June 20, 2002~~12:04 a.m.
EXPOSED!!
I once had a love-hate relationship with this guy, Jeremiah, in high school. Until then, I was not quite sure what the term �love-hate� really meant. How could one at once LOVE yet HATE someone? Was the line that gray between the two? Was it that unclear? I was confused. Then, one hormonal night Sophomore year, I was given my answer. Where only a mere 24 hours before, Jeremiah had been the most annoying person on the face of God�s green earth, I suddenly found him undeniably attractive. There I was. Making out with him on the sofa (my modus operandi at the time). Six lovely months later, I looked at Jere and thought, �no way.� I can no longer deal with you. And that was it. As an aside, Jere and I are actually very friendly to this day. Apparently, the hormones wore off and although I can only stand him in short intervals, I enjoy his company once in awhile. Such is my relationship with the production team of Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray, of �Real World� fame. The crusaders of reality television, if you will. I�ll admit. I was burned by their rejection letter. I was miffed when Yes failed to find me photogenic or charismatic. In my book, Yes gets a big N-O next to his name. Whenever I read Melissa from New Orleans� website (www.princessmelissa.com) I get a twinge of jealousy at her pseudo-fame. I think to myself, �I�m that funny. I�m that hilarious. I�m that smart and witty and sarcastic. What�s wrong with me? Is it because I�m relatively well-adjusted? Perhaps it�s because I have two parents who are still married and make enough money so that I will never be the subject of �Coal Miner�s Daughter II.� To that I say, �Talk to the hand, Mary-Ellis!� Because even if I don�t have a very good tale for �Behind the Music�, I do have one quality coveted by MTV and their reality t.v. crew: I was in a sorority at the University of California at Davis. Delta Gamma to be exact. In case you are unaware, the newest reality television show to hit the air on MTV, �Sorority Life�, is a show filmed at my alma mater, UC Davis, at a sorority called Sigma Alpha Epsilon Pi. It is the sister sorority to Alpha Epsilon Pi, my former roommate Masterbating Dave�s Jewish fraternity. According to their website, SAEPi was started by a group of girls who wanted a place to share their religion and form a sisterhood. According to me, it�s a group of girls who probably went through recruitment and were annoyed by the singing and clapping and cute-ness. Then they lucked out and MTV offered to make their wannabe dreams come true. And now they are posed on mtv.com in strange clothing and weird expressions and things like �boys� and �parties� and �drinking� said in chirpy tones with giggling are being edited and put on the ads on t.v. Disclaimer: Because I was a sorority girl in one of the largest sororities on campus and my boyfriend is a member of the Latino fraternity, Nu Alpha Kappa, I can both dis sororities and cultural sororities without being accused of jealousy or closed-mindedness. I know how the cultural sorority/fraternity thing is SUPPOSED to work, and work it usually does. Omar�s best friends in the world and quite possibly, the nicest guys I�ve ever met came from his fraternity. NAK also could be credited with starting a �trend� of sorts at UCD. They were very visible on campus, had a lot of pride despite their relatively small number of members (only usually around 20 guys) and they did more community service than any other of the more than 350 student organizations on campus. Omar and I actually MET at the Student Programs and Activities Center at UCD, so I was, for four years, constantly in contact and in the �know� of what organizations were doing on campus. And, may I say, although I have not BEEN a student there for the past 2 years, I was NEVER very aware of SAE Pi. By the time I graduated, they had been a local sorority for two years. I am also half-Jewish. So it cannot be said of me that I have anti-semitic tendencies. I am all for a place in which to unify a group of people, be it a cultural group, a religious group or a specific sex group. But come on. I think they have sold out here. I don�t think there�s enough money in the world to entice the NAKs to go on camera. They�re just too tight and too focused on their goal: bettering the lives of other Latino people. I have a feeling we won�t be seeing a whole hell of a lot of Shabbat-Shalom-ing on this show�just a thought. So anyway, I can dis them with complete indiscretion. Because, well, this is my diary and I say so. Now, you may be wondering, as does any UCD alum I talk to, why in heaven�s name would MTV pick UCD for which to film a show? Why not a party school like Chico State where the sorority girls are your stereotypical cheesy fake plastic blow-up types? Why not Cal? It�s just a mere hour west on I-80 and, judging from the disproportionate members it has sent to Real World and Road Rules casts, Bunim-Murray obviously has some weird obsession with this school. Oh right. It�s overrated, that�s why. Well, let us not dwell on �why UCD?� because, quite frankly, I�ll tell you why. As one of my sorority sisters put it, actually, it�s the best-kept secret in California. Almost everyone (with the exception of Annelise) who goes there, loves it. It is an adorable, albeit sometimes frighteningly politically liberal little college town that creates frog crossings and implements laws banning light and noise pollution, within minutes from Sacramento and only an hour and a half from San Francisco. The campus is beautiful, although none of the buildings match, but whatever. And it is continually in the top ten ranked public universities in the nation. AND you can and DO ride your bike to school and all over campus. And it has Picnic Day. THAT�s why. The Greek scene is fun but not necessary to have a good time. Only about 8% of the entire school population is Greek. I like to think that part of the reason Bunim-Murray picked UCD was because the Greeks there AREN�T annoyingly fake and superficial. If they were even a fraction as cheddar-cheezy as those at Chico, I would have never joined. Granted, within any group of girls you are going to get a sample of that type, but overall, especially the DG�s, most sorority girls were pretty chill there. But when I heard that MTV had chosen to film the local Jewish sorority, I was baffled. Why them? Why not one of the big ones like DG or Kappa? If I were doing a show on life in a sorority house, it likely would NOT be the most realistic of shows to film the sorority with only 7 members. But again, Bunim-Murray doesn�t like my ideas. Then I talked to Paul, the Greek advisor for UCD. I tracked him down on Picnic Day on the quad, just feet away from the MTV filming crew. We chatted. I realized that although MTV �interviewed� all 8 of the other Panhellenic member sororities, yet chose SAE Pi, they really had no choice but to base their show there. Why, you ask? Well, it lies in the difference between local and national sororities. National sororities are called such for two basic reasons. 