Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.
The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.
(From the New York Times)
Often, Steve Nash is sainted for his two MVP seasons, but Shaquille O’Neal considers them to be “tainted.” …
“I don’t know what to say,” Nash said. “I’m sorry he feels that way.”
(From The Arizona Republic)
(For text of both articles go to the end of this blog entry.)
I always wondered about sororities and fraternities. They’re exclusive clubs, inviting new members based on some sort of special criteria. Yeah, there’s the community service aspect to the Greeks, and the members do use their membership to network in the business world. So there is a practical end to it. But there’s just something about them that never sat right with me. Maybe I’m too much of an anarchist to want such an organized group of pals.
My first organic chemistry lab partner at Washington was in a sorority. That concerned me; Greeks have a definite Party Girl/Party Boy reputation. And perhaps she was the life of the party. But she was also a very good student, and we got on well. I went over to her sorority house one day to pick up some notes or something; it was very sedate. The place wasn’t strewn with empty beer bottles and underwear. Maybe it was the Delta Chi High-GPA house.
The frats had a worse rep at the U-Dub, as they likely do at most campuses. The fronts of their houses were often littered with trash, lawn chairs laying around, toilet paper hanging from the trees. Once someone at a frat party hurled a chunk of ice off the roof or terrace of the house; it struck a grad student who was cycling by. Well, boys will be boys.
(Not that stupidity is a Panhellenic exclusive: my roommate in Seattle lived in a UW dorm for a year and she said people would throw fire extinguishers off the balconies. And a couple of guys in my NYU dorm smoked so much dope the people in the next building complained. Which is why I always say that having a college degree is wa-a-a-ay overrated.)
Biking to campus on a fall day my first year at Washington, I headed down Greek Row. There were rivers of young, well-dressed, attractive, mostly white people strolling down both sides of the street. I didn’t know what was going on. Fire drill? Yard sale? Later on I heard that it was Rush Week.
Ah-hah ….
The Greek system is dominated by Caucasians, but there are race-based frats and sororities. I suspect these were probably founded because non-whites could not (or could not easily) gain entrance into the more establiched fraternities and sororities on college campuses.
While Alpha Beta GammaLand is where white folks dominate, basketball has become the black man’s domain. Which is why I think so many people have a difficult time accepting Steve Nash as NBA MVP. Racism goes both ways and while few will say it (like few would come out and say they hated John Amaechi) there is some color-based discomfort over Nash winning two MVPs.
Personally, I’m cheering for Nash to win MVP this season because I want to see Shaq have a cow. (His second cow, actually: I think Shaq already had one because Dwyane Wade is injured and may be out for the season.) I don’t think Shaq is racist, even after he did that ching-chong Chinaman shout-out to Yao Ming when the Chinese center entered the league. Shaq is great with the sound bite, but not always well-spoken. He falls into the Dumb Jock category more than he should. But I don’t think he’s a bad guy. If he was a bad guy he’d have killed someone by now, the way opposing players have fouled him throughout his career. Still, it bugs the Diesel that Nash beat him out for MVP in 2005 and repeated in 2006. Part of that, I’m sure, is ego. And part of it, I suspect, is Nash’s lack of pigmentation. He can’t believe (1) that anyone is better than him, and (2) that a short white guy is better than him.
(DP made some thoughtful comments regarding Shaq’s remark on Yao and the topic of stereotypes, calling himself out for being insensitive. As Reggie Miller would say, “Daniel, you’re the greatest!”)
Talking with my Dad about it a few weeks ago, we both agreed that we’d lean towards a point guard for MVP. The point guard is the floor general; he (or she) runs the offense. The PG is like a quarterback, touching the ball on every play. I don’t watch enough basketball to say if Nash is the very best PG out there, but I do know he is very good. I wouldn’t rule out a player from another position as MVP, but I’d definitely look at point guards first.
