Sociology of Elite Reproduction on College Campuses
The emergence of Greek organisations and highly selective clubs on college campuses serves a reproductive function of social stratification, specifically elitism, in American society. In this paper, I will discuss how elite secondary schools prepare their students for exclusive environments like Greek organisations on college campus, reproducing so-called ‘elites’ using Bourdieu’s theory of capital, and how outsourcing of the social aspects of undergraduate collegiate life keeps the current system in place. I will not dive deeper into whether elitism should exist in our society or not and instead focus on analysing and improving the current system.
According to Cookson and Persell, ‘schools serve a reproductive “function” in society’ because ‘[they] are generally founded to train and socialise the young into the actual and symbolic worlds of their parents’ generation.’ While there are many competing perspectives on this topic, the symbolic interactionist theory explains that as students interact with others who have similar class status, ‘[they] come to believe in the appropriateness of their class position within society.’ (Cookson & Persell, 1985) As Khan notes, ‘it is not what you learn in classes, but how you know it, who you meet as you begin to know it and what knowing it from an elite institution means to others as opposed to knowing it from a non-elite institution,’ referring to both the social capital one obtains through attending an elite institution as well as the symbolic advantage, or ‘prestige,’ that comes with it. According to Zweigenhaft,
‘Social capital refers to the benefits of knowing people who can be of help to one — what in earlier times was referred to as making “connections” and, more recently, is often referred to as “networking.” Bourdieu writes that social capital “is often indispensable if one desires to attract clients in socially important positions.”’ (Zweigenhaft, 1993)
By surrounding oneself by a circle of influential people, like government bureaucrats, CEOs and financiers — as well as their children — in elite institutions, one obtains a kind of social capital that gives them a tremendous head start in their lives. Not only that, but also elite secondary schools prioritise non-academic traits such as ‘learning to play the bassoon, or to be an expert rower, or develop skills as a debater,’ which are cultural capitals later weighed significantly in admission to elite colleges, social clubs or other highly selective social establishments. (Khan, The Education of Elites in the United States, 2016)
Indeed, there is a daunting number of barriers — a combination of economic, cultural and social capital prerequisites — to get into the elite circle and obtain ‘elite education.’ While education reforms, including standardised national credentials, have been implemented throughout the last few decades to level the playing field, elite colleges still use highly subjective metrics like personal essays, extracurricular activities and leadership traits that disproportionally benefit elite secondary school students. (Cookson & Persell, 1985) Research indicates that ‘attending one of the top 72 high schools in the nation is one of the strongest predictors of getting into a college.’ (Khan, The Education of Elites in the United States, 2016) Not only that, but also, as Mills remarked, ‘there are “two Harvards”: one for a closely networked set of “old boys” and one for everyone else’ (Reeves, Friedman, Rahal, & Flemmen, 2017). This is because even within those selective elite institutions, there are highly exclusive social establishments, often Greek organisations, that closely resemble elite secondary schools in their culture and provide their members with leadership and social links necessary to join the elite ranks. Due to the market system of college clubs, the campus officials have little say in the selection process, with some organisations ‘[excluding] based on race, religion, social class and also on nebulous characteristics like physical appearance, charisma and ability to get along well with present members.’ (Syrett, 2020) Furthermore, the Supreme Court ruled that ‘private groups […] can use the constitutional protections of their expression of their beliefs to restrict their membership, even in discriminatory ways,’ (Cohen, 2009) paving the path to the current situation in which the social aspects of attending college are increasingly inaccessible and exclusive. This phenomenon gives a potential explanation to why ‘graduates of prep schools, and especially, elite prep schools, were more likely to have joined prestigious social clubs and that they were more likely to have entered occupations in which social capital would be especially useful,’ (Zweigenhaft, 1993) indicating that the elites tend to socialise within themselves and keep the resources necessary for pursuing elite professions within themselves through a variety of barriers, the Constitutionally-protected right to free speech and the requirement of social, cultural and economic capitals.
