Lit. Review #1: Paying for the Party

Paying for the Party is the accumulation of over four years worth of observation from the watchful and thorough eyes of Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton. They took in a group of researchers, set up camp in a freshman girl party dorm, and proceeded to follow the girls on that floor throughout and beyond their undergraduate years. There's a large focus on Greek life, particularly "elite" sororities, and how they affect the girls' self-perception, social and financial status, and where it leads them academically.

Elizabeth Armstrong is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Organizational Studies at the University of Michigan and has a PhD in Sociology from the University of California-Berkeley.

Laura Hamilton is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California-Merced and has a PhD in sociology from Indiana University.

Even though Hamilton and Armstrong don't address the four types of sororities/fraternities, they do label and explain what they've come to see as three main types of students and their choice of "college pathways": "The party pathway is provisioned to support the affluent and socially oriented; the mobility pathway is designed for the pragmatic and vocationally oriented; and the professional pathway fits ambitious students from privileged families" (Armstrong 15). They have taken away half of my work because not only do they consider personality but financial, social, and class background. This fits in with my idea to assign a certain type of student into a certain type of fraternity. For example, those in the party pathway tend to swat towards social fraternities while those in professional or mobility pathways may prefer academic or professional fraternities.

However, one thing I will have to consider is that these interviews and observations were made strictly in terms of the female population. From what I've read so far, very little is mentioned of fraternity brothers other than describing social interactions with the project's girls. Armstrong and Hamilton conducted their research with the mindset that "women are well represented among those oriented to achievement" (Armstrong 14). They expect the women they interview to want to achieve some modicum of success, whether it be in a social, academic, or professional setting. They also rely on the idea that "monetary and career success... have traditionally been in competition [for women]" (Armstrong 14). While both statements are true, it means that the goal for these researchers wasn't about identifying groups of people but rather how each group of women tend to go about searching for a method to success. I am in pursuit of a more unisex observation.

Citation:
Armstrong, Elizabeth and Laura Hamilton. Paying for the Party: How College                 Maintains Inequality. Harvard 2013.