Given what’s been said about Nash’s previous two MVP’s it was refreshing to hear Tracy McGrady on the DP Show giving props to Nash (Thursday, 22 February show). He sounded very sincere and — as Dan pointed out — was practically gushing. T-Mac also gave props to Shaq, saying he wouldn’t try to dunk on him because the big man is just, well, so big. Sports are such an incubator for ego. Perhaps that’s a reflection of the lack of civility of our modern culture. Why is it so hard for some people to give others their due? Kobe had nothing nice to say about Gilbert Arenas after The Hibachi went and dropped 60 on the Lakers last December. Very petty.
I always thought Pedro Martinez was kind of goofy, and even more so when he called the Yankees “my daddy” after he struggled against them in 2004. But he was just giving credit where credit was due. You don’t elevate yourself by cutting other people down.
If a black guy can play quarterback and if a black guy can be head coach or manager, then why can’t a white guy be MVP?
I guess it’s the same reason why chubby non-white girls are no good for a sorority.
——————————————————————————-
Sorority Evictions Raise Issue of Looks and Bias
February 25, 2007
By Sam Dillon
GREENCASTLE, Ind. — When a psychology professor at DePauw University here surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of “daddy’s little princesses” and another as “offbeat hippies.” The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as “socially awkward.”
Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.
The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.
“Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave,” said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization.
“I sensed the disrespect with which this was to be carried out and got fed up,” Ms. Holloway added. “I didn’t have room in my life for these women to come in and tell my sisters of three years that they weren’t needed.”
Ms. Holloway is not the only angry one. The reorganization has left a messy aftermath of recrimination and tears on this rural campus of 2,400 students, 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis.
The mass eviction battered the self-esteem of many of the former sorority members, and some withdrew from classes in depression. There have been student protests, outraged letters from alumni and parents, and a faculty petition calling the sorority’s action unethical.
DePauw’s president, Robert G. Bottoms, issued a two-page letter of reprimand to the sorority. In an interview in his office, Dr. Bottoms said he had been stunned by the sorority’s insensitivity.
“I had no hint they were going to disrupt the chapter with a membership reduction of this proportion in the middle of the year,” he said. “It’s been very upsetting.”
The president of Delta Zeta, which has its headquarters in Oxford, Ohio, and its other national officers declined to be interviewed. Responding by e-mail to questions, Cynthia Winslow Menges, the executive director, said the sorority had not evicted the 23 women, even though the national officers sent those women form letters that said: “The membership review team has recommended you for alumna status. Chapter members receiving alumnae status should plan to relocate from the chapter house no later than Jan. 29, 2007.”
Ms. Menges asserted that the women themselves had, in effect, made their own decisions to leave by demonstrating a lack of commitment to meet recruitment goals. The sorority paid each woman who left $300 to cover the difference between sorority and campus housing.
The sorority “is saddened that the isolated incident at DePauw has been mischaracterized,” Ms. Menges wrote. Asked for clarification, the sorority’s public relations representative e-mailed a statement saying its actions were aimed at the “enrichment of student life at DePauw.”
This is not the first time that the DePauw chapter of Delta Zeta has stirred controversy. In 1982, it attracted national attention when a black student was not allowed to join, provoking accusations of racial discrimination.
Earlier this month, an Alabama lawyer and several other DePauw alumni who graduated in 1970 described in a letter to The DePauw, the student newspaper, how Delta Zeta’s national leadership had tried unsuccessfully to block a young woman with a black father and a white mother from joining its DePauw chapter in 1967.
Despite those incidents, the chapter appears to have been home to a diverse community over the years, partly because it has attracted brainy women, including many science and math majors, as well as talented disabled women, without focusing as exclusively as some sororities on potential recruits’ sex appeal, former sorority members said.
“I had a sister I could go to a bar with if I had boy problems,” said Erin Swisshelm, a junior biochemistry major who withdrew from the sorority in October. “I had a sister I could talk about religion with. I had a sister I could be nerdy about science with. That’s why I liked Delta Zeta, because I had all these amazing women around me.”
