deep with my D, at Y, with the whole affirmative action thingie, # 2 in her class of over 400, 34 SAT, state ranked athlete, and more awards than you can shake at stick at…
When assessing the prominence of Greek organizations, it is more important to examine how central they are to a campus’s social environment. If almost all parties and social events are hosted by Greek houses, and the student-body leadership is typically dominated by fraternity and sorority members, then there are systemic problems to address if the majority of students are ineligible for membership.
As a southerner that loves to criticize the South. You may or may not be more racist, but there are definitely commonplace instances of racism in the South that some people seem keen on ignoring. Playing a game of “who’s more racist” doesn’t do anything. Maybe the game should be “let’s stop being racist”.
Yeah part of it is due to affirmative action. So what? Even if I get into a high ranking institution in part or regardless of affirmative action, my stats would still be near the top of the pool at Alabama.
Alabama isn’t a hard to get into school, nobody is saying otherwise. Alabama is a flagship that attracts enough applicants from all the state’s demographics, we get it. By definition that’s what a flagship does. The last two sentences of your post make no sense to me.
1- Race/Class are intersectional
2- A high enough proportion the entire school are part of Greek Life to where income cannot be the only obstacle
3- Nobody is saying that the school is discriminating against black people getting accepted. This is about the Greek System.
Because racism totally doesn’t exist in the economic, educational, and corporate spheres of America! Right! Money is the panacea for all mistreatment.
“I do not understand why people feel these young women must portray themselves as something they are not.”
Well, these young women did not choose to portray themselves as scholars, or musicians, or athletes, or volunteers, or even as people who might hang out and watch The Bachelorette together in the sorority house without full makeup on. I’d bet that there are members of the house who ARE all those things, but it’s not how they portrayed themselves. I think that’s what the university was looking for and didn’t see. I don’t think anyone wants them to fake who they are – the issue is editing out everything besides cheesecake. They ARE more than that.
This is incredibly misleading. When it comes to URM’s, the Ivies are bending over backwards to get more of them in, so they are not discriminating against, they are discriminating for, if you want to phrase it that way as many people do. That is an AA discussion that belongs elsewhere. And while Asians are free to sue to see if they have a case, they are highly over-represented at these schools relative to their percentage of the general population. So since the discussion here with regard to my particular point is all about under-representation and exclusion based on race, nothing you said there made a lick of sense to me. And as GMT pointed out quite correctly, ever since the SEC finally integrated their teams back in the 1960’s, making a sports team is overwhelmingly a matter of performance and ability, not race.
I completely understand you are not in favor of exclusion based on race. My point is that it is happening AND there are consequences beyond just not being part of some fru-fru social club. Not only are there potential consequences to careers in the future (however large or small you might think that effect is), it represents an entire mind set and a complete lack of progress towards true race neutrality, idealistic as that may be. The video is just a blatant example of how little progress there is and how little attention these young women seem to be paying towards making it better. They had a chance to make a statement, even in a subtle way, that they are committed to improving that situation and did nothing in that regard. Given the publicity around the issue over the last couple of years, I don’t think that can just be waived away as an oversight.
Woogzmama - the other Alabama sorority recruitment videos are all pretty identical to this one. None of them focus on scholarship or philanthropy or campus activities.
@Atlanta68 I think you completely miss the point, and even argue against yourself. The very fact that in general Alabama has a much larger number of black students than these other schools AND YET has a minuscule number in these sororities just dramatizes the point even more, without having to be drama queens. And your use of statistics is ridiculous, because the numbers that form the base for the increase are so small. If there is a company of 100 employees and they have one black person last year and now have two, that is a 100% increase, but hardly a major achievement.
Finally, to say this is strictly or even mostly a class issue is ludicrous. For one thing, these sororities have scholarships and fee waivers they can easily use to increase minority enrollment if that is the issue. Second, out of all those black students at Alabama and the subset that have tried to get into sororities in the past but have been refused and discouraged from trying, I would be more than shocked if there were not enough that could easily afford to be in a sorority to obviate your argument. Evidence? Many join black sororities and pay similar dues.
If this video is pretty identical to others, Pizzagirl, why was this video singled out, especially by the university’s administration?
“One can only imagine what The Machine and their minions are thinking, or planning.”
That’s part of the problem, Lucie - that these groups take themselves so seriously that there has to BE a “Machine.” Why can’t they just chill out and be social organizations instead of “avenues of power”? This is why Alabama still has far to go no matter how much money they throw at OOS.
This thread continues to blow my mind. As far as I am concerned women can be anything they choose to be and they certainly do not need my stamp of approval. Some women may not choose to wear their intellectualism on their sleeves or perhaps they simply are not particularly academic, or sporty or whatever else others might expect them to be. Do all intelligent women have to act that way 24/7? Do all intelligent women dress a certain way and act a certain way all the time? Do all women have to meet a certain level of intellectualism or present characteristics that satisfy all the tastes on this thread? I think not.
These women chose to participate in a video that represents some part of who they are. Fine with me. Fraternities produce recruiting videos and you never hear a peep about them, although many might find them objectionable. Todays college campuses are facing issues such as hazing, sexual assault, alcohol abuse and actual deaths from hazing. And everyone is up in arms about a benign video that a southern sorority put out?
The mistake that Alpha Phi made was to take that video down.
Just google the others, oldmom. They aren’t appreciably different. JHS articulated this earlier upthread; perhaps you missed it. This particular one just happened to have hit social media and so that’s why presumably the administration commented on it. This wasn’t one blonde-bimbo video amidst a dozen serious-philanthropy-and-earnest-scholarship. They are all like this because Alabama is ground zero for this flavor of Greek life.
“The video is just a blatant example of how little progress there is and how little attention these young women seem to be paying towards making it better. They had a chance to make a statement, even in a subtle way, that they are committed to improving that situation and did nothing in that regard.”
Let’s suppose there had been 5 mini-Halle Berrys/Tyra Bankses in this video - all pretty, well dressed, well built, presumably upper middle class.
I’m willing to bet they would have been accused of tokenism and that these girls don’t represent the true AA community.
I think these girls in general are in a no-win position.
I have no problem at all with the criticism leveled toward the lack of diversity in that sorority. That should be discussed and addressed. But the personal attacks on these women by both males and females is disappointing but not surprising. Women still have a lot to learn about supporting each other choices. Men got that one down long ago.
At least then it means the sorrority’s “look/type” isn’t based on race @Pizzagirl
“When non Southerners criticize the South for its racial issues, I always wonder if they think Southerners are innately evil people. Are Southern Whites REALLY more racist than Whites in other places, all things being equal? Maybe its time to stop projecting.”
What I found when I moved to the south (North Florida, which is a whole lot more like rural Georgia than it is like Orlando or Miami) was the racism is more gentle, but more accepted. The blacks live in certain areas, go to urban schools, don’t go to the same entertainment venues, don’t eat in the same areas. Most churches are still pretty segregated and church is a big part of the lives of many. In a city that is about 1/3 black, 1/3 white, and 1/3 other minorities, you could go into a restaurant and there would be no racial mix at all, just white or just black. Some friends came to visit and at a restaurant we were discussing it and I said “Look around” and they were very surprised to find not one black family in this casual hamburger bar.