I disagree about there being no appreciable difference between the various recruitment videos. They’re all pretty fluffy, but some are a lot more focused on displaying sex appeal than others. APhi is the only video with up-shorts camera angles and so on.
Of course young women can do whatever they want, but their university didn’t care for this, and I understand why. This is a registered student organization using the university name. The women in the video are not the only stakeholders.
"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. "
Or it could mean that there are a lot of STEM majors at this house?
“Are Southern Whites REALLY more racist than Whites in other places, all things being equal? Maybe its time to stop projecting.”
Plenty of Archie Bunkers in the north, but even Archie Bunker didn’t think blacks shouldn’t be able to sit at the lunch counter, sit anywhere they liked on a bus, use the same drinking fountains, etc. Face it - there was a special kind of dehumanization that took place in the South, and the “well, the North isn’t perfect either!” is just a way to deflect the truth - which is that you guys were way worse, for way longer. Why can’t you guys ever just cop to it and say you’re sorry?
Of course UA still has far to go, @Pizzagirl! But at least they’re trying, by working to attract top students with merit money and expanding their STEM programs. And yet they’re still being criticized here.
Robert Witt, the architect of the plan to increase the size and caliber of the student body a decade ago, was educated at Bates College, Dartmouth and Penn State–he’s hardly a Good Ol’ Boy. The new administration came out and criticized the sorority for the video, which was promptly taken down, resulting in accusations of censorship and an acquiescence to political correctness. I’m sure they could see that coming, but they went ahead with the statement anyway.
But how many of those here attacking the university because of a viral sorority recruitment video are going to do anything to make things better? How many of you have ever even set foot on campus? Let’s get real here. The truth is that many of those most offended here would never DEIGN to send your kids to UA because your kids are too smart, or too advanced, or just too GOOD for the school or the Deep South.
Honestly, @woogzmama, I have no idea what you’re talking about here. The generous merit awards that you sneer at are offered to in-state students in addition to out-of-state students. The only difference is that the requirements are actually LOWER for Alabamians. There are no limits on the number of scholarships offered either–you get the grades and the scores, the award is automatic. And it only requires a 3.0 to maintain it.
@oldmom4896, I think it was singled out by university administration precisely BECAUSE, having gone viral, it has invited so much criticism of the school. As to why it went viral, who can say for sure? I think it was a combination of it featuring a very popular member of the football team that resulted in wide distribution, which led to an opinion piece published in AL.com titled “'Bama sorority video worse for women than Donald Trump.” How’s that to rile folks up of all persuasions?
"If this video is pretty identical to others, Pizzagirl, why was this video singled out, especially by the university’s administration? "
One reasons suggested is because of the football player in the video. I think I read this in the campus paper?
The Crimson White editorial staff also wrote:
http://www.cw.ua.edu/article/2015/08/to-greek-women-from-greek-women
I’m calling BS on that one, @Hanna. If and when you’ve watched every recruitment video from every sorority at every university in the country, you can get back to me and let me know. Meanwhile, perhaps your time would be better spent reading the [Crimson White editorial](To Greek Women, From Greek Women – The Crimson White) that @twoinanddone posted above. From what I can see, the two young women who wrote it displayed more reason and maturity than most of the participants in this thread.
“The mistake that Alpha Phi made was to take that video down.”
“I think these girls in general are in a no-win position…”
I agree. I was never in a sorority but the idea that people can ridicule these women, call them vapid, etc. because they made this video is mind boggling.
Same thing from the University of Miami.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLRvS6-oLO4
They are trying to appeal to young coeds. Sororites are increasingly popular in recent years, so it must work. Many of these videos are made by the same production company so they all look very similar.
The idea that a sorority would try to recruit women with ass shots and shots that linger on cleavage is mind boggling to me. Join our sorority, we have great breasts and great butts, and we will prance around displaying them at every opportunity, is that the message they want to convey? It’s the message they are conveying.
Sorry, I misspoke class of Yale 2018, had 9.8% AA, see;http://admissions.yale.edu/node/2040/attachment
“I’m calling BS on that one, @Hanna. If and when you’ve watched every recruitment video from every sorority at every university in the country, you can get back to me and let me know.”
I was responding to a post specifically about the UA sororities, and I did indeed watch all the 2015 ones. The Phi Mu one comes closest, but it still vaguely resembles a party rather than a skin magazine shoot.
Maybe I am all wrong and we really do want a society where we make sure every group has proportional representation of race, blonds and brunettes, short and tall, and so on an so forth. Maybe then all of our problems really will be solved as we count and sort endlessly till the end of time.
Me personally, I am afraid it will be a really boring place to be. I think the world is ideal and a heck of a lot more interesting when Alabama sorority girls are as “twee” as they want to be (twee is my favorite new word - thanks PG!), when we can watch the North Carolina A&T BGMM perform their half-time routine, AND Kennedi Cobb gets in to Alabama Alpha Phi.
Alabama AXO. 
In the Miami video, the camera is not ogling the women the way the camera ogles the Alabama women. There are shots of women actually doing things other than posing: riding the jet ski, jumping off the high deck of the boat, drawing in the sand. There are cupcakes (mm, cupcakes). And maybe it’s just me, but I get a vibe of sisterhood in the Miami video that is absent in the Alabama video: the women are interacting with each other rather than the camera.
