Rebekah Barnes

Sororities create high-production videos to promote chapters during recruitment. 

Screaming, dancing and glitter filled Ohio University's campus as nine sororities celebrated Bid Day, welcoming new women to their chapters Sunday. 

The day culminates a two-weekend process of recruitment, in which each sorority talks to potential new members and introduces them to their chapter. Through a mutual-selection process, some women are offered bids to one of the nine Women's Panhellenic Association chapters on campus.

Typically, each sorority presents an introduction video as part of the process. Not just any video — high-quality, heavily-produced videos that can garner thousands of views on sites like YouTube. One video from the Ohio State University Delta Gamma chapter has over 120,000 views on YouTube. 

These videos, however, can have backlash. The Alpha Phi chapter at University of Alabama was criticized for the video being “so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives: College Edition, A.L. Bailey, of AL.com, wrote. The video was taken down but now can be seen through other publications, surpassing 500,000 views.  

via WKRG on YouTube

Last year, OU's Chi Omega gained national attention after Phi Kappa Psi, a fraternity on campus, spoofed it frame-by-frame. The original video has more than 190,000 views, and the remake has more than 180,000. 

Here are the 2015 recruitment videos for Ohio University Panhellenic chapters, in alphabetical order:

No video could be found for Alpha Omicron Pi. Delta Zeta's video is not available online currently, Sarah Kahler, Delta Zeta vice president of membership, said in an email. 

@reb_barnes

rb605712@ohio.edu

Comments powered by Disqus