How 'Bama Rush' will (or won't) change perceptions about UA's sororities

Jana Mathews didn't dive into Greek life when most do, as a teen-ager on her first jaunt from home, but some years later, in her first term as a professor at Rollins College, in Winter Park, Florida.

Joining Alpha Omicron Pi as an alumni initiate, she continued to learn and live among sorority sisters and their fraternity counterparts, first steps on what became a 10-year social-educational journey. Along the way she served as a faculty adviser for houses, visited other Greek systems ― including the University of Alabama's ― and gathered findings in her book "The Benefits of Friends: Inside the Complicated World of Today's and Sororities & Fraternities."

Thus the mother of four's odyssey through the Greek system varied rather extensively from that of younger women featured in new documentary "Bama Rush," which she watched May 23 when it rolled out as one of the initial offerings for the new Max streaming service, spun off from HBO Max.

More: What the 'Bama Rush' documentary reveals about University of Alabama sororities

She didn't see what she'd anticipated, based on promotions, and a visually-aurally jammed 2.5-minute trailer.

"We were expecting, I think, a takedown of the Greek system," Mathews said, which "Bama Rush" can't deliver, in part because director Rachel Fleit found access to houses limited and limiting, especially after social-media rumor-mongering that spoke of "20 women" infiltrating rush, wearing hidden microphones. Threats of recrimination and punishment followed.

One of the young women interviewed in "Bama Rush" stopped co-operating on the heels of the online badgering. Fleit, who has lived with alopecia areata since childhood but hasn't covered the fact for years, donned a wig for disguise, since she felt threatened. Fleit appears on camera wearing a "f*** your documentary" T-shirt that made rounds last year, while she and her crew filmed the 2022 recruitment. So while "Bama Rush" gets inside the heads of some women involved, it can't dig deeply into Greek life.

The positives of Greek life

A professor of English and cultural studies, Mathews' research and teaching interests began in medieval literature, specifically 14th century British poetry.

"So I had trouble filling my classes ... shockingly," she said, laughing. While publish or perish remains imperative to academic success, putting posteriors in chairs also abets tenure.

At Rollins, a small liberal arts college, Greek population reaches from 35 to 45%, unusually high, where a more typical figure runs between 10 and 15%, on an average campus. Perhaps needless to say, but UA is not an average campus, with something like 36% Greek involvement.

Matthews knew that in order to urge a chunk of the 3,000-something Rollins students toward Beowulf and the Grendel family, into the Middle English of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," she could get a start understanding what enticed them about Greek life.

Brigham Young University, where she was an undergraduate, didn't admit fraternities and sororities until 2021, so new Rollins faculty member Mathews was relatively clueless about Greek letters emblazoned on books, sweaters, shorts and pins; about song-and-dance recruitment skits; about blizzards of glitter.

She began visiting chapters until, four years after completing her 2007 doctorate at Duke University, Mathews joined Alpha Omicron Pi. Alumni initiation is a relatively recent idea, rarer a dozen years ago, offered to some faculty, staff, or family of actives who've been eagerly involved.

Initially she thought the offer was a gag, then flipped quickly from "Why in the world?" to "Why shouldn't I?"

"I went through the recruitment process with the freshman class, got a bid, became a full-fledged member, attended all the formals, projects and chapter events," she said, though skipping out on some teen-aged socialization. "I didn't go out clubbing with them .... I went to the slumber party, but left at 10 p.m."

Mathews came to know more of the positives, the bonding, support and acceptance in Greek life, than "Bama Rush" is able to unveil. In her book, though, she also talks about the narrowing of perspectives when a perhaps-overwrought sense of unity discourages thought, when hive mindsets supplant individual responsibility.

"Horizontal relationships tend to breed poor decision-making," she said.

Her book also questions the wisdom of primping and preening 18-year-olds, which can become almost pornographic as social media blasts them on public display; how Greek life funnels a narrower dating and friendship pool; how the focus on appearance ― on "hotness," which determines which houses are top-tier, interviews in the film say ― is ultimately all about marriage. Mathews also ponders why frat pipelines to Wall Street and Washington, D.C., don't exist in the same ways for sororities.

"Bama Rush" suggests the challenges these women speak about facing ― body-shaming leading to eating disorders; inability to define themselves, or find a place of acceptance; anxiety, depression and more ― parallel those of all women. While there may be correlations, it's a claim the film fails to support, Mathews said.