And the Miami women seem to be into super skimpy short shorts. So what? If a person thinks super skimpy short shorts objectify women, they will find a way to object to this video too.
One thing that seemed different about the Alabama Alpha Phi video is that it doesn’t look like it was filmed over a long time period but just over the summer, maybe in just a few days - days when they are not studying, not going to classes, not working at their philanthropy. They were doing summer things in summer clothes. Some other videos cover a time period, a school year of fall football, the philanthropy event, etc. Any video filmed over the year has to be edited or removed from social media to exclude those sisters who are serving as advisers to the NPM. At a ‘regular’ sized university, a house can send 3-4 members into exile, but at a house the size of Alpha Phi at Alabama, it might be 10 girls who can’t be in any shots, no mention of them at all.
It also seems that the other houses produced videos all the adults on CC seem to like better than this one. It’s advertising. Some people like Coors better than Bud, the Gap better than Hollister, Chili’s better than TGI Friday’s. I imagine there are some girls heading off to Rush at Alabama who watched all 16-20 videos (the Black sororities have them too) and ranked all the houses based on the videos and how well the girl feels she could relate to each house. I don’t know if they show the videos during the parties. It’s just advertising. Don’t like it, don’t buy the product.
TheAtlantic wrote" so are you denying there was not uproar about racial exclusion in Alabama sororities over the past few years. Obviously minority bid numbers would increase THIS year, because there was a huge uproar about it LAST year." First, no, I don’t deny that there was an uproar about racial exclusion in one particular Alabama sorority in Fall of 2013. I am not claiming anything about an increase in minority bid numbers. What I was pointing out is that only three of the young Black ladies who completed the rush process were unable to find a mutual selection. Do I wish that more Black girls found their way into UA sororities. Sure, but there were really aren’t that many young Black ladies who seemed interested in starting, let alone completing the process, so I am not surprised that there are only 25 who found a mutual selection. I also think you underestimate the role played by class in the lack of Blacks in UA’s Greek system. If a lower percentage of Blacks are able to enroll at UA than their overall percentage of the state population, largely due to their lower average entrance exam performance, and if a lower percentage of Blacks have the income that enables a student to even consider rushing, again, it does not surprise me that only 25 Black ladies found their way into a predominantly White sorority at UA. Not to mention again, the presence of a very strong and proud traditionally Black Greek system at UA. Nevertheless, compared with the situation at many other schools, UA is doing quite well, both in its ability to enroll Black students and to begin integrating its Greek system. I guess I want people to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. Or apply the same standard to other schools.
“MIT and Harvard are probably being generous by enrolling the amount of blacks that they do. They are private institutions practicing hollistic admissions and are some of the most exclusive schools in the world. For various socioeconomic and cultural reasons (that i could go into in a more thought out post) there are less blacks that are highly qualified, that apply, and that are accepted into these schools. However through affirmative action and other programs (like say Questbridge) they try to increase their minority enrollment. UCLA as a high ranking public (with high average scores) and a school that is WAY to expensive for most OOS to justify attendance also probably isn’t as good of an analogy as UAlabama.” But if diversity is so important, why doesn’t UCLA have more Blacks, and why doesn’t Vanderbilt, Auburn, Notre Dame, etc. have more Blacks? Again, Alabama is not the only state with a lot of Black folks.
"As far as UGA is concerned, as someone from Atlanta also, it’s hard for me to really fathom. I do know that Georgia State is about half-black while UGA carries traditional PWI enrollment trends. I think it may have a lot to do with Zell Miller/HOPE programs, with the higher standards it takes to get into UGA as opposed to GSU, and with what schools are emphasized in different school systems. Different schools and school systems emphasize different directionals for most students, with UGA/Tech being reserved for top " And in Alabama, UA and Auburn are reserved for the top. But the ACT scores at UA have a very wide range for its middle fifty percent, 22 to 31. That bottom number is much lower than a lot of schools, precisely because UA WANTS to be able to admit Blacks AND Whites who show promise but lack the high entrance exam scores. UA rejects about half of all applicants, but we can see from this middle range that it IS trying to be accessible to a wide variety of students. But UA is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn’t. If it does not raise its standards, it gets called un-selective. If it does raise its standards, people like yourself might start complaining about the effect it will have on Black enrollment.
Yes, TheAtlantic. private schools are not under the same obligation, but again, UA is doing as well if not better than very many large state schools, in enrolling Black students and in increasing its enrollment of other minorities, such as Asians.
Already there has been an uptick in the enrollment of Asians, largely due to the enhanced reputation of UA Engineering.
As I remember from one of the links upthread Alabama video was shot by an Alabama junior majoring in film studies over 2 days with 2 cameras and one drone. This may be one of his first attempts at filming. He had access to 10-15 girls. Given these limitations he did a pretty good job.
Woogzmama wrote: [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.] Do you have any evidence to indicate that UA is NOT trying to enroll as many of these kind of “promising students” as possible. How low must it go in its admissions standards to make people like yourself happy? And what do you think a lowering of standards to increase a relatively already high number of Black students would do to its reputation??? UA HAS managed to enroll ever more out of state students, without losing its status as the state school with the most in state students.