You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
One start-of-the-academic-year tradition that has grown in recent years is the discovery of a sorority recruitment video that is particularly expensive to produce and devoid of any evidence that the sorority sisters in question engage in academic work. This year's winner may be Arizona State University's Alpha Phi, which this week unveiled the video below. Pricing sorority videos is not an editorial strength of Inside Higher Ed. But Teen Vogue, citing reporting by Elle on a similar video, estimates the video cost $200,000 to $400,000 to produce. (Inside Higher Ed reached out to Alpha Phi but has not heard back.) Teen Vogue's comment on the video: "In a sorority recruitment commercial promoting Arizona State's chapter of Alpha Phi, the sisters (who are mostly white and blond) embark on a desert adventure, where they take an off-road spin in a pink Jeep, do some totally safe-looking backflips off the side of a cliff and go for a completely, 100 percent normal hot air balloon tour. While nothing says 'sisterhood' quite like frolicking in the desert, the video looks more like an ad for spring break."
The Houston Chronicle wrote of the video, "The only thing we don't see them doing is studying, attending class and performing all those philanthropic acts they claim to do. Minor detail."
You can judge for yourself.
