"Sorority Life" - 2nd season & new show "Fraternity Life"
 

UB students will star in two MTV series

By SHARON LINSTEDT
News Staff Reporter
8/24/2002


Reality television will capture Buffalo's college life this fall, when MTV comes to town to shoot its popular "Sorority Life" series, as well as a new companion show, "Fraternity Life."
University at Buffalo students will be the stars.

An MTV spokeswoman declined to comment on the network's Buffalo plans, saying final agreements have yet to be signed. However, sources familiar with the cable network's Buffalo plans said formal announcements regarding the second season of "Sorority Life" and birth of its fraternal twin are expected next week.

"Sorority Life," which tracks a group of six pledges through the sorority rush experience, made its debut on MTV in June, featuring a group of coeds rushing Sigma Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish house on the campus of the University of California at Davis.

The finale of the current series, which will air Sept. 9, will reveal who gets in and who doesn't make the cut. The show, which airs Monday nights at 10:30, has become one of MTV's five most popular programs, drawing an average of 1.9 million viewers per episode.

For its second season, MTV wanted to give the show an Eastern flavor by choosing an East Coast college or university. After touring a number of schools and meeting with students and sorority representatives, the network decided to focus its camera lenses on a dozen UB students.

The two locally shot series will begin airing in February, and reportedly will run back to back on Monday nights. Though the shows are being shot as separate entities, the 12 students are expected to cross over between the programs to some extent.

TV crews follow the students 24 hours a day, seven days a week through their efforts to become sorority and fraternity members, while simultaneously capturing a student's-eye view of college life. The unblinking cameras portray the good, bad and very real moments of the rush process and college life.

"There's no script. No one knows what will happen along the way or how it will end," said Dennis R. Black, UB's vice president for student affairs. "In the episodes of the current season I've watched, you see college students being college students and living their lives. It's not a picture postcard for UC-Davis."

In expanding its college-life franchise by adding a male pledge counterpart to its programming lineup, MTV will follow a similar formula to its sister program. The real-life cast of "Fraternity Life" will see six would-be frat guys rooming together in a North Buffalo house, with video crews trained on their pursuit of happiness, Greek-dom and passing grades.

The identities of the participating male and female students have yet to be revealed.

While MTV's negotiations have been conducted directly with the involved sororities and fraternities, the school is well aware of the network's interest, Black said.

"We know they are planning to film the reality shows here and that our students will be the focus, but we're not a direct party, just a very interested party," he said.

University officials hope the shows will portray UB in a way that attracts future students, but they are aware that in reality-based television, there are no guarantees the school's best attributes will show up on the screen.

MTV representatives have been busy in recent days securing housing in Buffalo's University Heights neighborhood near the UB South Campus for the two groups of pledges. They also have been looking at temporary office space to serve as local headquarters for the two programs for the next few months.

MTV crews are expected to start shooting the two shows soon after Labor Day, timed with the start of the school year and the kickoff of the rush season.

As the cable network crews set up, Universal Pictures film crews are scheduled to be in town to shoot scenes for the major motion picture "Bruce Almighty," starring Jim Carrey. Shooting is expected to start next week, capturing the sights and sounds of the Buffalo area. Carrey won't arrive until late September, when a key scene on the deck of a Maid of the Mist boat is shot below Niagara Falls. In the movie, Carrey's character plays God for a day when God, played by Morgan Freeman, gets fed up with all the complaining and gives Carrey a chance to show he can do a better job.


http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial...24/1026775.asp

:rolleyes:

Christ.

damn... now i have to cable.

Fraternity Life should be interesting... 6 guys living in the same house??? Most likely freshman...

hold your breath everyone...:rolleyes:

no actually I belive freshmen cannot pledge in fall in Buffalo, only upper classmen and transfers:) Freshmen pledge in spring.

ok i take that freshman comment back :cool: but that would be kinda interesting tho... starting college life with a camera following you around. *gets chills*

To be clear, this is SUNY Buffalo we are talking about, right?

Here's a place to start:

http://www.student-affairs.buffalo.e...grparent.shtml

Looks like they have a six-week cap on the length of the pledge
period in addition to the Freshman rule.

Here's another page:

http://www.student-affairs.buffalo.e...fe/grigc.shtml

Looks like there are at least two or three local fraternities and
sororities that could have been chosen.

Why bother making it two seperate series? Why not just an hour long show called Greek Life? :confused:

Especially if they're going to be overlapping!

Let's all say a little prayer.

Dear (fill in your diety of choice),

Please let the members and pledges/new members of these new groups learn from the first season of Sorority Life. Let them be extremely studious and well behaved. Let them have the sense to manage to ditch cameras before getting crazy. Let the brothers/sisters hand pick the pledges living in house for the least scandilous (sp?) show! Last, but certainly not least, let the brothers/sisters follow their gut and cut any person up front that they feel is there for the wrong reasons!

Thank you. :o

You think people would learn :rolleyes:
Enjoy your 15 minutes, you'll be ridiculed for a lot longer than that.

dear lord... you would really think everyone learned from this time around.. EEK!

OMG!! Did no one learn from this experience?!?

Actually I think I will like Fraternity life better, sorority life was way too cheesy for me. Like. :rolleyes:

LOL,

Ladies, one of these days we are actually going to call on you to clearly delineate what you mean by "disaster," "Train Wreck," "killer of Greek Life", etc.

We are going to ask for clear, substansive answers backed with good facts and reasoning. And most of you are going to be left stuttering. . . or conventiently not answering ;).

The only thing I can say in their defense is that they might have signed the contract BEFORE most of the first season aired, and didn't realize how silly the whole thing could make them look. Other than that . . . who knows?

It's gotten to the point that I'm starting to think the show is hilarious -- it's definitely entertaining. If I was in a sorority I might not be so amused, but as for now . . . ha.

Amen! :cool:

James, what we mean by "train wreck" is something you don't want to look at but you can't seem to look away. We know the show is not going to show us the positive image of Greek life that we hope for, but we can't seem to stop tuning in...just to be sure.