Vetter, Matthew K.

English

College of William & Mary: W&M Publish

Oracle: The Research Journal of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors Volume 11 Issue 2 Article 7 September 2016 Review of Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality Matthew K. Vetter Denison University, vetterm@denison.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/oracle  Part of the Higher Education Commons Recommended Citation Vetter, Matthew K. (2016) "Review of Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality," Oracle: The Research Journal of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors: Vol. 11 : Iss. 2 , Article 7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25774/g304-tq31 Available at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/oracle/vol11/iss2/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oracle: The Research Journal of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors by an authorized editor of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact scholarworks@wm.edu. Oracle: The Research Journal of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority AdvisorsVol. 11, Issue 1  •  Fall 201662REVIEW OF PAYING FOR THE PARTY: HOW COLLEGE MAINTAINS INEQUALITY MATTHEW K. vETTER, DENISON UNIvERSITY Armstrong and Hamilton (2013) start with a simple question: what is the college experi-ence of a cohort of women assigned to the same floor of a party residence hall to begin their first year?  The narrative that developed from their qualitative ethnography surprised even the researches as the pervasiveness of party culture defined the experience for the cohort of women in the study.  Paying for the Party highlights not only how participating in the college party culture can influence the student experience, but also how the secondary effects for a party culture can dominate the college experience of even those who have no interest in participat-ing.  Armstrong and Hamilton demonstrate that colleges have nurtured and reinforced a party pathway through college that has resulted in the perpetuation of privilege and inequality among students. In an era of heightened risk management, a drinking age of 21, and the fraternal values movement it might be easy to assume that the golden era of college partying from the mid-twentieth century has passed.  The evidence brought forth by Armstrong and Hamilton starkly refutes this notion and provides evidence of a thriving party culture.  Students gave re-ports of Wednesday through Sunday partying, lax peer monitoring of parties, class-based strat-ification within sororities, and fraternity men acting in sexist and dehumanizing ways towards women.  The evidence made clear that the party culture is alive and well on today’s college cam-pus. The differentiated experiences of under-graduate women based on class was highlighted through the different pathways available and the vastly differing college outcomes to the women in the ethnography.  While often heralded as a force for equalization and meritocracy, Armstrong and Hamilton argue that the col-lege experiences of the women in their study reinforced and cemented class differences.  Middle and working class women lacked the physical capital to afford the most meaningful and career-building college experiences, and they often lacked the social capital to form peer support networks that could have enriched their investment in the college.  The significance of this finding is not lost upon the authors, nor do they make such an assertion lightly.  Armstrong and Hamilton (2013) note that, “it is damning that not one of the working class students grad-uated from MU in five years” (p. 179).  Mean-while, their affluent peers with similar or lower academic ability used peer networks to find easy classes and family networks to secure competi-tive internships. Equally damning is the extent to which struc-tural forces contribute to the negative experi-ences and outcomes of the women in the study.  The authors go to great lengths to critically examine the policies and practices of the college administration that influenced the lives of the participants.  Beginning with the recruitment of wealthy out of state students, Armstrong and Hamilton critique the host college for permit-ting college legacies and other cultural insider students to self-select into party or alternative residence halls at the cost of isolating others.  The authors found the college equally at fault for segregating the brightest and most moti-vated students into living-learning communi-ties, supporting a dominant white and affluent fraternity and sorority party culture, permitting lax peer enforcement of policies for fraternity parties, turning a blind eye to sexist fraternity behaviors that increase the risk for sexual as-sault, offering easy and overpopulated majors with little career transferability, and stunting the 1Vetter: Review of Paying for the Party: How College Maintains InequalityPublished by W&M ScholarWorks, 2016Oracle: The Research Journal of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority AdvisorsVol. 11, Issue 1  •  Fall 201663least prepared students with the least experi-enced teachers through remedial courses.  These policies and procedures contributed to the divergent paths for wealthy and working class student and reinforced the inequalities in their college outcomes. On a surface level, the inequities reinforced through structural systems at the college hold practical implications for offices and depart-ments across campus.  Offices of admissions, financial aid, fraternity and sorority life, resi-dential life, student housing, student conduct, campus safety and security, honors colleges, off-campus study, and academic affairs are all implicated for their unequal treatment of stu-dents and given an imperative to act.  From an equally poignant position, the evidence portrayed by Armstrong and Hamilton should provide every faculty, staff, and administrator the imperative to conceptually reconsider the status quo of their daily work.  