I can’t seem to find any indication that this study was published in any peer-reviewed academic journals. Also, there is a large study by Bowen et al that finds that SES matters in terms of graduation and that students at flagship schools graduate more quickly than those in non-flagship institutions.
Meaning that it may be the SES level of the girls on the floor, and not the party atmosphere, that is more critical for their graduation rate.
I also read Armstrong’s paper about Karen and Monica, two of the girls on the floor with poor outcomes. Both ended up transferring. The author’s suggest that the regional school is the reason for their success, but seems to me it may also be that they girls grew up a bit and recognized that they really needed to succeed this time. They may have done just as well at another flagship as they did at the directional. That is just me speculating.
I think Harvard University Press is about as good as it gets for publishing an academic book.
Romani? What do you think?
eta: We may not like her area of research and dispute her findings, but from everything I am seeing online she is considered at the top in her field, by her peers in the field.
Alh - I was already aware that IU had a particularly brutal system. I think systems should be set up so that assuming a girl keeps her options open, she is essentially guaranteed a bid. I see no reason why quotas shouldn’t be established by taking the number of girls going through and dividing by the number of houses. There were vanishingly few girls who were rejected from all houses, and they were of the “I ate my boogers” or “can’t have conversation with a stone” variety. There was a place for pretty much everyone. And you didn’t “disappear” into your house never to be seen again. That’s as it should be.
Lower SES students graduate at a lower rate, as we know from Bowen et al. But that raises the question, why do lower SES students graduate at a lower rate? The Armstrong work raises the possibility that part of the reason is the kind of social exclusion and isolation that the lower SES women on this floor experienced.
Books don’t tend to be “peer reviewed” in the same way that journal articles are. I’m sure you can find many a scholarly book review on it though. (Just did a search- there are dozens though I’m not sure what is freely accessible to the public)
Seems that a small change that the IU Greeks can do is move rush to early fall so that it’s done and over with (and the girls/boys who are dissatisfied can either seek transfer options, if they care about being Greek that much, or seek out other living arrangements and other community organizations).
I know schools try to show themselves in the best light. It would be helpful to prospective female students to know that half the women who want to join a sorority at IU fail to do so.
A little truth in advertising. Then prospective students can make informed choices.
"'m always amused by women who advise women who are trying for sororities to maximize their choices, as if that would solve the problem of rejection. "
But it does, CF. A girl is best advised to accept invites from as many houses as she can. If she gets 9 invites for an 8 party she should accept 8. It’s the girls who, at that point, say “I only want the top 3” and only go to 3 who then get dropped entirely. Or on preference night, only putting down 1 house. We always strongly recommended against that.
It may not help at a school with quota limitations, but with a school that doesn’t have them til the end, it does.
Eta: OMG $8,000 a year?? That’s insane. Absolutely insane. Required clothing? Also insane.
I believe Tufts guarantees a bid for every woman who goes through the process - nobody is cut from all houses and not given an option to attend one or more parties on every day of recruitment.
PG - I honestly don’t know anyone in the Greek system at Tufts, and I was never myself in a sorority, so I do not understand how this would work for a girl who did not pick up the signals that she was not really liked or welcomed by the only group that had room for her at the end of recruitment. I also do not know how this would work for a sorority that cannot attract members who “meet their standards.”
I happened to run across this little tidbit several years ago when D asked me if it would be ok if she were to register for recruitment at her school, and I was trying to figure out why she would suddenly be interested in joining a sorority, how much time and money she would need to invest, and how this would work or compare to other campus groups that interested her and that were not “open admission.” (Club sports, performing arts auditions, etc.)
I wanted to know how recruitment worked at her school and similar schools, and googled a handful for comparison.
Interestingly, when we went to Owl Days several years ago, we ran into a heated discussion among parents who were concerned that their child could be assigned to a house (Rice has a house system, and every student is assigned to a house as an incoming freshman) where they would not be welcomed and would run afoul of cliques, and be stuck with that house for all four years. I think the answer from promoters of the school was that they worked to promote social inclusion in all the houses.
Hamilton, Laura. 2007. ‘‘Trading on Heterosexuality:
College Women’s Gender Strategies
and Homophobia.’’ Gender & Society
21(2):145–72.
Hamilton, Laura and Elizabeth A. Armstrong.
2009. ‘‘Gendered Sexuality in Young Adulthood:
Double Binds and Flawed Options.’’
Gender & Society 23(5):589–616.
Plus-- Armstrong did get tenure at a top research university, and we have to figure that a study that took five years of her professional career would play into that.
To be clear, I agree she is clearly accomplished and has published a lot of papers. I was just wondering whether this particular study had been peer reviewed - not because I thought she was not qualified but just wondered if this study was well received on the academic side . In my experience, the usual pattern was to publish a paper and then a book expanding the paper but i am not a social scientist. The reviews I found seemed to on Goodreads and Inside Higher Ed (not really a journal i don’t think), but there is one that is not accessible in Gender and Society, I checked her CV, but was looking for titles more clearly from this study, thus didn’t realize the “slut shaming” article was from the same research. Also thought the earlier ones were from different research on sexuality.
I was wondering if other academics are citing Paying for the Party. I didn’t discover the answer to that (it’s tough without access to journals) but look what I did discover: a new study showing that just having a panel where upperclassmen tell new freshmen about how their social class affected their college experience improves the freshmen’s academic performance. Such a small intervention makes a difference.