SOC Week 8 Wednesday Readings

Paying for the Party Ch 1

Feminization of higher education = more women are entering college that is

now outcompeting the number of men
o Feminization of higher education seen more among working class,
lower income students
Paying for the Party Ch 2

Greek life is more visible and powerful on campus than suggested by

numbers or undergrad population involved in Greek life
Fraternity houses control some of the most valuable resource on campus ie:
space to congregate, alcohol supplythey also own the houses on campus
[often owned by the national chapter]
Greek lifelanguage of partnership the Greek system and university
authority are equal; the university is to give such Greek organizations respect
Greek Bureaucracy and the Social Calendar
o Greek chapters are highly structured, bureaucratic organizations
there is a president, VP, executive committee, ect.
Need extensive training for such positions
o Structure of Greek life allows Greeks to dominate the public social life
of the campusthey execute large scale social events
o Greek activities more important than academic activities ie. test on the
day of rush activity math test was rescheduled to accommodate for
rush
o Academic events arranged around Greek schedule, not the other way
around
Greedy Greek Organizations
o Feature of Greek life that keeps students on party pathway: Greek
system is greedy of its members
Demand time, commitment, and efforts of students that limits
their ability to study, work, make friendships outside of Greek
system
Have academic requirements to get into Greek house 2.5 GPA,
but after this, you would have to skimp on studying to keep up
with Greek demands
None of the sorority sisters held a job during school calendar
sessions
Residence Life
o Residence halls were noticeably segregated by age, year in school,
marital status, gender, family situation and even class, race/ethnicity,
nationality, ect
o White, wealthy, out of state, social, Greek and Jewish were put in
social neighborhood
o Political, feminist, queer, nerdy, vegan, and smart were placed in
alternative dorm
o Less social, less affluent placed in normal dorms
Sorting into Residential Communities
 o Majority of freshman are required to live on campus in dorms, but this
does not produce heterogeneity and diversity in student population
it actually does not b.c of the homogeneity of the student body and the
housing segregation ie. learning clusters, international students dorms,
ect.
This creates a clustering effect and maintains the reputation of
the floor of being people of the same interests
Race was a way in which residential units were organized
Residential Reputations and Neighborhood Choice
o Location of dorms plays a role in student preferences and development
of dorm reputations ie. social neighborhood located near the stadium
and football field
o Allowing students to select a neighborhood enables self-segregation by
race and class
o More affluent students care about dorm reputation; less affluent didnt
care as much
The Puzzle of Dorm Preferences
o Why do the affluent like the social dorms?they are not the prettiest
dorms
But they care more about the college experience and
facilitated access to the Greek life and party scene
Easy Majors
o Social floorover 2/3rds were business or communications
o Trend that most choose easy majorseasy to obtain high GPA, little
evidence of general skills improvement during college, heavy focus on
appearance, personality, charm
Easy majors are a key feature of the party pathway
Education majors have the highest GPA (education as the major;
they dont major in the subject they want to teach in)
University has majors that rely on personal taste, appearance,
and self presentation almost all people in this major are party
pathway women aka upper middle class feminine women that
are working to perfect in the party scene
University ensures that easy majors are well publicized, easy to
access, and treated as legitimate