I went to a large state flagship very much like the one described in the book. What was happening back in my day at state universities (70s) when baby boomers were still benefiting from the GI bill, expanding job opportunities, unparalleled working class access to wealth creation, etc, bears no relation to what is happening today. I reject the idea that just because, for a brief moment in history, there was the opportunity for many working class families to move into the upper class, that opportunity exists today.
In my opinion, the primary mission of a university is survival. When the public isn’t willing to support state universities with taxes, universities have to look for support someplace else: donors and potential donors, and thus the emphasis on creating a college experience aimed at party loving, wealthy students. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would argue creating a university that doesn’t advance social mobility is deliberate.
It is my impression that professors do advising most places. This is part of their job. Professors I know doing this job well ask questions designed to avoid the negative results described in this book. They do a good job of advising. Some of them work at schools with extremely limited resources. Of course, sometimes it is impossible to save students from themselves
I believe a large greek presence creates a negative campus culture. Greeks are an exclusionary group. The university should be inclusionary. imho. ymmv.
I can’t figure out how to copy and paste text from kindle to here. In the chapter discussing Greek life, we learn the Dean of Student Life is a fraternity member and a huge supporter of the system. He talks about the university partnering with fraternities and sororities. In such a partnership, a lot of the student body is left out, since a majority don’t participate in this system. imho. ymmv.
The party dorm: oh my oh my, mean girls go to college.
It bothered me quite a bit Elizabeth admits she’s intimidated by Whitney and some of the others and that it dredges up feelings of her past encounters with girls like these. She isn’t an unbiased observer. I feel sorry for Whitney but more sorry for her victims. (This whole book reminded me of I am Charlotte Simmons and Whitney reminded me of Hoyt. They are both sad characters. They don’t see the whole picture and wind up seriously disadvantaging themselves through their ugly actions) In the end, 50% of the dorm is social isolates and it concerns me they didn’t band together to create their own group. I think there should have been dorm oversight to avoid this situation coming to pass. The RA can’t be expected to do this on her own, but Residential Life should have. Again, this shows where the university puts its emphasis. imho. ymmv.
PG: is there any way whatsoever to excuse “the dark side”?
In my opinion, a greek dominated campus culture encourages and facilitates mean girl behaviors. imho. ymmv.
CF: I don’t think girlyness and stereotypical feminine social behaviors are necessarily also mean girl behaviors. I agree with you some of those behaviors advantage women who possess them over those that don’t and that isn’t fair. Nothing about this story is fair.
With or without Greek life there will still mean girl behaviors. Every campus has parties, may they be private or college sponsored, and there will be parties which are more desirable than others. There will always be good looking people on campus and more often than not they are more popular than others. So many parents like to think if there is no Greek life than there won’t be alcohol/drug abuse, rape, mean girl behavior, but that’s really not true.
oldfort: I agree there will always be mean girl behaviors. A university in partnership with sororities institutionalizes and sanctions some mean girl behaviors. I don’t think all sorority girls are mean girls. I hope to gawd I wasn’t. I hope I’m not today. The system promotes mean girlness. imho.ymmv.
I don’t believe popularity is necessarily tied to conventional attractiveness but that is another thread entirely.
Fraternities and Sororities are only a big deal to the people in them and a few wanna-be’s. On a large public university campus with as many as 40-thousand students most really don’t care.
I actually think for larger campus it matters more, look at Alabama. For larger Us there is more of a need to differentiate, Greek life is an easy way to make one’s circle smaller and more manageable. I went to a LAC with strong Greek presence, but we were all friends with each other. On weekends after various fraternity parties we all ended up at the local pubs. Whereas my kids at a large Uni they knew kids in the Greek life. They partied together and they ate at certain dining halls and studied at certain libraries (to see and to be seen). At my LaC there was only one dining hall and one library.
marie: I would be so interested in your take on the book, if you had time and interest to read it. I would like to read your response to the 50% social isolates in the party dorm.
oldfort: you, too. Do you have the time to read it? Your job sounds pretty time consuming.
adding: I interpreted PG as having a pretty strong reaction to the book, even though that reaction was negative. She wrote some long posts. When a friend has a strong reaction to a piece of writing or film or art, whether that reaction is positive or negative, it makes me interested in checking out what that is all about.
I agree with Marie, fraternities and sororities are only important to people who care about those activities…just like a ski club probably isn’t interesting to people who don’t want to ski, or a chess club to those who don’t play chess or a club sport that someone has no interest in. I’m not sure why we place so much ‘importance’ on these organizations on a campus with 40,000 people. No one cares about those organizations…unless they aspire. There are mean girls and mean boys all through life. One of the, in my opinion, issues with our overly politically correct culture and everyone is a winner early childhood education is that we have a slew of kids in college along with a bunch of parents with pretty thin skins…again in my opinion. It will certainly be an interesting generation of kids entering the workforce no doubt.
Circle is important when you are trying to find friends because you can’t possibly be friends with 40K people. You have to join a lot of right kind of organizations before you could find your circle of friends, and very often you won’t run into those people again for a long time. To form friendship is by seeing someone over and over again. It is one of the downside of going to a large U.
