Paying for the Party-- How College Maintains Inequality

Parent Cafe
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^These authors are reporting a one hour program closed the achievement gap between first generation and continuing generation students. That doesn’t sound too financially burdensome to the universities, does it, Purple Titan? It sounds like the sort of program that would have been useful to Hannah and the other high SES girls, as well.

Once again, thanks CF for doing all the research for us. I am also now interested in reading some of the articles mom2and has referenced. (thanks!) This research interests me and I agree with Romani that her writing style is accessible, which helps me a lot with scholarly writing.

frazzled2thecore: I hope you have time to read the book. There is so much to discuss there we haven’t even touched on, imo, and your posts are so perceptive.

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@dstark - I don’t know what information IU Panhellenic distributes to prospective students regarding rush and I agree with your comment -they should be transparent about the reality of how many spots are available ( and maybe they are but people don’t understand or think they/their daughter won’t be affected) I would say it is pretty well known around here ( Chicago suburbs ) that IU’s system is brutal. A friend and IU alum recently told me a counselor at her kids’ high school has actually told girls not to go to IU if they are absolutely sure they want to rush.

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I would agree it’s somewhat well known here too (also Chicago suburbs) that it’s very competitive and many girls get disappointed.

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I am wondering if the book has had any impact on how new students entering the “party dorm” (especially if not by choice) are being advised or mentored, or if any of the recommendations made by the authors that do not involve closing down the Greek system have been followed?

I do not think I am able to comment on how I think the study might have been done differently until I have read the book, given the scope of manpower and funding, but glad that these types of questions are being asked even though I myself was never in a sorority, and recruitment and even sorority membership never ended up being more than minor sideshows in D’s college career.

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So then maybe I don’t understand this process. Say 1000 women start out. During the process, 100 women are cut from all houses, 200 women drop out because they’re dropped from their favorite houses, and 700 women find sorority homes. You say it’s all right that the 100 unacceptable women were cut and we shouldn’t worry about them, but the 200 women should have stayed in and there would have been a place for them.

Are you saying that all the pledge classes would have been 9/7ths bigger (28% bigger) with no problem? That the sororities would have happily accepted almost 30% more women?

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Getting cut from a sorority should be about 999th on any list of worries in life. If you can’t deal with that you are in for a rude awaking later. This not soccer for 6 year olds.

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I was relatively poor 1st gen in college and knew from about 2nd grade on some kids have more money etc etc. By HS I was was fully comfortable with that and based my life on what was affordable not losing much sleep over what was not. I don’t get all this drama now and the the need to treat this problem. Did they just find out they were poor? That maybe some rich kids will ignore them?

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@barrons, depending on where they are from, they may not understand that some rich kids would ignore them.

I grew up in southern IL and went to HS in Chicagoland. It was a shock as that was the first time I’d say “hi” to someone I saw in a class (but never talked to before) while passing in the hallway and get no acknowledgement back. Back where I grew up, that would be considered very insulting.

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"So then maybe I don’t understand this process. Say 1000 women start out. During the process, 100 women are cut from all houses, 200 women drop out because they’re dropped from their favorite houses, and 700 women find sorority homes. You say it’s all right that the 100 unacceptable women were cut and we shouldn’t worry about them, but the 200 women should have stayed in and there would have been a place for them.

Are you saying that all the pledge classes would have been 9/7ths bigger (28% bigger) with no problem? That the sororities would have happily accepted almost 30% more women?"

I’ll answer your second question first. During my years there, our pledge classes went from 30 to 35 to 40 and then back down again to either 37 or 38. So, yes, in two years there was a 33% increase from 30 to 40 because apparently there was increasing interest.

So to go back to your first paragraph, if the 200 women were cut from their favorite houses and dropped out (but still had invites from houses who liked them), chances are quite high there would have been a place for them.

If there are that many girls going through that it results in pledge classes that are so high as to be unmeaningful / unmanageable, then it’s incumbent on the school (IMO) to put out a call for other Panhel organizations to establish a colony. At NU, for example, the “magic number” seems to be around 12. If a chapter closes and hence takes X number of spots out of the total, they put out a call for another chapter to colonize or re-colonize. Of course, I have no idea what the magic number would be at any other school, and IU is a lot larger, but they can likely handle way larger pledge classes too.

