Only a little more than a year after the desegregation of their Greek system, the University of Alabama (UA) has another sorority controversy on its hands.
The Alpha Phi Beta Mu sorority chapter at UA posted a video aimed at recruiting new members. The video went viral, but not for the reason the sorority envisioned.
The sorority took down the video, but other YouTube users dowloaded it and re-posted it.
A.L. Bailey wrote for AL.com that the video is "worse for women than Donald Trump," but that quip was only the headline. Bailey laid into the sorority for promoting "a parade of white girls and blonde hair dye, coordinated clothing, bikinis and daisy dukes, glitter and kisses, bouncing bodies, euphoric hand-holding and hugging, gratuitous booty shots, and matching aviator sunglasses."
Bailey also pointed out that the video seemingly had nothing to do with academics or the advantages of belonging to a Greek-letter group post graduation.
As of Monday afternoon, UA's Alpha Phi chapter wiped several pages on its website clean. For example, the "About," "Join," and "Contact" pages on AlphaPhiAlabama.com are blank. The sorority also deleted its Twitter account, turned its Instagram account private, and deleted all the content from its Tumblr page.
UA is not far removed from the segregated Greek system scandal in which black female students spoke out about how they were blocked from joining certain sororities because of their skin color. UA's Student Government voted in April, 2014 to end segregation that still existed in their Greek system.
In the first sorority recruiting cycle after the scandal, UA stated in an official university release that 25 percent of its African-American female students submitted a bid for a sorority, up from 19 percent last year.
But a school spokesman told BuzzFeed News the Alpha Phi recruitment video should not be considered representative of the school's Greek system.
"This video is not reflective of UA's expectations for student organizations to be responsible digital citizens," Deborah Lane, the school's associate vice president for university relations, said in a statement. "It is important for student organizations to remember what is posted on social media makes a difference, today and tomorrow, on how they are viewed and perceived."
