“The tone of the Theta video is quite different to my eye.”
You are looking at the 2014 Theta video (girls wanna have fun) which is pretty tame. Apparently there was a 2015 Theta video that was the hot one that inspired the Bama video.
http://totalfratmove.com/arizonas-kappa-alpha-theta-brings-the-heat-in-their-recruitment-video/
Yes, the university statement does not seem to make any particular evaluation of the content, but of course as a government entity it is not supposed to do that. I would agree that posting the video on a public forum like youtube was not digitally responsible, as shown after the fact by the mostly ridiculous public reactions to it. The students should have predicted this would happen, so it makes them look digital-world naive, if nothing else. But even that can be excused in my mind if posting them on youtube this way has been common for years without negative repercussions.
http://uapanhellenic.com/main.html
On this page is a link to Greek Chic, a brochure for all Greek organizations. It shows 4 black sororities, of which one has a house on sorority row and has about 55 members. The recruiting for the black sororities (and fraternities) takes place over a number of months and they do not offer invitations until the student has 12 credits at Alabama. Costs are significantly less than the APA sororities. Significantly less.
I think the Theta video is cute, fun, and creatively-produced. I enjoyed watching it.
I wouldn’t want to live in that bunk room either–it reminds me of the rooms in my British boarding school, but we had more space! 
--but it’s an honest view of the inside of the house.
Here’s the website for the UA chapter of the National Pan-Hellenic Council, which comprises the traditionally black fraternities and sororities (4 of each).
http://bama.ua.edu/~nphc/policies.php
Many broken links, not much info.
Here’s another site, from the UA greek life site:
https://ofsl.sa.ua.edu/councils/national-pan-hellenic-council/
I didn’t hate the 2014 Theta video, but I think my Ds would have been totally turned off by it. The song used (“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”) is trite and overused. Way back when one D was in 8th grade, she wouldn’t participate in a talent show act by some of her friends because they were using that song. To each her own.
I wonder if that particular house came to the same conclusion, so the 2015 video was updated. I could not view it on the above link; it is frozen, so perhaps too many people are trying to see it at the same time.
I really wish I could see the 2015 AZ Theta video, so as to compare to the Alabama one. It is locked every place I look.
Maybe the 2015 video is the same as the 2014 one, only with the camera held about two feet lower throughout.
I was looking at the grade reports for Greeks at UA, previously cited here.
http://0101.nccdn.net/1_5/20a/040/067/201510-Spring-2015-Grade-Report.pdf
I noticed that this document lists the total membership of each council.
APA (historically white sororities) 5,497 members
IFC (historically white fraternities) 2,970 members
NPHC (historically black fraternities and sororities) 163 members
UGC (multicultural and special interest based sororities and fraternities) 249 members
I have seen posts on CC for years about the vigor of the historically black Greek system. But with such a tiny membership in comparison to that of the historically white houses, how could that be?
That may be about how few black students are at UA…I hear the Greek system is very strong at Howard and perhaps other HBCUs, where they were mainly founded. And maybe other campuses?
According to the Common Data Set, 3,339 out of 29,851 degree-seeking undergraduates are black. That’s 11 percent.
All members of traditionally black and white fraternities and sororities equal 8630. 163 members traditional black sororities and fraternities is less than 2 percent.
The only reason I mention this is that on this thread and elsewhere, many people have posted that many black students join the traditionally black sororities and fraternaties rather than looking to pledge the predominantly white ones. Not so many.
Agreed. Maybe now that black students can rush the “regular” sororities at UA with some assurance that they won’t have their cards tossed automatically, they will do it?
Or maybe not, maybe the costs are a barrier, or more likely some combo of all of that.
Not likely, I think, if they see videos like the one cited in this thread!
There’s also just the feeling that if they are let in, they won’t really be “wanted”. Who wants to join Greek Life knowing their brothers may not actually want them there.
Well, I’m a middle-aged white guy, but I do know about Greek life on one campus (not Alabama). However, I’m no expert, so corrections are welcome if I’m overgeneralizing or if I’m misremembering …
NPHC fraternities and sororities have a very different process for joining. They don’t “recruit”; they have “intake”. It’s a very big deal and can take 1-2 years. Unlike the historically white Greeks, they are looking for members who truly want to make a life-long commitment when they join. (BTW - the hazing for black fraternities is much more brutal than for the white fraternities. I don’t know details, but some of them actually literally brand their members with a branding iron.)
Anyway, with the historically white organizations people usually join as freshman, while I believe that people become full members of the historically black houses late sophomore year or early junior year. So the 163 NPHC membership you see is actually more like 250-300 on an apples-to-apples basis.
Then you have to count the black members of the APA/IFC organizations. It’s lower at Alabama, but I think(?) that at a typical college 2% or 3% of the membership of these organizations will be black. If we use 2.5% times 8500, we get another 200 black fraternity and sorority members.
So you see that at a more typical college you might have 4%, maybe 5% of the total Greek membership being made up of black students, with about 60% in the historically black organizations. That would be compared to 9% African American representation in the total student body (bit lower than at Alabama).
Then you can get more fancy. I’ve seen a study that someone did (at one college) which controlled for SES to get an idea of how to address under representation of black students in APA/IFC since low SES students don’t join Greek life as much. What was found was that, if statistical patterns held, the black students who were pledging the “Divine Nine” historical black fraternities and sororities were a large majority of the untapped pool of black students that the APA/IFC organizations could recruit from. Of course, if you’re a bunch of no-nonsense CEO-types who are truly committed to increasing diversity, that just tells you that you need to get yourself a bigger hammer in order to effect change 
Huh? The numbers I posted are published numbers for total undergraduate enrollment. Yes, if you multiply the members by the number of years off membership per student, maybe you could double it but I don’t know why you would do that. If black students join 2-4 semesters later, it doesn’t multiply the number of black students who join traditionally black sororities and fraternities.
The fact that pledges at traditionally white sororities (don’t know about fraternities, not so much posted here about thems here) have to indicate interest long before they move into campus and that the whole selection process (complete with letters of recommendation from alumnae) takes place before the first day of class doesn’t sound very inviting to outsiders.
I am an Alpha Phi alumna and graduated in the 1980s. This video is harmless and not intended for the over 45 mommy demographic that populates CC. It is reflective of the state of sorority videos that you will find in virtually every SEC school and CA school.
Absolutely not the case Hanna. Just look at any number of FSU sorority videos. For example, FSU Delta Gamma 2013 is well over 500,000 views.
Must be why the University of Alabama has the largest NPC sorority recruitment in the nation (and has for the past 5 years), with a 93% placement rate AND a majority of OOS students.