The lived experi-ences of the women represented in this study are a striking and valid counter-narrative to the idealized values of higher education institutions.  Offices and individuals are equally accountable to the successes and failures of higher education and should view Paying for the Party as evidence towards the need for cultural change. Written by a sociology faculty member and a graduate student, Paying for the Party gives voice to the lived experiences of the women in the study.  Armstrong and Hamilton frequently explain student quotes as if correcting the misinformed perceptions of faculty.  However, the authors also provide depth to their analysis through ancillary interviews with student affairs staff so as to better understand the administra-tive decisions that reinforce the party pathway.  Even with this analysis, Armstrong and Hamil-ton barely touch on the multitude of research from the field of higher education and student affairs that both reinforces and contradicts their findings.  Some of the staunchest defenses of fraternities and sororities have come from the Center for the Study of the College Fraternity – housed at the same campus where this ethnog-raphy took place.  For example, a faculty mem-ber (Pike, 2000) at the same institution studied by Armstrong and Hamilton used data from an unnamed single-institution study to refute a multi-institutional study that had indicated lower cognitive development by fraternity and sorority members in the first year (Pascarella et al., 1996).  This led to two subsequent stud-ies that largely reinforced the original finding (Pascarella, Flowers, & Whitt, 2001, 2006).  The irony of these contrasting perspectives should not be lost to the informed student affairs pro-fessional.  Armstrong and Hamilton introduce a new perspective that brings into question the assumptions and validity of existing research.Reading Paying for the Party can leave the reader with a nihilistic perspective on both the present and future state of higher education, but it is important to frame the findings in the context of the study.  Armstrong and Hamil-ton highlighted the stories of a small group of women with a unique college experience.  The study was focused on the experience of women on a single floor of a residence hall that was culturally identified as a party hall.  The cam-pus where the study took place had an atypical fraternity and sorority culture and a unique set of campus traditions.  The authors note that sec-ondary evidence suggests that the experiences of men on the same campus may be very differ-ent based on the differing recruitment methods of fraternities and male cultural norms.  While generalizing the experiences of the women in the study would be inappropriate, a reader should use the stories to challenge assumptions and question existing policies and procedures on college campuses. The calls for change in higher education have become numerous and varied based on a pletho-ra of converging factors such as emerging tech-nologies, changing demographics, or financial sustainability.  The question of equity and access are two critical issues for the future of higher education.  Yet for all the critiques and manifes-2Oracle: The Research Journal of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors, Vol. 11 [2016], Iss. 2, Art. 7https://scholarworks.wm.edu/oracle/vol11/iss2/7DOI: https://doi.org/10.25774/g304-tq31Oracle: The Research Journal of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority AdvisorsVol. 11, Issue 1  •  Fall 201664tos charged at traditional higher education based on these themes, few carry the weight and the impact of Paying for the Party.  Armstrong and Hamilton address a third critical issue of stu-dent success and portray an institution that is supporting student experiences that directly contradict its mission.  As mission-driven insti-tutions, colleges and universities are faced with the unavoidable imperative of responding in meaningful ways to the evidence brought forth in the narratives of the women in the study.  If change in higher education is inevitable, perhaps Paying for the Party will be the impetus that final-ly moves higher education in a meaningful way.3Vetter: Review of Paying for the Party: How College Maintains InequalityPublished by W&M ScholarWorks, 2016Oracle: The Research Journal of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority AdvisorsVol. 11, Issue 1  •  Fall 201665ReferencesArmstrong, E. A. & Hamilton, L. A. (2013). Paying for the party: How college maintains inequality. Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Pascarella, E. T., Flowers, L., & Whitt, E. J. (2001). Cognitive effects of Greek affiliation in college: Additional evidence. NASPA Journal, 38(3), 280-301.Pascarella, E. T., Flowers, L., & Whitt, E. J. (2006). Research revisited: Cognitive effects of Greek affiliation in college: Additional evidence. Oracle: The Research Journal of the Association of Fraternity Advisors, 2(2), 117-132.Pascarella, E. T., Whitt, E. J., Nora, A., Edison, M., Hagedorn, L. S., and Terenzini, P. T. (1996). Cog-nitive effects of Greek affiliation during the first year of college. NASPA Journal, 33(4), 242-259.Pike, G. R. (2000). The influence of fraternity or sorority membership on students’ college experi-ences and cognitive development. Research in Higher Education, 41(1), 117-139.Matthew K. Vetter is the Associate Director of the Campus Leadership and Involvement Center at Denison University.  He is currently a doctoral student in Higher Education at Azusa Pacific Univer-sity where he is pursuing research interests in co-curricular involvement and college student thriving. Matthew may be contacted at vetterm@denison.edu.4Oracle: The Research Journal of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors, Vol. 11 [2016], Iss. 2, Art. 7https://scholarworks.wm.edu/oracle/vol11/iss2/7DOI: https://doi.org/10.25774/g304-tq31

Review of Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality

https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1135&context=oracle

Review of Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

College of William & Mary: W&M Publish