A totally honest thread...from long long ago

ellebud · #1 12-01-2007, 01:00 PM

Benzgirl, you are good. I rushed in the early 70s.

Benzgirl · #2 12-01-2007, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ellebud

Benzgirl, you are good. I rushed in the early 70s.

So on top of the turmoil of the war, protestors and the anti-establishment, you had to deal with something as rediculous as this. That is really too bad.
Many chapters closed during this era. I'm curious, how did the chapters survive at USC?

ellebud · #3 12-01-2007, 05:46 PM

There are 11 chapters at SC today. One, SDT, just became part of the row. I don't believe that they have a house as yet. AEPhi closed in the late 70s. It was a victim (?) to a positive change: Jewish girls began to have choices. And SC, not a traditionally strongly Jewish school didn't have a lot of Jewish girls rushing. The other sorority that didn't make it was, Chi Omega.

SC was always more conservative. Yes, there were some protests but totally unlike UCLA or Berkeley. And despite its location SC at that time was very insular. The neighborhood was awful and there was a leave campus and run mentality. Today the row is very strong. And there are more Jewish girls there. I know that if my youngest rushes she wouldn't be interested in a Jewish house per se. My oldest daughter, who decided not to pledge, might have been interested in a Jewish house. (She dropped out of rush...). But not because it was Jewish.

honeychile · #4 12-01-2007, 11:22 PM

I didn't want to insinuate that this WAS a chapter from "Loose Change"; I was just wondering if it was the same chapter. To a lot of us east of the Mississippi, all those California schools soemtimes seem to be interchangable!

LOVEinZTA · #5 12-02-2007, 01:59 PM

Thank you so much for posting this story! It's interesting to me because I know this past year we were scared of losing girls we absolutely fell in love with to our AEPhi chapter because they were Jewish - I just couldn't imagine completely cutting out an entire group of rushees based on their religion. Congratulations to you for finding a home and being such an amazing sister!

bejazd · #6 12-04-2007, 01:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by honeychile

To a lot of us east of the Mississippi, all those California schools soemtimes seem to be interchangable!

Honeychile, Cal and USC are NOT interchangeable. Oh dear, I think I am feeling faint. I do believe you have committed an atrocious faux pas, but as you are not from California, we will graciously forgive your inadvertent error.

33girl · #7 12-04-2007, 01:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bejazd

Honeychile, Cal and USC are NOT interchangeable. Oh dear, I think I am feeling faint. I do believe you have committed an atrocious faux pas, but as you are not from California, we will graciously forgive your inadvertent error.

Well, now you know how we feel when people confuse the University of Pennsylvania (aka Penn) and Penn State. Yipes.

honeychile · #8 12-04-2007, 02:21 PM

I feel shame.

I suppose I better learn which is which before my godchildren start going to school in Cali!

jwsteele · #9 12-04-2007, 09:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bejazd

Honeychile, Cal and USC are NOT interchangeable. Oh dear, I think I am feeling faint. I do believe you have committed an atrocious faux pas, but as you are not from California, we will graciously forgive your inadvertent error.

I don't want to turn this thread into something completely different, but if you are talking about campus culture then the two are vastly different...if you are commenting on academics/prestige, USC has been climbing rapidly and according to the 2008 US News Rankings Berkeley is 21 and USC is 27...still a slight difference but I think the next poster's comment about it being similar to the difference between Penn and Penn State is extremely exaggerated.

But great to read a USC rush story, even from an alumni. It's crazy how much the campus are changed...there are several Jewish girls in the "top" sororities and there seems to be no problem for them during rush.

aephi alum · #10 12-04-2007, 10:14 PM

I've just read through this thread... wow. It's an eye-opener to read a rush thread where women were, ah, "encouraged" to pursue or not pursue a given sorority because of their religion. (Not to make you feel old, but you rushed before I was born!)

When I rushed in the early 1990's, religion was - I won't go so far as to say it was totally a non-issue, but it was less of an issue than it seems it was for you. There were four NPC sororities (none historically Jewish, but I believe each had Jewish members) and one newly-founded local whose members were all Jewish... I gravitated straight to the local, which is now a chapter of AEPhi. Off the top of my head, I can think of several Christian alums and one Hindu alum. Times change.

LML,
aephi alum

Football Fan · #11 12-06-2007, 01:49 AM

To add to JWSteele's comments.....
Recently, I did a report on SC admissions and a survey of their graduate/undergraduate rankings. According to an official at SC who wrote to me it is just as difficult to be admitted to Cal, UCLA or SC. For those of you out of California SC is a smaller private university. UCLA and Cal are much larger and part of the public Univ. of California system.
For information purposes SC had 33,754 applicants for a freshman class of 2964 (2763 last year)entering in 2007. National Merit Scholars were 220 and 5 were National Achievement Scholars. Unweighted GPA of entering freshmen was 3.7.
For this academic year there were 9 Fulbright Scholars, 1 Marshall Scholar and 1 Rhodes Scholar. It has one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation.
If any of you Trojans wish to PM me I have the rankings of most of the graduate and undergraduate programs.

FSUZeta · #12 12-04-2007, 10:14 PM

bejazd, how precious of you to so graciously point out honeychiles faux pas.

i think all the chapters at fsu in the mid to late 70's had jewish members. we had several members who were jewish and it was never an issue with them or us.

AnchorAlumna · #13 12-05-2007, 12:39 AM

Hey, ellebud, you and I seem to be about the same vintage. It's truly surprising to me that the U of Alabama at that point was a tiny bit more "progressive" than USC. I remember my sophomore year (1971-72), the rush chair explained that all the Jewish girls were dropped "as a courtesy" to the Jewish chapters, SDT and DPhiE. By then most of the other groups were OK
to pledge non-Christian girls, although there weren't that many. By my senior year, DPhiE had folded, and SDT pledged a (Christian) great-great-niece of one of our Founders. The gloves were off, so to speak, and by then the Jewish girls were considering ALL the groups, not just the Jewish ones. It probably hurt SDT in the long run, although they are still hanging in there.