1. They have multiple chapters nationwide, and 2. they are governed by National Panhellenic, which, among other things, sets the rules for all sororities everywhere. Not the least of these rules is the dry policy wherein no sorority is allowed to host an event with alcohol (unless it is provided by a third-party vendor who will check ID�s) nor are they allowed alcoholic beverages of any kind on the house premises. Not even girls over the age of 21 that live there. So all those �Girls Gone Wild� videos? They�re either taped on a beach in Cabo at Spring Break or at a party of some fraternity whose national board hasn�t denoted them a �dry� fraternity yet. But stay tuned, because most fraternities will be dry within 5 years or so. So a �local� sorority such as SAE Pi has complete governance over their alcohol policy, and, any other policy, for that matter. And as such, they do not mind if someone comes in and makes them look like permanently inebriated sluts, because there will be no consequence or reprimand from the Higher Power, and thus, there will be no danger of their chapter being forced to shut down. Basically, as Paul put it in not so many words: National Panhellenic would shit a brick before they let any of us have CAMERAS taping our every move, event, bar hopping venture, frat party, private ritual, etc. and putting DELTA GAMMA all over the t.v. screen. A snowball would have a better chance in hell. So basically, SAE Pi was the default choice. Oh. Did I say that? Pardon me. They are very nice girls who won the hearts of Mary-Ellis and Jonathan. (snicker) By the way, look for Gay Crew pajamas on the show, because Jordan, the pretty girl with curly hair (who we saw at The Grad on Picnic Day weekend dancing on the table for 4 hours straight with a camera trained on her every ho-bag move) came in with one of the other girls and bought them, I THINK for the show. I will let you know if they make an appearance. Oh and also, don�t be fooled that these are all girls who WANTED to be in this sorority. Rumor has it that MTV went around to local coffee shops and such and asked people if they wanted to join to be part of the show. And also, um, okay, what sorority that has only 7 members and is only 4 years old has money for even a chapter house let alone an additional pledge house? And while we�re on that question, what sorority has ever had a separate pledge house for pledges? And actually, what REAL sorority calls them pledges anymore? The term is �new members.� MTV put some crazy-ass blue lights on the outside of the SAE Pi house (which, by the way was a house with NOTHING to speak of a mere two years ago�I�m not even sure I knew it was there before) probably for outside shots of the �real deal.� But in truth, MTV put the pledges up in an incognito house in North Davis where they did the actual filming. Then, they paid the whole sorority a mere $100,000 for the whole gig. That might sound like a lot of money, but when you think about your sorority and yourself being edited for the convenience of Mary-Ellis and possibly never being able to live down that one drunk night that will be re-edited to look like 20 drunk nights and you, therefore, being edited to look like the trophy �drunk girl� of the house in addition to a house payment of probably $300,000 for downtown Davis across from campus, it�s really chump change. Thank you, MTV, for your generosity in the face of exploitation. Now there is also a curious sub-plot that probably will not be known via the television. One of the girls, who shall remain nameless, used to be a Tri-Delt at UCD but dropped out. She then decided to join SAE Pi. This is just not an option if you want to join a different national sorority. Once you are in one sorority, that�s it. But in Local Sorority-land, there are no rules. So she joined the sorority and then promptly moved out of her apartment she lived in with another Tri-Delt to move into the MTV pledge house so she could be on television. Jeni saw the MTV instruction sheet in the girl�s old room right before she was forced to duck the cameras outside. The instruction sheet said not to wear white because it didn�t look good on camera and that if the girls tried to go anywhere the cameras weren�t allowed, then they couldn�t go in either. I think Yes actually did me a huge favor. Risk not getting to go to the Cantina on a Thursday night? Thank you, but no. Apparently, the girls got a little haughty about their celebrity, too. Word on the street has it that they just stopped STANDING IN LINE at the Cantina and decided they were �too good� to do so! Well, I think you�ll see soon enough that that most certainly is NOT the case. There are just some things that even Sephora cannot help. Oh my gosh. That was so sorority-esque of me. I apologize. Kinda. Oh and one more thing, I was checking out the MTV website today and noticed that when asked the vapid question of �which frat has the cutest guys� several girls answered, �Lambda.� Um, I might not be the most �hip� girl ever, but I�ve only been gone from UCD for 2 short years and I have NO idea who Lambda is on that campus. And is it a coincidence that �frat� spelled differently is �fart?� From my experience, I think not. So I�m having a �Life in the Sorority House� Trashing Party at my place on Monday night, 10:30 sharp. You are all invited. But if you can�t make it, just check back in for updates on what REALLY happens in Davis and Sororityland. Because guaranteed, Bunim-Murray and the SAE Pi�s have no idea.
|