Despite the aforementioned barriers to entry, Greek organisations present college students with a valuable opportunity to interact with their peers, hone their leadership and team-working skills and develop a sense of belonging and altruism on campus. Studies found Greek-organisation affiliates ‘in many cases fare better than other students in terms of their level of engagement in educationally effective practices,’ (Hayek, Carini, O’Day, & D, 2002) ‘demonstrate substantially higher retention rates,’ (Nelson, Halperin, Wasserman, Smith, & P, 2006) and ‘report higher gains in social involvement and integration of college experiences, resulting in greater increases in their general abilities associated with cognitive development.’ (Pike, 2003) (Tull & Cavins-Tull, 2018) Although labour market research indicates that ‘higher and higher ability students gain less and less or are even hurt in terms of wages by fraternity membership,’ (Popov & Bernhardt, 2012) their significance in providing students with certain social and cultural capitals cannot be ignored. As Cookson and Persell explain, ‘class position is strengthened by educational and other cultural experiences that create a sense of status group membership. A “status group” is a group of people who feel a sense of social similarity,’ (Cookson & Persell, 1985) and Greek organisations are the kind of environment in which such status groups are embodied. As Sasso notes, ‘in an era when most students develop friendships via social media and become “digital natives,” fraternities and sororities have value in providing students with more authentic social development opportunities.’ (Sasso, 2018)
However, because of the lack of diversity and inadequate oversight, Greek organisations are also frequently involved in sexual assaults, hazing deaths, racism and binge drinking. As Syrett mentioned,
‘[…] the sense of exclusiveness and social preferment which thus arises is hurtful to the young men who are in the fraternities because it gives them a false and undemocratic sense of superiority. And it hurts the students who are outside the fraternities by giving them a wholly unwarranted sense of being inferior and of being social outcasts.’ (Syrett, 2020)
In other words, the spaces in which students socialise, obtain valuable social and cultural capitals, which are useful in their professional careers, and gain leadership and community service experience have also become incredibly exclusive, discriminatory and toxic environments. Inevitably, a considerable percentage of the elite is nurtured in the fraternities whether one likes it or not: ‘a recent review of the NIC website showed that 19 (44%) US Presidents were members of fraternities; 39 (39%) of the US Senate membership are members of fraternities or sororities; and 106 (24.6%) of the US Congress are members of fraternities or sororities,’ (North American Interfraternal Conference, n.d.) (Tull & Cavins-Tull, 2018) and the fact that those influential people spend their most defining time of their lives in a closed-off, conformist and conceited community is deeply disturbing. Khan alerts that ‘in healthy societies, elite status is not relentlessly inherited or protected through social institutions, but rather new members join the elite because of their talents.’ (Khan, The Sociology of Elites, 2012) However, considering the barriers to entry, the increasingly closed-off elite circles that take their roots in elite secondary schools and then in Greek organisations on college campuses, the current elite is anything but meritocratic. It stands in stark contrast with the hefty ideals of equity, inclusiveness and liberalism of tertiary education in the United States, including the elite institutions themselves.
At the same time, it is crucial to note that since the same issues — discrimination, violence, binge drinking and so on — are observed on college campuses throughout the nation, we have to accept the notion that there are underlying structural issues that need to be changed, instead of taking each issue at face value and naïvely hoping to prevent further unfortunate incidents by working only with the individuals involved in perpetrations. Amherst College’s experience with dealing with Greek organisations, for instance, gives us a useful insight: it is one of the few colleges to ban Greek organisations outright. Nonetheless, the Greek organisations persisted, operating as ‘local organisations’ instead, and they have continued to be involved in controversial acts such as vandalism, underage drinking and violence with even less oversight. Despite ‘existing but simultaneously not existing,’ the Greek organisations of Amherst managed to ‘trade social capital to coerce sex from unwilling women’; (Syrett, 2020) it made national headlines for the mismanagement by the campus authorities as they reportedly ‘admitted [a victim] to a psychiatric ward in response to her comments about being depressed.’ (Sasso, 2018) The key takeaway here is banning this type of organisations is ineffective because they are an integral part of undergraduate student life, because they capitalise on the kind of social and cultural capital that campus administrators fail to provide students with: as long as demand exists, there will always be supply of some sort.
Treating undergraduate colleges as purely academic institutes in which only lectures and research take place is an absurd view. And in an apparent recognition of that reality, undergraduate education focuses on balance, breadth and foundation for not just further education but also character and career of the students, dubbed ‘liberal arts education.’ However, college administrators often give minimal attention to non-academic aspects of undergraduate student life, making students resort to controversial communities like Greek organisations. Obviously, there exist Greek organisations that respect inclusivity and diversity, there exist student organisations that are successful in providing students with a safe and supportive environment, but as long as the current market system exists, there will also be ones that cause hazing deaths, emotional trauma and sexual assaults and nurture misogyny, racism and discrimination. By making essential components of student life such as leadership, interaction and community service an exclusive commodity, the elites maintain their status and keep it quasi-hereditary. It has serious ramifications on the whole society as many of the people nurtured in those controversial environments rise up to highly influential positions in society. Although no causal relationship can be made without a full scholarly enquiry, looking at this situation makes the reason why some of the nation’s political leaders are so hellbent on deeply discomforting stances like banning abortion, an inarguably fundamental women’s right, less blurry. Some colleges have tried banning those organisations while others are actively enquiring into the Oxbridge-style system of residential colleges. But one thing is clear: something must be done.
Bibliography
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Disclaimer
This essay was written as a coursework for UC Berkeley. Any sort of plagiarism will be strongly condemned.
In writing this paper, I made a number of assumptions, some of which I do not necessarily subscribe to. As with any social theory, nothing mentioned here is universal; I intended to provide my own analysis on the general trend observed, which does not apply to individual level. For instance, the term ‘elite’ is used here exclusively to refer to people who hold disproportional degree of power and influence, similar to the capital-owning bourgeoisie in Marxist literature. The reason I used this terminology over ‘bourgeoisie,’ for example, was to emphasise the connection to Bourdieu’s social theory which argues that capital can not only be ‘economic’, which Marx mainly focuses on, but also social and cultural while reflecting the fact that the particular social class is not rigid like aristocracy or the early industrialisation but somewhat open for outsiders. Thus the term neither holds any substance on individual basis nor concerns the romanticised notion of elitism.