As for the 100 women cut from all houses - I can only speak to my own experience as a rush counselor, but that really simply didn’t happen. It was exceptionally rare for a girl to get cut from *everywhere. Unless she truly was what I described earlier - either just entirely off the grid in terms of communication skills or more likely the kind of girl who was openly hostile or rude. I mean, if a girl walks in and in response to small talk, says, “You guys are boring and anyway, I only want to be a Kappa,” I think a house should cut her, don’t you?

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Your house cut women, Pizzagirl. What was the usual reason? What were the other reasons? For the women you cut, why wouldn’t all the other houses have the same reaction? Yes, I agree I’d cut the “I only want to be a Kappa” woman, whatever house I was in, including Kappa.

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“Your house cut women, Pizzagirl. What was the usual reason? What were the other reasons? For the women you cut, why wouldn’t all the other houses have the same reaction?”

You’re asking about something that’s completely subjective. When you walk into a room and meet a bunch of new people, you hit it off with some and you think “boy, I’d like to get to you know better” and you don’t hit it off with others.

I know you want me to say there are “reasons” (Her bag was from Target, not Neiman’s! Her daddy didn’t make enough! She was brunette and we prefer blondes! She has never been to Paris, can you imagine?) but there really weren’t. It was just not that appreciably different from how you “choose” who you’re going to hang out with in a dorm or cafeteria setting, except that it was conducted in a more structured manner.

And the intent was always-always-always to give every girl a chance to shine. The goal was never to make anyone uncomfortable. You always wanted to leave a positive impression and be gracious. You treated them the way you would treat a guest in your home.

If a girl didn’t meet enough people, you automatically invited her back and made special effort to ensure she talked to someone that she might have something in common with. That’s how recs were used – to facilitate getting to know someone. She’s from Seattle - make sure the junior from Seattle has a chance to say hi.

Without divulging too much inside baseball, the way girls were talked about when the decision was made to keep or cut was very respectful. Physical appearance was not discussed except for identification purposes (“she was the one in the red dress, sitting in the wing chair by the fireplace”).

Why wouldn’t all other houses have the same reaction to a girl? That’s like asking why we’re not all equally friends with one another. Do you like everyone you meet equally?

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Turn that around, though. Aren’t there people at your workplace, or your church, or whatever organizations you belong to, that everyone likes, and others that don’t seem to have many friends, who come across badly for whatever reason? If a PNM comes across badly to you, because she’s reserved and you can’t draw her out, or she’s abrasive and she rubs you the wrong way, or her body language is all wrong-- doesn’t look you in the eye, fidgets, and so forth-- don’t you think most other women will have the same reaction? And if a PNM seems to you to be able to charm the birds out of the trees, don’t you think most other women will have the same reaction?

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“If a PNM comes across badly to you, because she’s reserved and you can’t draw her out, or she’s abrasive and she rubs you the wrong way, or her body language is all wrong-- doesn’t look you in the eye, fidgets, and so forth-- don’t you think most other women will have the same reaction? And if a PNM seems to you to be able to charm the birds out of the trees, don’t you think most other women will have the same reaction?”

Sure. There are undoubtedly PNM’s who are highly likeable and get invited back everywhere and some who may only be invited back to a few places. I’m not certain of your point here. For most girls, the truth is somewhere in the middle – some houses will spark to them and some houses won’t.

As for the shy / reserved - that may depend on who they wind up talking with. Maybe at one house they get paired with the really outgoing girls and they find her difficult to talk to. And at another house they get paired with the kind of person who is able to bring out someone’s best side and put them at ease even if they aren’t bubbly.
BTW, shyness or nervousness isn’t automatically a disqualifier, and super-bubbliness isn’t always a good thing either.

These things work the same way in the dorm, though, too. If you’re sitting with someone in the cafeteria and you attempt to strike up a conversation and you get a bunch of monosyllabic grunts and a lack of interest or engagement or effort into having a conversation - even if it’s just happy small talk - you’ll find someone else to sit with the next time. Isn’t that “cutting” them too?

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“If a PNM comes across badly to you, because she’s reserved and you can’t draw her out, or she’s abrasive and she rubs you the wrong way, or her body language is all wrong-- doesn’t look you in the eye, fidgets, and so forth-- don’t you think most other women will have the same reaction?”

