The Price of Sex at USC

Parents Forum
261

“Do you really believe this? That the path to success is made demonstrably easier because of a particular sorority? Is that because of parental connections in that top sorority girls may have more successful parents who can help out a sister with a job or internship? Or is it because they attract higher status men?”

It’s possible that this is an issue of selection vs treatment effect. The women who are able to socialize, make small talk, present themselves confidently in such a way that they get into a sorority - those traits may serve them well in the outside / business world. I personally think sorority rush and job interviews have a lot in common in terms of being able to put your best foot forward.

262

We shouldn’t look at the mean, here. It’s not telling us the whole story, or even much of the story. A full 60% of the women had no hookups. Of the women who did have hookups, the mean number of partners was 5.8.

263

If you are 17 or 18, you are a lot more likely to already have those traits if your parents have money. Upper middle class young women are more likely to have already learned the makeup skills, the clothing selection skills and the upper middle class social skills that will enable their acceptance into sororities.

264

Yes. And if everyone in your social group has these skill, you may not realize you re privileged in that regard, since it is your norm.

265

@Mom2and - My experience with fraternities and sororities was that they were very self-selecting. For instance, our house had alot of pre-law students. When a candidate mentioned that they were interested in becoming a lawyer, we would introduce them to our members who had similar aspirations, and that was a hook for getting pledges. Other fraternities had similar reputations. There were several Jewish houses, an engineering house, a redneck house, a rich boys house, a stoners house, several jock houses, etc. These self-selections did not impact students once they graduated, but they certainly helped or sometimes hindered students navigate their academic fields.

Sororities also self-selected, but seemingly on different criteria. There were a couple of Jewish sororities, and a country girl house, but generally, the sororities seemed to self segregate based on looks and perceived wealth. For example, Chi-O was for rich brunettes, and Tri-Delt was for the rich blonds. It was remarkable how you would walk into a sorority house and see so many women who looked and dressed alike, drove the same kind of cars, etc.

Sororities also had a much more structured rush system, with the school and the Panhellenic association running a match making system whereby the sororities and rushers had to rate each other, and, after the first round, they were matched for a second round of rush. In contrast, fraternity rush had minimal rules.

266

Reminds me of a Humphrey Bogart quote that I think was referenced in the movie “That’s Entertainment”.

All the stars at MGM used to eat lunch in the same room. I am paraphrasing. Humphrey Bogart said, “Everybody is so good looking. No wonder everybody is having sex with each other!”.

267

“If you are 17 or 18, you are a lot more likely to already have those traits if your parents have money. Upper middle class young women are more likely to already learned the makeup skills, the clothing selection skills and the upper middle class social skills that will enable their acceptance into sororities.”

Yep. The point being? Upper middle class people are at an advantage in pretty much everything. That’s why people try to get into college in the first place, so they can get to that level … no?

Pleasing self-presentation is something that everyone can learn. There is no magic involved. We’re not talking about Prada and Chanel and stilettos to go to class, we’re talking about looking well-groomed and selecting attractive clothing within one’s budget and taste. CF, you seem to have a very conflicted relationship with this topic - because in the past you seem to deride women who take effort and pride in looking like something other than what the cat dragged in.

268

Yeah, well, they’re not going to learn it in a sorority unless they already had it, and they’re probably not going to already have it unless their family has money.

PG, you’re constantly saying that sororities are for like-minded women who care about what sororities care about, to socialize with one another. But this is disingenous in the extreme. The Indiana girl who cares about what sorority women care about, but who is from a working class town and doesn’t already have the clothes, the makeup and the upper middle class social skills, is not going to be able to be in a sorority, because she won’t get picked for one.

The Indiana sororities are for women with privilege, because that’s the women who get chosen.

269

I was using Al2Simon’s number and did not go back to check. Even if it is 5.8, there are still many more Saturday nights (not to mention Thursday and Friday nights) even in one semester of college. That means these girls are not hooking up every time they go to a frat party or equivalent social event. Was it 60% of the sorority women with no hookups? I missed that in the article.

Thanks for posting about the book. The book seems to focus much more on the social outcomes. The working class women on the floor, who didn’t choose specifically to live there, generally did not have good outcomes in terms of success.

One issue is that the researchers seemed to have targeted a particular type of student - ones interested more in the party and less in academics. For the rich girls in this study (not in general), this may be because they don’t have major career goals. It also sounds like many of the girls on the floor did not go Greek. So the most important factor was not the sorority but parents. Parents who could get them jobs with their friends or family members, even with a 2.0 GPA.

Not sure this is a big revelation. Kids with less economic stress tend to have an easier time graduating in 4 years. Not sure if the lower income women had been on a different floor or chosen a different major, their outcomes would be better. Certainly, better advising might help but kids tend to do what they want to do. Not sure the college is going to advise someone to be an accounting major if they want to study tourism.

This is based on article on the book and an interview in the NY times with the author, not the book itself.

270

al2simon, post #256: Thank you for taking the time to write that. I do acknowledge regional differences. The majority of my adult life wasn’t spent in the south.

Here is what really confused me. Self reporting is pretty subjective, but they also sent surveys to Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic Council executive officers and gave in person surveys to administrators in the University’s Greek governance office. pg 18. On page 83, in Appendix F, there is discussion of algorithims used by sororities during rush to get to their final bid list. Then there is a table I don’t understand. Then there is more discussion of top groups. What I could never tell is if they were using success in getting the preferred bid list as a marker of top sorority. That would be an objective marker (of some kind) in my opinion.

