The Scoop
On September 17th, 2003 MTV will premiered third season of 'Sorority Life'. To new and returning faithful readers of the BrianX Magazine Official Review of MTV Sorority Life Season One and Season Two, which are my reviews of the first two seasons of MTV Sorority Life (with a touch of Fraternity Life), here's a preview of the third season and some other info. 

MTV's Sorority Life 3 follows the lives of at least 6 women who are trying to join Zeta Sigma Phi Sorority at the University of Southern California (USC). Zeta Sigma Phi sorority was founded on the basis of its members devoted to academic achievement, cultural awareness, inner and outer beauty and power. 

Apparently you need a minimum 3.0 GPA to get in and the women of this sorority try hard to break the 'typical 'sorority girl' stereotypes. This sorority wants it known that they stand for diversity among college women. I'd say they sound more elitist than anything else which puts them into a different category of stereotype. Anyhoo...

The Pledges
During January and February 2003, MTV was recruiting and filming women for the third season. To get on the show, MTV does a bunch of interviews with potential sorority members, asks them to bring items that 'represent' their personalities to these meetings and then has them sign contracts. Ok, well apparently the names of some of the women who were rushing included Annie, Michelle, Leonie, Nhon, Suz, Amy Elizabeth and Joe. These names are reflective of the fact that this is a multi-cultural sorority with members with various origins such as China, Ireland, Japan, Italy, Africa, Hawaii, the Philippines, Central America, Thailand, Korea, and so on. In any case, it turns out that Amy Elizabeth de-pledges shortly after being offered a bid. She writes about it in her blog (live journal). [Note: at Amy's request, I removed the link to her blog].

The "Thing" About MTV
I have this love-hate relationship with MTV. They have some really entertaining shows but also some really lame ones. But the real reason I get annoyed with the channel is that they are 101% aware of who their target audience is and so they produce a number of shows demonstrating that they are conscious of that fact, teaching about sex, addiction, and other such negative influences on the minds of young individuals. Obviously, that's great. However, they also show as much, if not more, sex, skin, drinking, and partying on many of their other shows just to grab people's attention. This is really hypocritical in my view. 

How does this all relate to MTV Sorority Life? Well, aside from playing on the stereotypes of sororities and fraternities in the first few seasons, they managed to show plenty of skin and partying. At least in season two they show some philanthropy which is actually a large part of sorority and fraternity lives. Of course they continue to show the partying because it makes for a more entertaining show but to redeem themselves, it would seem that they continued the changes for Sorority Life 3. The third season focuses around Zeta Sigma Phi who apparently have more, um, dynamics (for lack of a better word) than the sisters of the previous shows. 

Chapter Confusion
Something that frequently happens with fraternities and sororities that are local (have one or just a few chapters with no national headquarters) is that the name they are using gets used multiple times. It happened with Sigma Chi Omega from Fraternity Life season one and it happens in the case of Zeta Sigma Phi. 

It turns out that there is a chapter of Zeta Sigma Phi at New York University (NYU) which was founded in 1988 and is not affiliated with the MTV chapter. There is also a fraternity using the name! The chapter of Zeta Sigma Phi at Hardin Simmons University (in Texas) is a business fraternity that was founded in 1997.

Note that the zetasigmaphi.org is under construction. I'd bet that with all the money they get from MTV, they'll have a great central website!

The Sisters (Last names held back by request)

Mail and Hate Mail
In related news, as early as the middle of march the sorority had received a lot of hate mail and hassles over the MTV gig. The powers that be on USC campus didn't let MTV film in a lot of areas. BrianX Magazine has received a number of emails explaining that the sorority is really not considered an official Greek entity by the other sororities and fraternities on campus. 

Apparently the headquarters of the other Greek organizations on campus were so appalled at MTV playing on the Fraternity and sorority stereotypes that they told their USC chapters that if anyone was caught on film with letters, there would be serious consequences such as the chapter losing their charter.

The Show
Filming of MTV Sorority Life 3 was completed around May 1, 2003 and as stated above, it began airing in September 2003. I watched the first episode and it wasn't overly exciting to me. I asked BrianX Magazine readers to review the show and received mail saying that I didn't miss much this season. It turns out that the season had the usual pledge-pledge and pledge-sister fights and drama. 

The pledges who became members of the sorority included Sharifa, Meena (who later depledged), Salina, Michelle, Monica, and Janelle. Carmen was not asked to join and she is possibly better off for it!

It seems that these women just weren't as exciting as in previous seasons. MTV may have fluked out during their first season since it seemed to be the most interesting and the subsequent seasons just haven't lived up to viewers' higher expectations.