"It's more about what it means to be a wealthy, upper-class woman now," she said.

'Everyone wants to be like Alabama'

At least two of the interviewees were found through engagement with sorority rush consultants, such as Trisha Addicks, Sloan Anderson, and Lorie Stefanelli, all of whom appear in the film. Consultants coach PNMs (potential new members) on how to dress, talk and comport themselves ― to lay off the five Bs: Boys, Booze, Bible, Bucks and Biden ― on how to stuff resumes until they're attractive, how to "get their names out" before they visit campus.

A 2017 Vanity Fair article said begin at $100 for a 90-minute session. Pat Grant, founder of Rushbiddies, said her most popular package costs $1,500, for which a PNM gets 40 hours of text, chat, and Skype, with workbooks and handouts. At Sorority Prep, a young woman will pay $500 for a three-hour class. Hiking in Heels offers a premium package for $1,496, and an elite for $2,975, according to a 2021 Fortune magazine article.

A text block runs across the bottom of the "Bama Rush" screen at one point reading “The average annual cost for new members of a sorority at Bama is $8,300.” It's unclear if that includes recruitment prep.

Much as it does with football, UA leads the nation in recruiting out-of-state students, Mathews said. For 2022-2023, Alabama residents are paying $11,940 for undergraduate tuition and fees at UA; that rises to $32,300 for out-of-state students. A 2021 article in The Atlantic noted UA among those pushing to expand out-of-state numbers, beginning under Robert Witt, who was UA's president from 2003-12 and UA System chancellor from 2012-16.

UA enrollment by 2016 had increased 58% over 10 years previous. When Witt arrived in 2003, about 3,000 were involved in Greek life. In 2022, that number is closer to 12,000.

It follow that out-of-state students often derive from healthier financial circumstances, Mathews said, or at least from families who've seen value in the UA investment. She knows something about costs personally, as three of her four kids are in college; two of them have chosen to participate in Greek life.

"Alabama doesn't have the native population to populate the school at that level," said Mathews, referring to UA's record-breaking enrollment of 38,645 students in fall 2022. The also-record freshman class of 8,037 included about 62% out-of-state students.

"We have a dwindling supply, nationwide, of college-aged students," Mathews said. "It's expected to hit the wall in 2025, a major demographic shift" linked to uncertainty and unemployment caused by the 2007 global recession. The number of annual births per 1,000 women (ages 15 to 44) stayed roughly between 65 and 70 from the early 1970s until 2007. Starting in 2008, numbers began to fall, until hitting 56 per 1,000 in 2020, lowest rate in American history. In 2007, there were 4.3 million births nationwide. In 2021, 3.7 million.

"The University of Alabama has decided to invest enormous amounts of money and capital recruiting wealthy students from out of state," she said.

And part of the marketing is the Greek's suggestion of an elite version of campus life, offering a curated dating experience, unity and bonding, and a proffered channel to a golden world post-college.

"Alabama is an extreme version, and it's self-consciously extreme, of the fraternity and sorority experience," Mathewes said. "It serves as an aspirational model.

"Everyone wants to be like Alabama."

"Bama Rush" captures some of the thrills, the drives of those who wish to join Greek life, but lacking access and cooperation from the houses, can't show many positives, Mathews said.

"Watching this film, if you're not familiar with this sort of culture, you might think this is a horrible, horrible thing," she said. "It'd be like watching Miss America and saying this is how all women in America look.

"If that's an idealized life, then it brings to question what do we value as a society and a culture? Materialism, a certain body aesthetic?"

That might have shifted had the Greek system chosen to participate.

"I'd have told (the Greeks), 'If you don't tell your story, if you don't let people in, people are going to tell the story for you,' " Mathews said.

Even with hints of machinations from not-so-secret Greek society Theta Nu Epsilon, also known as the Machine, discussions of body positivity, identity, inclusion, and disillusion, "Bama Rush" fails to include the new or unknown, especially for those already familiar with the UA phenomenon, whether through experience, Tuscaloosa proximity, or TikTok viral videos.

"It makes arguments in much more subtle ways, and I appreciate that, but the expectations ...." Mathews said. "For better or worse, it landed a softer punch than what we were expecting."

Reach Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.