Greek Life and the social media challenge

Earlier this week I got a text from my brother who is currently located in MA “Why is FAU trending on insta”?

My response? I have no idea. I don’t have a instagram. Why don’t you click it and tell me?

Of course, to my brother seeing pictures with #WhatsYourStoryFAUGW16, he had no idea what that meant. In fact nothing about that Hashtag tells you anything about well anything except that something is happening at FAU, if you can even recognize that.  However, being in Greek life I instantly knew because every 2 seconds I was being reminded to post with the hashtag because easy points. For those who don’t know it’s this years Greek Week and they themed it based around “stories”. The “WhatsYourStory” part is supposed to be a play on Owlthon’s campaign “What’s Your Why?” (side note: Owlthon is a separate FAU organization that raises money for CMNH. Owlthon has partnered with Greek Week in order to increase awareness and participation in the event. While Greek week is exclusive to the Greek Community, Owlthon is open to all of the FAU community).

So while the world is aware something is happening at FAU, do they realize it’s Greek Week? And what is the point of raising awareness of Greek Week at FAU anyways? Let’s take a step and go back to this idea that it is easy to generate points in a competition and Greek Life loves to be competitive.

In fact, competition is how many Greek Life organizations generate awareness and profit for their national philanthropies.

Many will hold some kind of a competition, where a representative from each organization will compete for a title. There will be many events to generate points, while raising money, awareness, and promoting Greek unity. So competitions aren’t bought by who can raise the most amount of money and discourage participation, they add other things to generate points such as sports and utilizing social media.

The most popular social media challenge for FAU Greek Life is the Facebook Profile Picture. Basically, the representative changes their profile picture to a picture with members from the organization hosting the event, both organizations names, the title of the event, and what the event is raising money for.  The points for this portion of the competition are generated based off the number of “likes”.

For example, this was my profile picture for when I represented my sorority, Phi Mu in a fraternity’s philanthropic competition. The Triangle Fraternity was hosting Tri-Angel in order to raise money and awareness for their National Philanthropy, Habitat for Humanity. The winner received angel wings and a halo, $100 donated to a philanthropy of their choice, and the title of “Tri-Angel”. This photo got over 700 likes during the week by,  well, begging. I had tagged every Phi Mu chapter I could find, and personally messaged just about everyone in my Facebook friends. I wound up winning 2nd overall in the Social Media challenge, but won the title of Tri-Angel in the end and Triangle donated $100 to Phi Mu’s national philanthropy CMNH (which is also Owlthon’s but they’re two separate organizations).

In my opinion, social media challenges are a fun way of adding to a competition, if done correctly. The Facebook profile picture challenge is very straight forward. It states it’s purpose, raises awareness and done so in a way where it doesn’t blow up a person’s news feed. Plus an easy way to keep track of points.  The Instagram challenge, however, was done so in a terrible way. It raised awareness on nothing. No special cause, no organizations involved, no real purpose or meaning; it started trending to make it easier to count points for a title worth only bragging rights.

However, it was a good attempt. A failed attempt but Greek Week took a chance. They noticed social media could be utilized to add to competition and they tried to make it fit with their event. Obviously a profile picture wouldn’t work. Greek week isn’t a pageant where one member represents an organization. Many organizations come together and form a team. They needed a way to count points so they created a hashtag. It was thought out in the sense they needed to make the challenge work for their event, they just didn’t acknowledge how their challenge would pan out in the world of social media.

If you stopped worrying about the sorority stereotype, maybe it’ll change?

I think it’s safe to say my inquiry thus far has been related to focus in social media regarding women issues, such as rape. With this post I want to still examine how social media shifts focus from women’s issues but in regards to the topic of stereotypes in sororities, the campaigns that have been released, and my own personal experiences of how image is more important than actually solving issues that have risen.

So I think the best way to start this is with a picture that was posted on my social media, and many like it of my sisters are plastered on our social media account in order to say, look how sisterly we are, and how much fun we’re having at this event. The said truth behind this photo was that it was completely used as a marketing strategy AKA this event was a video shoot where you were supposed to be taking pictures and laughing with sisters. That’s it, that’s the story behind this adorable photo and many others from this same day and setting. I was required to dress up, hair and make-up done, or else sorry you’re not in the video. How superficial does this sound? Yet, oh wait we’re trying to tell you sell you on the fact we’re so much more than that with simple gestures like this photo.

