Trailer for upcoming "Bama Rush" HBO documentary

Parents Forum
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It’s not a ‘voting’ thing, it’s a numbers thing. They keep statistics on everything. They determine #1 (for Rush) by the number of matches, the houses that ‘take quota’ or now ‘quota plus’ (which is allowed by the algorithm), that had the most acceptances for parties.

After all the parties are completed, the house makes a list of who they are extending bids to and the order, and the PNM do the same and order them. The more #1 matches on both list, the better for both, so the more ‘points’ (they aren’t really points awarded) and the house with the most is #1. There is a neutral group doing the matching and they know which house had the most matches.

Some houses don’t take quota, some don’t match as many #1 choices from the PNM but match #2 or #3 picks.

Does it matter if a house is #1 or #4? Probably not. Some women don’t want to be in a really big house and concentrate on the smaller houses during Rush. The house I was in was much smaller and we never took quota, and in fact got about half of our members during ‘open’ rush or spring (organized) Rush. Houses that took quota in the fall didn’t even rush in the spring.

So by the numbers we weren’t as popular. WE thought we were terriffic.

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290

Sorry, did not mean to aim that at you. I don’t have any first hand experience with anyone at UA either, I was just going by what was in the video. It alluded to racism by showing the darker skinned girl saying that “they look at you differently if you have any color in you”, then shows her standing awkwardly and alone at a party surrounded by a bunch of white girls having fun. So they are suggesting that the sororities are racist, although a white girl in the video also suggests that the most desirable sororities exclude “ugly” white girls too (“the hottest girls get in the best sororities”).

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Pretty sure supermodels of any hue would be welcomed into the top sorority.

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I guess supermodel would outrank color of skin in their ranking. But the video does suggest racism, maybe it’s made up just for shock value, I don’t know, but likely at least a little bit of truth in it. As a white woman I have had other white people say shockingly racist things to me, assuming I was OK with it since I was white. Racists are everywhere, but some places more than others.

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No first hand knowledge for me either, so I guess we can wait and see. In similar settings it seems physical beauty ( including body type) trumps other factors by a wide margin.

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My daughter said she seems to be a magnet for unacceptable comments from older white women (about other people). She’s not sure why they think she would agree with them.

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And yet, there is a whole website dedicated to “ranking” houses.

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Of course there is. Just like Forbes ranks the best country clubs, etc, etc

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Indeed, I agree with you. Many greek systems around the country are but (very) junior varsity versions, or perhaps expressions, of this very culture.

IDK, it’s more of a “it is what it is” thing to me, and I don’t get worked up about it. But I can say unequivocally that if any of my kids came home singing their own praises for getting into the “top sorority” at their school, it would have been met with a muted response - something along the lines of, “oh that’s nice. i’m glad you’re happy,” followed by practical questions about the details of the living arrangement, which is the most relevant part of the whole thing to me.

I, too, know parents who have this way up on the list of things that make them proud about their kid. For a few, it may be at the top of the list.

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It’s not so much about individual racists, but about systemic racism. I know of many girls that I would never label as “racist” that are in sororities that have systemically racist practices.

Someone wrote above about girls getting letters of recommendation, being “legacies”, having consultants, etc in a previous post. Who do you think the legacies and girls that can get letters of recommendation from previous members are? Usually not any POC. It’s a way to generationally keep sororities white, Christian, and wealthy.

The history of any given sorority was written by white Christian women for white Christain women. All of the artifacts around the house will feature these women. The traditions, culture, and pledge education were all created by and for these women. In the past, girls were often “blackballed” for not being the right “fit”. This was an easy way for racists to keep out women that didn’t fit that white, Christian, wealthy standard. Usually, it didn’t even get that far as everything about these houses screamed “Don’t Bother. You’re not one of us”.

Some chapters have done much more to address these issues than others. I was in a house in the late 80s/early 90s that had a DEI consultant come in to go over our traditions and practices.

We changed or got rid of many of the “traditional” songs. Once you see some of the things that were in them through a DEI lens, you can’t unsee them. We changed some of our rush practices to de-emphasize clothing, appearance, etc. But, the most significant thing we did was ditch letters of recommendation and legacy preference. We didn’t even open the letters or keep any record of legacies. Straight into the trash. I thought that all chapters were doing that at this point but just looked at some rush and national sites and they all talked about LORs and legacies. I guess I’m just really disappointed that it’s been over 30 years and there are still a majority of chapters that still engage in these practices.