Thank you very much for the summary of the thesis. I like this kid, that he is asking these questions and wonder if he will revisit this particular question some years out or if it is just an exercise for his master’s research and he drops it entirely. I would like to read his research on the same project ten or fifteen years from now. Of course, the world may be quite different then, but so far greek life today reads pretty much identical to greek life in the 70s to me.

adding: I am not asking you to go back and read that thesis again!!! If you have anything else to offer me, just based on your memory from skimming, I would be interested and appreciative.

271

The sorority rankings were determined by the fraternity responses. Look on page 18:

272

aside

PG: I agree wholeheartedly with CF’s recent posts and that is why I keep arguing for random selection for sorority membership. We can teach the socially awkward girl from an unprivileged background if we pledge her. However, those girls won’t be in our house because they won’t be at the top of the bid list. They may not be on any of our three bid lists. We don’t get a chance to have them as sisters and that seems a misfortune to me for us more than for that girl.

273

It’s 5.8 different partners, for the women who hook up. But it’s 14.6 hookups, on average, for the women who hook up. That’s an average of a hookup per weekend. This is from page 22, applying a tiny bit of algebra.

274

257, mom2and: [quote] Do you really believe this? That the path to success is made demonstrably easier because of a particular sorority? Is that because of parental connections in that top sorority girls may have more successful parents who can help out a sister with a job or internship? Or is it because they attract higher status men?

[/quote]

I think those are all good examples.

My house had daughters of politicians. A couple of those daughters are politicians themselves today. Some of their sorority sisters have benefited from that association.

Maybe top sorority membership isn’t the advantage I imagine it to be. I’m delighted if it isn’t and can quit proselytizing PG about random selection.

275

270 CF: Thank you. What do you think about defining top sorority house in that way?

276

And my house had girls from working-class / modest backgrounds (t counter CF’s assumption that they were all rich girls) who went on to have major jobs. I can think of two from a working class background - one who became a well-known pediatric immunologist and the other who is chief counsel at a major communication company. But CF’s already made up her mind - sororities are just rich girls who have mastered the art of hair-tossing and the art of looking good which apparently eludes anyone who isn’t rich.

277

Okay - upon further reflection I guess I get that is sort of the point of the thesis. I guess the thesis is a male perspective. I am sorry for once again going so far off topic.

I just ordered the book.

278

alh - Just sharing my own experiences. I think it’s always interesting to compare notes and to see how different everyone’s perceptions are. I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I read the posts here I wonder if some people went to college in the same century I did !

I think CF answered your question about status in post #270. That is the precise definition of status that he uses, based on surveying male Greeks. You think it’s hard to get consensus on the tiering of sororities by status, and that’s fair. But Hernandez doesn’t worry about that. He’s very happy with averaging male Greek’s opinions. (I think it’s probably fine - the real improvement I would make is instead of having the statuses be simply 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9; I’d incorporate the notion that sorority #1 and #2 may have roughly the same status but both are clearly of much higher status than sorority #3).

So I think you’re also asking another question - why then is Hernandez is collecting all this other status related data and discussing the algorithms for extending bids?

(I don’t know what kind of background you have in this stuff . You seem to be affiliated with a university - are you faculty / staff / administration in a related field? Apologies if I’m saying stuff you already know.)

Here’s why Hernandez is worrying about this. The question he wants to answer is to what extent does the status of a woman’s sorority influence the quantity of sex she supplies (that sounds vulgar !). But the problem is that high-status houses may be selecting women who are thinner / more attractive, which is a personal characteristic, not a characteristic of the sorority, So the status of a woman’s sorority isn’t a pure “exogenous” variable. And this may be driving why the girls hookup more, not the status of the sorority. This messes up his analysis since he can’t figure out the part that’s due to a sorority’s status and the part that’s due to the fact that they have more attractive members.

So he’s looking at the algorithms / data to try to find some variable (an “instrumental variable”) which influences which sorority a girl is in but doesn’t directly influence the number of hookups she has. For example, the amount of dues might be one - a girl’s budget could dictate what house she joins but wouldn’t influence the number of hookups she has (assuming that she can still buy the right clothes, makeup, etc.). This would enable him to fix his regressions.

However, Hernandez ultimately doesn’t use variables like “dues” to fix his regressions even though he suspects he should. But that’s ok - this is a classroom exercise and his adviser is probably satisfied that he’s shown he’s aware of the issue and has found a possible instrumental variable.

279

Hernandez’s study used the men to determine the sorority rankings, and the women to determine the fraternity rankings.

We can then see what the men want in sororities: thin women who are conventionally attractive. I’m extremely dubious that the women’s ranking of the sororities would be different than the men’s ranking. According to Hernandez, “Armstrong and Hamilton [in the Paying for the Party book that is now on its way to me] went to great lengths to argue that erotic status characteristics were the primary interests of sororities when choosing new members.” That is to say, according to Hernandez, men rank sororities by the sexual attractiveness of their members, and according to Armstrong and Hamilton, sororities choose women by their sexual attractiveness, with the most attractive women going to the “top” sororities as ranked by the women.

It’s also worth noting that the average BMI for sororities at USC is below the average BMI for all women there. Sorority women are thinner than non-sorority women. Judging from their pictures, they’re blonder, too.

280

Huge thanks to you both for taking the time for those explanations.

I have no background in this stuff and you can’t make it too simple. Thank you again.