Alpha Phi Recruiting Video In Alabama Sets Off Firestorm Of Criticism

The Alpha Phi Sorority at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa has come under intense scrutiny recently after a 4 minute “recruiting” video was released on YouTube and promoted through other Social Media (SoMe) venues and sites.

Controversy erupted following publication of an OpEd entitled “‘Bama sorority video worse for women than Donald Trump,” on the AL dot com website by A.L. Bailey.

News of the wretched video quickly went “viral,” and made national and international news in numerous news outlets, from television, to radio, and the Internet.

A.L. Bailey was recently interviewed by representatives from the Alabama Media Group division of Advance Publications and a condensed version of the hour-long interview was published on their website AL dot com.

The video, which was quickly removed after having been posted (though once posted on the Internet, nothing really ever “disappears”), according to some sources, had at least 500,000 views in the day or two in which it was first available.

Following is commentary of a D.C.-based attorney friend and native Southerner whom viewed it, along with the video following the commentary.

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This is at once an impressive and an appalling intro to one of those ugly interracial porn videos. At first you think it might actually be a genuine recruiting video for the University of Alabama chapter of the Alpha Phi sorority. There is a clever use of the University of Alabama elephant mascot, actual shots of the lovely University of Alabama campus, and really high production values.

But then the clues set in that this can’t possibly be real and must be a porn video.

The REAL Alpha Phi sorority’s web page makes it clear that the sorority emphasizes scholarship (“Alpha Phi values each member’s passion for education, knowledge and achievement”), but the fake porn video never shows a book, much less anyone studying.

The REAL Alpha Phi sorority’s web page talks about “appreciating and celebrating diversity,” but the fake porn video shows 100% white girls, not a single black. Heck, not even an Asian or Hispanic student. Where, I ask you, in the modern university world is there a 100% lily white sorority? This is 2015, not 1915.

And what is that bizarre segment showing a black quarterback taking a highly suggestive snap from the hot blonde playing center? Or all those fake sorority girls taking long loving licks off popsicles, wearing daisy dukes, playing multiple games of girl-on-girl “giddy-up horsey,” and blowing wet kisses to the camera? That can’t be real, since the actual Alpha Phi sorority’s website says that the sorority promotes “cutting edge leadership and training programs for its collegiate members” and “interactive leadership programs that strengthen women’s management and team-building skills.” No young college woman who wants to be a leader in the business world would ever participate in such an extended porn parody of sorority life.

Still, even though the video is filled with long, obsessive close-ups of “coed’s'” booties, close-ups from behind of girls in super-short dresses walking up staircases, what seems like dozens of shots of girls in skimpy bikinis jumping into lakes, and long-haired girls winking at the camera — all of which should be dead-certain tip-offs that is actually a porn video and not a real sorority girl video — you still are almost fooled into thinking it’s real.

But then you go, “No, I refuse to believe that the stereotypes of sororities as racist bastions for young women whose highest ambition is to be a sex object and who have no sense of shame so long as their frat-daddy ‘big brothers’ are hot for them could possibly have any basis in reality.”

Today’s sororities are really progressive places where the young leaders of tomorrow come together without regard to race or class, where the young women are trained to view themselves as leaders of tomorrow and not as just sex objects.

But this is so well done that it is not until the hardcore sex action starts that you realize you’ve been punk’ed. How could you have possibly thought that sororities degrade women and place them into racist bastions where white girls of privilege can shake their booties and feel superior to their racial and economic inferiors?

I am so ashamed of myself for thinking for even a moment that this so-called Alpha Phi recruiting video reveals the truth of everything I have ever thought about sororities (and fraternities)? I deeply apologize.