But over the years DePauw students had attached a negative stereotype to the chapter, as evidenced by the survey that Pam Propsom, a psychology professor, conducts each year in her class. That image had hurt recruitment, and the national officers had repeatedly warned the chapter that unless its membership increased, the chapter could close.
At the start of the fall term the national office was especially determined to raise recruitment because 2009 is the 100th anniversary of the DePauw chapter’s founding. In September, Ms. Menges and Kathi Heatherly, a national vice president of the sorority, visited the chapter to announce a reorganization plan they said would include an interview with each woman about her commitment. The women were urged to look their best for the interviews.
The tone left four women so unsettled that they withdrew from the chapter almost immediately.
Robin Lamkin, a junior who is an editor at The DePauw and was one of the 23 women evicted, said many of her sisters bought new outfits and modeled them for each other before the interviews. Many women declared their willingness to recruit diligently, Ms. Lamkin said.
A few days after the interviews, national representatives took over the house to hold a recruiting event. They asked most members to stay upstairs in their rooms. To welcome freshmen downstairs, they assembled a team that included several of the women eventually asked to stay in the sorority, along with some slender women invited from the sorority’s chapter at Indiana University, Ms. Holloway said.
“They had these unassuming freshman girls downstairs with these plastic women from Indiana University, and 25 of my sisters hiding upstairs,” she said. “It was so fake, so completely dehumanized. I said, ‘This calls for a little joke.’ ”
Ms. Holloway put on a wig and some John Lennon rose-colored glasses, burst through the front door and skipped around singing, “Ooooh! Delta Zeta!” and other chants.
The face of one of the national representatives, she recalled, “was like I’d run over her puppy with my car.”
The national representatives announced their decisions in the form letters, delivered on Dec. 2, which said that Delta Zeta intended to increase membership to 95 by the 2009 anniversary, and that it would recruit using a “core group of women.”
Elizabeth Haneline, a senior computer science major who was among those evicted, returned to the house that afternoon and found some women in tears. Even the chapter’s president had been kicked out, Ms. Haneline said, while “other women who had done almost nothing for the chapter were asked to stay.”
Six of the 12 women who were asked to stay left the sorority, including Joanna Kieschnick, a sophomore majoring in English literature. “They said, ‘You’re not good enough’ to so many people who have put their heart and soul into this chapter that I can’t stay,” she said.
In the months since, Cynthia Babington, DePauw’s dean of students, has fielded angry calls from parents, she said. Robert Hershberger, chairman of the modern languages department, circulated the faculty petition; 55 professors signed it.
“We were especially troubled that the women they expelled were less about image and more about academic achievement and social service,” Dr. Hershberger said.
During rush activities this month, 11 first-year students accepted invitations to join Delta Zeta, but only three have sought membership.
On Feb. 2, Rachel Pappas, a junior who is the chapter’s former secretary, printed 200 posters calling on students to gather that afternoon at the student union. About 50 students showed up and heard Ms. Pappas say the sorority’s national leaders had misrepresented the truth when they asserted they had evicted women for lack of commitment.
“The injustice of the lies,” she said, “is contemptible.”
O’Neal calls Nash’s MVPs ‘tainted’
Paul Coro
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 24, 2007 12:00 AM
MINNESOTA – Often, Steve Nash is sainted for his two MVP seasons, but Shaquille O’Neal considers them to be “tainted.”
After Miami’s loss in Dallas on Thursday, O’Neal was engaged in an MVP discussion as it related to the Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki. O’Neal questioned how the media picks MVPs and said the award has been “tainted” the past two seasons. O’Neal was the runner-up for Nash’s first MVP in 2005.
O’Neal repeated “tainted” references to reporters.
“I don’t know what to say,” Nash said. “I’m sorry he feels that way.”
You get a homer bell for Outstanding Sleuthieness!
