Quote:
Originally posted by Wolfman
A lot of the comments are a bit too thin-skinned! I actually read the book; I checked it out of the public library in my city. The only problem I see is that she sometimes extrapolates from the narrow perspective of what she was personally privy to, in order to pontificate on larger issues. Let's be real! Catty behaviour, hazing,racial insensitivity, excesses of drink,sex, drugs, date rape do occur in Greekdom. It may not be the whole story or even major problems. They are importnat enough that sincere Greeks should want to deal with these things and not "sweep them under the rug."
The real story which made the book interesting and attractivewas the narrative thread of the young women's experiences in the context of their lives as ordinary human beings in this Greek context. Her final assessment on sorority life is a very ambivalent one, not wholly negative. Sort of like life in a variety of institutional settings, I suppose.
"Que Psi Phi 'til the day I die!"
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I also read the book and I will stand by my original comment. This is not an academic piece. It was written to make money. And I'm sure she's made quite a bit of it.
However, the problems she discusses in her book are not solely Greek problems. They are problems that happen all over university campuses in North America. They involve greeks, non-greeks, members of the student government, etc.
The problem with her and her book is her implications that it is only a greek problem and the problem would be solved if we got rid of greeks.
In reality that's not the case. If we got rid of greeks, hazing would still occur. Only this time it would probably be the athletic teams that would do the hazing. Campuses would still have racial insensitivity, students would still continue to drink and abuse drugs. There would still be date rape.
Her conclusions are far too simplistic and she does not offer any real solutions for problems that plague university campuses throughout North America. Her only interest is in laying blame, and laying this blame on a subsection of college populations that are not wholly responsible (while yes, are quite probably contributors) for these problems.
I don't think anyone here is saying that these things don't happen. But you can't imply that these are problems (and she does do this) on college campuses that are only greek problems. One cannot base research on one school and state facts that cannot be verfied because no one knows which school it is and if these women actually exsist. This is not how one conducts research.