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I meant to list the letters of recommendation as another difference between southern sororities and ones in other areas. At my daughter’s big 10 school, they explicitly told them not to get letters, and if they were submitted they wouldn’t be read. Southern sororities (and perhaps elsewhere, but none that I know) have turned it into a whole industry, with even certain stationery being recommended by some so-called consultants and stationery companies.

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I was in the highest-GPA sorority and we were NOT the top of the social food chain, no matter what we looked like. I didn’t care then and I don’t care now.

I wonder if the “consultants” are just creating a cottage industry for themselves, like the self-promoting private college admissions counseling services that offer 99% admission guarantees if you hire them.

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Legacy is no longer considered by at least 13 of the 19 NPC sororities at Alabama any longer:

*Zeta Tau Alpha’s national leadership eliminated its legacy policy, a practice that gave the family of former sorority members preferential consideration during the recruitment process. Last week, Zeta Tau Alpha joined 12 other sororities on campus that have ended this practice. *

The policy change is an attempt to diversify chapter membership and increase the number of women of color within sororities. Delta Gamma changed its policy nationwide in June 2020, citing the influence that institutional racism has had on the sorority.

The recommendation letters can come from anyone and aren’t restricted to someone from that sorority. The Panhell organization from a city collect the requests and give them to the alum chapter and the letters are written. It is more like a review of the student’s resume. For the houses (like Alabama) that used to require them, (I don’t know if they do anymore) at least for our house they are sent to the headquarters and someone there “writes” them all. It is really a form to be filled out but they want them all uniform. The houses at Alabama do not have time to read 2500 letters of recommendation in August. It is a checkmark on the form that a ‘rec’ was received. If not, someone might check the gpa or for any other requirements.

Now do I think if the National President’s daughter/granddaughter is participating in Rush that she’ll get a bid? I do, just like the President of the university’s child will get in or a rock star’s child will get in …

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The letters of Rec are absolutely pointless. There is actually a group on Facebook and strangers will say “anyone in xxx sorority and can write me a letter of rec”. They don’t even know them.

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Although only 36% of Bama is in Greek Life, according to the numbers in the NY Times article and on the Bama website, close to 60% of incoming freshman women join rush. Not sure how many get into a sorority, but seems a fairly high percentage drop out at some point during their college career. However, also seems to be pretty dominate in the social life of freshman.

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It does dominate a lot of social chat and energy in freshman year, especially first semester. But people start dropping out almost immediately and things also settle down socially once people have found their groups on campus.

I think it can be difficult if you decide not to rush and see lots of others with a ready made structure and social group from the off.

The good thing about joining is that structure around meals, studying, community, socials is provided. This was one reason my D joined. It provided structure and a way of navigating a large uni as an OOS student. Once she had settled in, it was not needed nearly as much, contributing to her dropping.

There are lots of other ways to find this at uni: LLCs, clubs, dorms, esp places that have residential colleges.

Letters of rec: D had them to five out of 16-odd houses, and these were from people she or we knew. Didn’t bother with the rest. No correlation between recs and invites back/ being cut from what she could see.

She was cut from most of the houses with very ‘southern’ reputations, and ALL the houses with a rep for being glamorous and image focussed. She was not bothered about this in the slightest as these are not her tribes and she was self aware enough to know that.

GPA is important - a lot of first round cuts are made for people who do not meet the chapter GPA cutoff (which is higher than the GPA needed to rush). This is made publicly known in advance.

Finances - think $3-4k per semester, half of which covers the meal plan. We paid for the meal plan and a couple hundred extra with the condition that D had to join in and contribute. She saved up summer job money for the rest. And didn’t buy ALL the merchandise!

Sororities at other schools are much less expensive, and much less intense.

I asked D if she regretted it and she said no - it was largely positive, helped crystallise her views on certain things, and played an important role in feeling settled at Bama in her first year. She also made friends and had fun.

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I don’t agree. I just saw a lot of time being wasted. Being required to get lots of signatures on a paddle? Many meetings and study halls? No thanks.

Even though UT was huge and I was shy, I quickly found friends in my dorm and in my classes. I loved college. :slight_smile:

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Some join the debate team, the newspaper staff, club sports. I see this as just another club to join if interested.

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Re: Nerds gone wild

I have a letter in my possession in which an alumni of my college (UIUC) details the efforts of the chemistry graduate students in the 1940s to document the effects of certain liquors on various members of their group. They subjected the members to tests and documented it scientifically. It is a hilarious read and I think nerds gone wild who be far more entertaining….

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I just want to thank whoever brought up SNL’s “Delta, Delta, Delta, can I help ya, help ya, help ya?” yesterday. It’s on YouTube if anyone needs a laugh. That’s what I did with five minutes of my Tuesday evening and it was worth it!

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