Large or small, it may also matter whether fraternities and sororities are a large or dominant part of the social scene. At Alabama, fraternity and sorority participation is a relatively high percentage of students compared to many other large publics, and they tend to have strong influence over things like the student government. Until recently, the sororities allowed alumni to influence bid decisions, which allowed racist ones to enforce racial segregation/exclusion. But this is not necessarily reflective of all large campuses.
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There are mean girls and mean boys all through life. One of the, in my opinion, issues with our overly politically correct culture and everyone is a winner early childhood education is that we have a slew of kids in college along with a bunch of parents with pretty thin skins...again in my opinion. It will certainly be an interesting generation of kids entering the workforce no doubt.
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I am not sure exactly what you are talking about here. I am not a proponent of growing a thick skin. Instead I advocate getting rid of bullies, starting in elementary school. This behavior should be unacceptable. Then we won’t have Whitney ignoring her dorm mates and marginalizing them to a “dark side” list.
Is bullying acceptable in the workforce, or do HR policies now forbid it?
oldfort: I agree that sororities can be good places to find a friends group. This worked out great for the rich girls int the dorm. The poorer girls, who couldn’t afford sororities or didn’t have the social skills necessary to join were marginalized by the sorority women. This was described as being an almost paralyzing experience for them. It bothered me these women were so passive. In other spaces, they may have been very successful socially. However, in this dorm, they were definitely disadvantaged almost solely due to SES. Do we want our universities to be only like associating with like? Do we think our kids may benefit from something more?
The party girls walked into a system that supported them and advantaged them. The non-party girls were disadvantaged by the same system. It seems unrealistic to me they could have been expected to see what was happening and respond in a more positive way. They received no university help so far as I could tell, except the one girl in a special program. The party girls received lots of university help. They participated in the greek/university partnership.
That is precisely the argument Paying for the Party demolishes. Sororities were important to the less privileged women on the party floor because the kiss up, kick down status-seeking of the sorority set made their life on the dorm a misery.
Were 50% social isolates on the floor only or 50% isolates in all aspects of their college experience? Did none of the 50% find their group outside of the hall?
Not sure what res life can do to promote bonding among girls who aren’t interested in being friends. The mixers or movies or other events tend to be considered a bit lame. But there are likely many social groups on the campus from religious, volunteer groups, intramurals, political, or others. Schools have a club day and clubs promote their activities. Yet the student has to take the step to get involved. That may be harder for lower SES kids or may just be harder for kids that have certain personality types.
That is not to say that the high SES girls did not have advantages, of course they do in most aspects of life. But one thing about a big school is that there are activities for everyone. I understand that kids with certain personalities are less likely to get involved and I think the RA should be encouraging the girls hanging out in the dorm on Saturday night to try other activities, but if they aren’t interested or willing to try, what do you propose the school do?
The advising should be better. Yet kids today have so much more information than we did. Most college websites discuss majors and what possible careers those majors prepare a student for. I am not sure it is fair or appropriate to presume to tell a student what to major in, based on his or her SES status.
“I agree with Marie, fraternities and sororities are only important to people who care about those activities…just like a ski club probably isn’t interesting to people who don’t want to ski, or a chess club to those who don’t play chess or a club sport that someone has no interest in. I’m not sure why we place so much ‘importance’ on these organizations on a campus with 40,000 people. No one cares about those organizations…unless they aspire.”
I should call out that Indiana has a particularly brutal rush process. For some stupid reason, the size of the pledge class is limited to what the house can physically handle living in, so you might have hundreds of girls who go through rush who don’t get in anywhere. This is in contrast to normal, more humane systems, where as girls go through, the number of spaces is calculated by taking the number of girls going through and dividing by the number of houses so the number of girls who dont get in anyplace is vanishingly small. Not to suggest it isn’t devastating to those few girls, but there’s a huge difference between systems in which that number is 5 and in which that number is in the hundreds. Indiana is NOT a typical Greek system.
Although if the number is in the hundreds, it seems like less of a stigma to not get in. If 95% get in and you are in that 5%, much more likely to feel like a loser, no?
They were social isolates in all aspects. In the book’s telling, freshmen find their friends and their social groups in their dorm. Freshmen at IU can choose their dorm “neighborhood.” The book says that other, non-party dorms were friendlier places where all types of freshmen could connect with similar people.
The savvy, out-of-state students knew that the neighborhood they were picking was a party dorm neighborhood. They knew coming in that they needed to kiss up and kick down to achieve the social status they wanted. The less privileged students, on the other hand, didn’t realize what they were choosing-- Indiana doesn’t officially tell students that neighborhood X is the party neighborhood, so a student has to be connected to find this information out.
Chapter 4, The Floor, is heartbreaking for those of us who don’t believe that people who are bullied deserve to be bullied. The students (half of the floor, remember-- this is not just a few) who were socially ostracized should have changed dorms. The high status students who were unsatisfied with their living arrangements had no qualms about changing. They expected that they were entitled to the roommates and the dorms they wanted. They, or their parents, acted to make changes.
The less privileged students and the socially isolated didn’t do that.
If one student on the floor finds herself in a bad situation, we can blame the student. If half the floor finds themselves in the same bad situation, it’s the floor.