Ok, so the truth is the reason I joined Greek life and the reason I stayed are far different. I fell for the fake ploys social media as given me, this image of sisterhoods, and always laughing and having fun. The fact it’ll help me socially and academically and blahblahblah When what I actually love about it, sorority girls fail to put on social media because they’re so focused on this clean, crisp image of sisterhood and fun. Which I mean don’t get me wrong I found in this friend pictured in that image, but get this, she’s still one of my best friends even though she left the sorority. Why? Because we spent to much time worrying about our image.  We spent so much time saying joining a sorority is all about women empowerment, yet behind the scenes we’re being told if our hair and make-up isn’t done properly it looks bad.  We spent to much time in make-up and heels, we forgot about our own health. Hate to break it to ya, but standing in heels for hours while we talk about breaking stereotypes, is a little contradictory.  We spent so much time getting yelled at because our grades weren’t up to par because of imagery standards, we forgot sisters need encouragement, not punishment. Sisters shouldn’t feel called out or berated, they should feel like sisters shouldn’t they? At least that’s what the social media campaigns you put out told me right?

Ok, so I bet you by this point I made being in a sorority sound awful right? You’re probably asking why do you put up with that and why are you wasting your time on an image. Well because while everyone’s so focused on image and breaking stereotypes, I can take a step back and say OK that’s dumb, well that helps justify that stereotype, clearly you’re hurting people, you’re a bad leader by doing this and LEARN from it. HA! ok that’s not the only reason but it is a major factor but now I’m getting off topic.

The biggest thing is what social media doesn’t draw your attention to. Yeah, obviously you see the pretty posed pictures and the lack of stereotypical party pictures because those will just get you in trouble. What you don’t see is the girls hanging out together in their pajamas and stuffing their faces because OMG how dare you be actual human beings on social media. What you don’t see is how much effort girls put into other organizations’ philanthropies or even their own unless they won the title in the competition and have bragging rights. You don’t see the chapter meetings as professional business meetings preparing us for the business world. You don’t hear the conversations of women empowerment because we’re to busy trying to show the world specific image and convey a message through a strategic plan to break stereotypes, instead of just allowing the girls to show it in their own ways.

So yeah, I talk shit about my sorority and love it at the same time. I don’t deny that. There’s a good side and a bad side to everything and the “We are not our stereotypes” campaign is the dumbest thing to even attempt to try and say otherwise. Why because it’s shifting the image and pointing out the dumbness of it all. It’s just another stupid, perfectly crafted strategic plan that makes you forget to address the actual issue at hand, not to mention some of the just make Greek life as a collective sound dumb, which is a stereotype the’re trying to break through this campaign. See the paradox? My favorite is the one that says “sorority girls spend Sundays hungover…I spend my Sundays in church”. Let’s be real though this is college, some girls in college whether they’re in a sorority our not will wake up hungover on Sundays. Others will go to church. Others who aren’t religious will go to ballroom practice (like me). So what are you really trying to say?

So I think the problem is the focus has been shifted from let’s fix this problems to how can we show the world these problems don’t exist. Greek life cares more about hiding the bad stuff than actually fixing the bad stuff. It is so focused on not talking about the bad stuff, it forgets bringing it up might actually fix some of the issues. In the end trying to pretend and convince the world that the issues don’t exist, is actually causing more.

So to end this I’m going to tell a story. When Greek Week partners were announced this year, one of my friends took to social media to express her feelings. She was upset at the pairings because of “Greek Unity” being the critic I am, I commented and asked for specifics. After a back and forth conversation the truth came out, She didn’t like the pairings because some organizations don’t participate therefore some teams have a better chance of winning just because of higher participation levels. What does that have to do with Greek Unity? Nothing. She was mad about a bragging right title and used the fact that event is supposed to unify Greek Life as a good image media tactic to complain.