Perhaps the particular group of students on THIS floor for THIS year was very exclusionary. And those that were in the “in” group were rich girls and those in the “out” group were not rich. Another year in the same dorm, all the girls could be friends or the socials could have no power over the isolates. There are friendly neighborhoods (I live in one), but I know someone on the other end of our street that complains of unfriendly neighbors. It is luck to some extent as well as how you approach others. I just don’t see how this incredibly limited set of data can be extrapolated farther than this one dorm floor.
I also don’t get how the other 50% were isolates because half the girls were socials. Why didn’t the isolates band together? I live in a town with some very wealthy kids and some not so well off. The “coolest” kids are not always the ones with the most money.
PG: While I agree with almost everything you say here, based on what i have seen among kids pledging frats and sororities, looks do matter, at least for the most “traditional” houses at many colleges. Just because that wasn’t the case at your house, doesn’t mean it couldn’t be true elsewhere. No house is going to say they pick on the basis of looks, but better looking, better dressing kids are going to be more likely to gain acceptance than kids that aren’t or don’t.
Even if the school advertised “party dorm”, there would be kids that chose to live there because their dream of college is to party, and they still would not be accepted. Not every girl on that floor that ended up isolated was there by chance. My guess is some selected this dorm thinking they would be cool. And some probably made that leap.
I am not clear CF why you take this book as if it has discovered a major, unknown problem and figured out the solution.
Pizzagirl, are you familiar with the Implicit Association tests? I ask because their results, as well as many behavioral psychology and behavioral economics research results, demonstrate that we don’t have conscious access to the stimuli that guide our decisions. We think that we are deciding because of X, but it’s actually Y that is guiding our decisions. For that reason, your friends’ earnest declarations that they are not choosing new pledges for their sorority based on appearance are not going to convince me.
Indiana is not southern, but we get
You can No True Scotsman me all you want, but when I keep seeing examples of sororities picking based on appearance, I can’t ignore it. Maybe your sorority didn’t pick based on appearance; I have no way of knowing. But Indiana sororities do, and so do USC sororities, and Alabama sororities, and Mississippi sororities, and that De Pauw sorority where national office came in and got rid of all the fat women and the ethnic minorities. The only evidence I have that sororities don’t choose based on appearance is your vigorous assertion. It’s very vigorous, but it fails to convince me.
At every school that has sororities, there will be a few sororities that are popular enough they can pretty much take their pick of pledges. Since they have their pick, all things being equal, they pick pretty, rich, smart, accomplished and socially connected, and perhaps in no particular order of importance. All things being equal, why wouldn’t they?
I am still arguing for a lottery type sorority selection instead of what we do presently.
Looks matter. I don’t know why this is news or surprising or something that needs to be denied or defended or anything else. It is just a fact and not really a sorority fact, either. It is a fact of life.
This brings me to a question for alh, Pizzagirl and everyone else who read this book. What surprised you?
Here are some things that surprised me:
I wouldn’t have expected that the road to success for less-privileged women would be to transfer to a directional school.
I was surprised that all the less privileged women, every single one, and also some of the other women, ended up socially isolated.
I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as a Tourism major, or an Apparel Merchandising major, or all those business-lite majors.
Maybe this was naive, but I imagined that the socially-skilled women on the floor would have used their social skills to include everyone. They were the ones who were good at setting up a social scene, and I thought they would have done it for everyone on the floor. I was surprised that they used their skills for ill instead of for good. They marginalized half the floor- those excluded women can’t all have been utter social failures in all contexts. I would have expected that there would be a few social failures on the floor, but not half the floor.
I didn’t think that parental helicoptering for this group would end up being so important. On CC we often recommend a hands-off approach to our children. For this group, that’s would have been a bad recommendation.
I didn’t realize that less privileged women had to work for pay so much. Those were long hours for fulltime college students.
I didn’t know that Indiana functioned as a finishing school for rich, academically underperforming, socially ambitious women from out of state.