Let’s say our hypothetical PNM is indeed abrasive, or comes across as a real snob (“I can’t fly anything but first class!”), or she badmouths the house she was just visiting prior to yours (“those Chi O’s sure are a bunch of dogs!”), or talks about completely inappropriate topics for a situation in which you’ve just met (“let me tell you about my abortion!”) or just comes across as a generally unpleasant person. Are you suggesting it’s not ok to cut her? If she comes across this way to all of the houses and subsequently gets dropped, is that a bad thing or a flaw in the system? Should some house be forced to accept her?

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Purple==all I can say is welcome to the big city. Our area was (is still) pretty rural and had a wide range of incomes from dirt poor to very wealthy folks that worked on Wall Street. We all knew each other and a few were snobs. Never lost a second of sleep over that. We had our own 1200 SF 1 bath house for a family of five with a big yard. We were free range kids back then which meant go wherever your bike can take you but be home for supper.Compared to some of my relatives still living in NYC projects I thought we had a great life. My cousins probably thought we were rich.

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Somehow, at Tufts, she gets placed in a house. If it can work at Tufts, why can’t it work somewhere else?

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That’s not what Tufts’ website says. It does *not * say “every girl who goes through is guaranteed to get a bid.” It says (from the website): “Potential New Members are required to attend Panhellenic Day/Open House Tours, one open event at each chapter, and * all parties to which she has received an invitation * to be guaranteed a
bid.”

Here’s what it means. The specific numbers in each round will differ campus to campus, but this is the concept.
There are 12 houses on campus: ABCDEFGHIJKL.
The parties are structured as follows:
Round A - Go to all 12 houses for 1/2 hour apiece
Round B - Go to up to 8 houses who invited you back for 1 hour apiece
Round C - Go to up to 5 houses who invited you back - these are open houses, drop in as you see fit
Round D - Go to up to 3 houses who invited you back - you will get a bid if you do this. These are preference parties.

So Smart Susie does the following:
Round A - Goes to all 12 houses.

7 of them - ABCDEFG invite her back.
Round B - She fills her 8 slots with all 7 she can - ABCDEFG
4 of them - ABCD invite her back.
Round C - She goes to ABCD (the maximum she got an invite from)
2 of them - AB invite her back
Round D - She goes to AB (the maximum she got an invite from). She is guaranteed a bid from A or B.

Unwise Ursula decided ahead of time that she was going to be a member of FGH - or not at all.
So she does the following:
Round A - Goes to all 12 houses.
All 12 - ABCDEFGHIJKL invite her back.
Round B - She goes to ABCDEFGH.
All 8 of them - ABCDEFGH invite her back.
She doesn’t want to be bothered with those losers in ABCD so she only accepts EFGH.
Round C - She goes to EFGH (not the maximum she was invited to - she has an open slot)
3 of them - EFG invite her back.
But she really wants to be an F or G, so
Round D - She goes to FG (NOT the maximum she got an invite from).

She is not guaranteed a bid from F or G because she could have filled her card with E and chose not to.

Note a few things:
Initially, Ursula was “more popular” than Susie - Ursula initially got invited back to all 12 and Susie only got invited back to 7 of the 12. However, Susie consistently “filled her dance card” as full as she could. Ursula didn’t. w

The system is structured to encourage/reward Susie for keeping her options open and “punishes” Ursula for deciding ahead of time she didn’t want to give other houses who might have wanted her a fair chance.

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This system is designed specifically so that girls don’t decide before the fact that they must be FGH and ignore weaker houses. It gives weaker houses a chance for girls to get to know them better, by incenting girls to fill their dance cards fully.

Some people set their sights on a specific house, ignore the others, get dropped / don’t get a bid and then are devastated. Again, I want to point out that Ursula was “more popular” than Susie off the bat, but her focus on specific houses did her in.

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http://uss.tufts.edu/studentAffairs/documents/fslPolicies.pdf

So Tufts does guarantee that if a person attends all the events they are invited to, they get a bid. There are only three or four sororities at Tufts.

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Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. If they attend all the events they are invited to. Which Susie did, and Ursula didn’t.