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Originally Posted by DTD Alum
I don't think it is a big deal because I don't believe the girl was in the sorority, but as an alumnus of USC let me spell out why it is such a PR disaster.
The sorority in question is one of the three houses whose philanthropy event is unanimously loved by the fraternity community, and of the three it is arguably the most famous. All three take place during the day in a very public area of the campus, involve competition of some sort and raise absurdly large amounts of money. All three are officially "no alcohol allowed" events, and those in charge (exec board, advisers, president, event chair, etc) make it very clear that nobody should be drinking.
However, each fraternity gets assigned a group of captains from the sorority, and usually these captains are close friends, girlfriends, etc. These captains are in charge of making sure the membership goes to the event, donates money and has fun, and it is not uncommon at all for them to get a ton of alcohol and come over early in the morning to get the fraternity brothers drunk before going to philanthropy. Not surprisingly, some of these captains also get very drunk.
So the pictures, in which the fraternity member is wearing the philanthropy t-shirt, ignited a firestorm of criticism because the implication was that the girl was so blackout drunk during her PHILANTHROPY event that she agreed to have very, very public sex. In reality, the girl is not in the sorority, she is not wearing the t-shirt that every other member was wearing at the time and nobody has been able to identify her from a limited pool of (frankly, very high profile) students in the last 5 days, while the guy was identified within minutes. But this is a sorority that many would want to do poorly because they are arguably considered the "best" sorority on campus in several different ways (reputation, recruitment, philanthropy events, physical house, grades are always at least top 2 or 3, if not flat out #1).
So to sum it up: public sex is kinky but whatever. Drunken public sex during the philanthropy event of one of the most admired houses on campus is what is causing the controversy, on campus at least.
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How I heard about this was from a friend of mine in Los Angeles who received an email about it last Saturday night or maybe Sunday morning. He works for one of the local media so it is not unusual for him to receive emails about local events from various sources.
What was unusual was the subject line of the email that said “Public Sex at “XY” Event.” Not much else was included in the message other than links to the pictures.
Add to this, my L.A. friend did not attend USC and has no connection with USC other than some friends who are alumni. So him getting the email rather quickly means it was being sent around outside of the USC community fairly soon after the event.
Which gets to part of the controversy. As DTD Alum noted, the “XY” chapter is well respected. Heck I may only know little about the USC Greek community, but when I saw the sorority’s letters, I knew enough to think “this is big.”
In any case, what I have now heard from GLO friends here is that there was (may still be) speculation that one of the other sororities - or a member of one of the other sororities - may have been involved with taking and posting of the pictures and / or sending out the emails.
Which now gets us back to the potential PR issues. Right or wrong, not only does the “XY” chapter have to be on the defensive about this, but so might the rest of the SC sororities.