Doesn’t seem like those Indiana sororities are looking for smart, accomplished women, though. Pretty, rich, socially connected, but I don’t see the part about the smart and accomplished.
106 ^CF: I agree with your main point. There are some sorority women who have the whole package and who are nice. They weren't in this book. They were in my sorority.
I admit to knowing very little about sororities, but I want to insert a point of information here- every time I weigh in on a thread about “why don’t undergrad business majors have more status” or “why don’t some high status companies hire undergrad business majors” I get reamed by the PC police who tell me how smart and analytical and hard working their business major is.
And I believe them. Truly, I do.
But in 30 years hiring and recruiting for large corporations, I have met hundreds (maybe thousands) of the Tourism/Apparel Merchandising/Sports Management majors that Cardinal Feng seems so surprised about. And although I shouldn’t extrapolate from a sample size of several hundred to the entire world, I still maintain that a kid is better off majoring in European History or Classics or Sociology and getting an actual education and writing real papers and reading real books than one of these “lite” majors that serve as an excuse for endless partying and sorority joining for a certain segment of the college going population.
I realize that the crowd that is so critical of me, believes that “Business” means that an actual business will hire their kid. And I hope they are right. But doing a deep dive on what some of these vocational majors actually involve from an intellectual perspective is rather disturbing.
I have no opinion on the mean girl phenomenon- sorry.
But the clock should have been ticking at IU ever since Lauren Spierer disappeared after a night of partying at bars which are known to serve underage women until the point of absolute, falling down intoxication.
I don’t see how you can generalize that Indiana “functions as a party school for rich OOS kids.” Have you even met anyone who went to Indiana in your life? I’m sitting here in the Midwest, where it’s a popular choice and their grads do very well, and that’s an unfair characterization based on just a few girls.
Guess what. There are going to be people prettier than you everywhere. Richer than you everywhere. More popular than you everywhere. You can sit and sulk that they haven’t accepted you or you can move on.
You seem to want social acceptance from people whom you disdain. My perspective is - if these are superficial, ditzy airheads, then what am I missing out on if they aren’t friends with me? It’s rather like getting upset that if I lived in a dorm with Kim Kardashian, she wouldn’t give me the time of day.
I agree that people should be polite to one another but I also think life is too short to go beyond polite with people you don’t click with. Maybe that’s my introvert speaking.
One thing women often have problems with is the feeling that she should be unfailingly accommodating. If Joe asks you to prom, and you really don’t like Joe, go anyway so you don’t hurt his feelings. Now my POV is - of course be polite to Joe, but you’re not obligated to accept his invite because your needs, wants, desires are important too. While on one hand I sympathize w a girl who goes around offering to play cards and gets rebuffed, if it were my daughter and she wanted to read / study / do whatever, I wouldn’t tell her she ought to drop everything she’s doing to play cards.
“Doesn’t seem like those Indiana sororities are looking for smart, accomplished women, though. Pretty, rich, socially connected, but I don’t see the part about the smart and accomplished.”
Well, then, so the “true” smart and accomplished women will blow them out of the water in real life.
Why is it a college’s responsibility to make sure every student is loved, happy and well adjusted? If we couldn’t do it when they were living at home (while in high schools), what make you think college could do a better a job? Why don’t we just have college do what they do best, which is to educate our students.
I do believe most sororities pick girls base on looks first then they try to get to know them better before they make the final decision. It is no different when we decide who we want to date. We are first attracted by their looks first then we get to know them better. For anyone who says looks doesn’t matter, it does. It is only human nature. On the other hand, there are people who become more attractive once you get to know them better.
CF, since I actually live in the Midwest and know IU grads, it matters not one whit if one was a Kappa or DG or Chi O or whatever, other than idle curiosity.
The shocking thing to me was how nasty Whitney and her group were.
