Oberlin students get a glimpse of Greek life thanks to MTV’s newest reality show.

How is a college student to choose from with the ever-expanding catalog of reality television shows? While Joe Millionaire was absurdly entertaining and newer network attempts like All American Girl and Married By America continue to experiment with the reality show formula, marriage and chosen-by-America stardom are not themes to which most Oberlin students relate. What we do enjoy, however, is talking about ourselves and noting our striking differences from other schools. When we study abroad with fellow Great Lakes College Association of America (GLCA) students from places like Wooster and Wabash, we are reminded that the absence of Greek life on our campus is a definite advantage.
A phenomenon on college campuses all across America, sororities and fraternities become immature soap-opera freak shows on MTV’s Sorority Life and Fraternity Life. This portrayal, of course, only validates my imagination.
In contrast to the people who appear on these shows, Oberlin breeds the socially eccentric types that prefer anti-war teach-ins and the plotting of nihilist parades to “rushing” a fraternity or sorority. Oddly (and embarrassingly) enough, I love to watch other people rush. MTV is in its second season of Sorority Life and recently debuted the complementary Fraternity Life. Every Wednesday at 10 p.m., my friends and I kick the West Wing crowd out of the Wilder television lounge and commence the MTV power hour. (It’s like TRL for college seniors.)
What becomes most interesting about the shows, besides the melodrama, is the way the editors at MTV play up gendered differences between the people portrayed on Sorority Life and Fraternity Life. The women are portrayed as socially aggressive and the men as physically aggressive. Not surprisingly, the overlaps in those behaviors are few and far between.
The shows each follow a group of students from the first stages of rushing, through the trials of pledging and living in the pledge houses to the final decisions of who’s in and who’s out. This season, the shows are taking place at University at Buffalo and follow the Delta Xi Omega sorority and Sigma Chi Omega fraternity, both of which are small, local (meaning they have no national chapters) Greek organizations.
Common themes in the shows include the clash of personalities, pledges missing their “other” friends, new love and breakups and a general dictatorship run by the sorority sisters and fraternity brothers. It is clear that MTV is leaving out any scenes of actual studying, community service or employment. Personal lives are only portrayed as they relate to the organization as a whole.
The act of pledging, through the eyes of MTV, is a painful process that only the truly mad should consider. For example, the Delta Xi Omega sisters insist that the new pledges keep journals to record thoughts about the pledging process and keep the journals with them at all times. If a pledge accidentally leaves her journal behind while she goes to the bathroom down the hall, for instance, a sister has every right to come in, steal the book and punish the pledge.
Unfortunately, many of the antics on Sorority Life are utterly childish: journals, catty fights about pledge class “bonding,” rules about never sleeping outside of the pledge house, arts and crafts time and threats to slap one or the other of the sisters. It truly is painful to see college students, who I thought were in the same boat as I am, make such fools of themselves, or be paid to let MTV make their lives look foolish (according to brianx.com, word is that the sorority cashes in at about $1,500 per episode).
Fraternity Life is similarly juvenile in themes and discussion, but also includes a lot more drinking, sex (or at least talk about it), pranks, “horsing around,” military-type intervention from their brothers and physical aggression. While the sorority pledges seem to sit in their houses and talk behind each other’s backs all day, the pledge brothers are out and about, trying to steal a pet from the zoo, or their neighbors or meeting strippers at local bars.
It’s unfortunate that we get such stereotypical views of the lives of these men and women, but since the two shows overlap so much already (the sorority and fraternity are not only on the same campus but are also brother/sister organizations), if these differences weren’t played up, it would be one very long, disturbing show.
Television-mediated Greek life is fascinating because of its overriding notion of being “in” or “out” — you have to work to impress the brothers or sisters to be accepted into the organizations and really be willing to commit your whole social life to their whims.
In addition to the spectacle on the screen, mtv.com offers the shows’ cast commentary boards for viewers who want to go “behind the scenes.” The message boards allow only characters on the show to post their reactions and clarifications, and the dialogue is often more telling than the show itself. Stacey, one of the sisters, posted: “Whenever I’m flipping through the channels and see it on, I just cannot get myself to think of it as a TV show that all of America is watching. It’s weird to see your house and things that are so familiar to you on television. It still does not seem real.”
These shows are also among the minority of reality shows where the characters comment on the effect of having cameras following them around everywhere. One pledge brother, Dan, actually de-pledged because he said he just “wanted to be a normal kid” and go back to life without the drama and cameras. On recent Sorority Life episodes, the girls have refused to talk about certain topics (like sex) with the cameras around. It’s both awkward for the viewer and empowering for the subjects.
While I do not recommend this show to anyone seeking a sociological study of Greek organizations, it is entertaining in a repulsive, satisfyingly un-Oberlin way.