In contrast to you and PG I was a social butterfly in high school. I got there, surveyed the situation and facilitated the creation of a social group that overwhelmed the small mean girl group by sheer force of numbers. The fact it was a deliberately inclusive group gave it huge social power. Sometimes lately I have wondered if I misremember or misinterpret that situation and a few months back when my next oldest sister was visiting, who was in high school the same time as I was, I asked her if my group (in which she was included when she cared to be) ever excluded anyone. My sister has no problem telling me if she thinks I’m wrong, mean, etc. She thought a while and said once a new girl, much younger, wanted to hang with us and we included her during her first summer in the neighborhood but when school started and she joined some clubs with girls her own age, we quit taking her out with us and probably that hurt her feelings.
1 and #2 surprised me. #3 did not surprise me. Many of my sorority sisters had easy majors like that. Remember the sorority time suck descriptions? My best friend in sorority was an engineering major. I had chosen a pretty difficult major in which I was very interested. Engineer buddy told me, "the governing board called me to a meeting and said you and I aren't participating in enough activities. I told them we actually have to study. We aren't doing nonsense majors like they are. And if you call alh in here and tell her that, she will just quit right then and there and walk out the door." One of those governing girls sought me out and just casually asked, "what would you do about someone who won't participate in all the required activities, especially the joint events with fraternities?" I answered, "I guess I would just tell her I missed seeing her."
4 surprised me. I was shocked no one stepped in and fixed that situation. I would like to believe that I would have used my skills for good.
5 I have always understood some kids need extensive helicoptering to get through college successfully.
I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear here. I didn’t mean that Indiana is a party school for rich OOS kids and nothing else. That’s clearly untrue. Many students go to Indiana, work hard, achieve, and get great educations. What surprised me was that the CEO and CFO dads of Abby, Maya, Hannah and Melanie sent their daughters to Indiana and not some other school, and that Indiana turned out to be the right place for the kind of college experience they wanted.
That may just speak to my ignorance, but there it is, it surprised me. If I in my ignorance thought to myself, What college should a rich, socially ambitious girl who doesn’t care about academics go to if she wants to focus on her social life and nothing else, I didn’t think of Indiana. Maybe I should have, because I knew that Indiana is the one school outside the south that’s notorious for a competitive sorority rush. But I didn’t.
I’m not sure. Then, probably nothing. Now, people have a better understanding of women like me. Now, if the college sees a student who is having the kinds of academic problems I was having, and looks a little closer, they might be able to offer some kinds of therapy interventions that weren’t available then, for both organizational problems and social problems. Of course, the student might reject the interventions.
I think it’s quite a conundrum for people with atypical social skills. Part of having friends is being a friend, and that requires communication and social skills. I don’t mean life-of-the-party, but just some measure of ease of ability to communicate.
Would someone showing up on your door with a deck of cards have made a difference? Would you have ever made a first move yourself, by asking someone if you could sit at their table or whatever?
The saddest issue with the isolated young women on the floor is that they were isolated from each other. They were never going to be bosom buddies with the social women, but they didn’t find each other either. The isolates that reached out to try to make friends initially ended up trying to connect with the social ones, and weren’t given the time of day, so they concluded that everyone was unfriendly and it wasn’t worthwhile trying to find friends on the floor. The social ones treated the isolates as invisible, which somehow made them invisible to each other.
If this just happened to one or two women on the floor, we could blame it on them, but it happened to all of the isolates. That’s structural. The solution is not obvious, but the first step is to admit that the floor was toxic to all the isolates.
There isn’t any large state flagship anywhere that doesn’t have a contingent of well to do kids. That’s often forgotten on CC where it’s assumed rich kids only flock to Ivies and similar.
My sister went to the U of Kansas. Plenty of wealthy St Louis and Chicago families sent bright but not brilliant kids there. Plenty of money in certain corners. She lived in a dorm that had some nickname relating it to the North Shore of Chicago because so many wealthy Chicago are kids went there.