UCLA student film: And It Goes On and On: A Film (c. 1967)

[Slow jazz music]. [Lynne Blaikie] Sororities and fraternities are a specific group and people within that group are involved in that group. You don't get out of it. Basically, the sorority arrange social life except for the party is exchanges and beer busts and stuff like that. So you are once again you're put into this group. [Music playing]. You're going out there now as yourself because you're in a sorority and you're going out to be that sorority girl and so when people ask you, "What sorority you're in", you're gonna say you're this sorority. "Oh!...you're in that one." You're not a person. You just a part of a group. [Music playing]. I don't like the belonging to groups. You're not doing it. You're just having a sign that's already said that you've done it. I guess going out and trying to impress people because you're from some certain sorority or from a group or from, from a fraternity. Actually, you got yourself in the niche. There's really not much you can do. I realize [?] lots of times that I didn't want to be in the sorority. I got sick and tired of looking good, but I felt I still had to, and even if I didn't do it, I was already classified at that type. And that no matter what I did, I'd be stuck in that group. [Music playing]. It's like, the school, there are 25,000 people here but... I'm beginning to feel that I've never done anybody new because I just keep on going around the same crowd and I dated people that are the same group. There's no way you can get out of it. [Music playing]. [Party noise]. [Lynne Blaikie] I think that would be an orgy. It's something very disgusting. It should never even...I mean, I hope this never [?] anybody I never know. Because then you've completely lost all this... any bit of personal affection. It just becomes something that... I mean that, that's the real fraternity/sorority bit. The first party I ever went to...fraternity party was a "pajamarino." In my freshman year. And they had these solid mattresses, they had mattresses built up and they had mattresses on the floor and if you wanted to you to could walk around and see people on every stage of sex and being a freshman I didn't even know what half of it was but I mean you could see people fornicating left and right. That's all it was, just complete fornication. It wasn't, it wasn't sex. It wasn't even going to bed. It was people that were completely drunk and, I mean, things like this, this is the fraternity bit. This is the one obnoxious thing about fraternities is just that you don't...."Well, wouldn't it be great, we'll get five million beds going across and everybody'll fuck everybody else." So that in this way you really have actual proof to your roommate or to the guy down the hall that you really did get this girl and you know it's sort of like having to prove it in public so everybody will believe you. [Party noise]. [Music playing]. [Crowds cheering]. [Man speaking through a megaphone] "Okay everybody back. All you girls..." [Crowds cheering]. [Man speaking through a megaphone] "Everybody back. [crowds cheering]. [Lynne Blaikie] I find myself getting tired of getting beautiful so I can impress another group with my group. I felt lots of times that I am compensating for girls that weren't as pretty as I was so I'd go over there and stand out and be a pretty girl in the stands for my sorority. Instead of being a pretty girl that stands for myself. I think it's very important that people should be individuals. You can't be an individual for yourself and look good for yourself but you have to look good for other people as a member of this group. So therefore you're beautiful then everybody in the sorority must be beautiful. Just like if they see one ugly girl from a sorority then they think everybody in the sorority is ugly. [Crowds cheering]. [Man speaking through a megaphone] "Get set...go!" [Crowds cheering]. [Crowds cheering]. [Man speaking through a megaphone] Whether you drink it or dump it you, you have to, you have to hold it like that going down there and back. Okay? [Crowds cheering]. [Crowds chanting] [Man speaking through a megaphone] The white rose. Yes, the white rose. [Man speaking through megaphone] An honorary fuzzy [?] girl. She, I mean he, is a [?] in the traditional American way. [Crowds cheering]. [Man yelling through megaphone unintelligibly] [Crowds chanting]. [Man speaking through a megaphone] Get your fill from the Sigma Chi [?] chest. The community chest. Do it, Ry [?]." [Crowds cheering]. [Man speaking through megaphone] ... no, it's super Sig. Faster than a Tri Delta stronger, than a Delta Gamma, it'll [?] in a single bound. Commonly known as the mild-mannered Rich MacAvoy...[?] [Music playing]. [Lynne Blaikie] In my freshman year, I used to enjoy beer busts. And the same things that happened to me then happen to me now. But I don't know whether I'm getting tired of it or I'm actually realizing how meaningless it is. But when guys used to flirt with me and guys used to dance with me and say all these wild things to me, I used to come home and be so jazzed. And I'd tell everybody how many guys I danced with and how good-looking they were and which ones I met and now I come home and the same exact things that happened to me as a freshman that are happening to me now as a junior mean absolutely nothing to me and it disgusts me. And I think sororities is part of growing up and the beer busts is just another part. You... it's like having too much of something or if you have something over and over again that really isn't anything great you get tired of it because you begin to see into it. You begin to see the phoniness of it. And you start to see how you have to talk to the right people and the best-looking guys in the best houses have to dance with the right girls. And everybody gets tired of talking to the same people and, I mean, some guys I've, I've been flirting with for three years and and our relationship will never go any farther beyond that. We both realize what the relationship is. But it's a beer bust, we see each other, we realize, "Well, we're back here again," and we're gonna start flirting again, and we know it won't mean anything but we'll do it again because that's what the set pattern of what happens at a beer bust. And it just, it goes on and on. [Rock music playing]. [Lynne Blaikie] That's what fraternities and sororities are...all they do is mingle. They don't really get to know people, because, you can't know a person because it is sort of fake outside, false facade he puts on, but he has to impress people with and...I think that's ones of the bad [?] things about the whole system is it people put on facades and people finally break down and get to know each other. It takes a long time...lots of people never really know each other because they've gotten so used to putting on this beer bust facade, this exchange facade that you sort of recognize them as that type of person. This sort of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde bit and that Mr. Hyde sort of pops out in everybody. And uh...the same old bit, you got be loud and obnoxious so everybody could notice you. All the quiet guys stay in the corner, nobody knows. With the sororities and fraternities you, you don't have a chance to become yourself, really, lots of times because you have to put up this front. And then at times when you want to be yourself, you're afraid to because people are going to understand that person you've become. [Music playing]. [Lynne Blaikie] Each sorority will set up so many exchanges. Spread maybe three exchanges for each semester with, with fraternities and half the times I can't even stand the fraternities. But they have to have exchanges so they can be over on the row with the rest of 'em. So they can say they're having an exchange tonight. It isn't as if we're all a bunch of friends and we could all just get together and be together at one time. Lots of times three-fourths the girls in the house can't stand the guys they're having an exchange with and by the time, the night of the stupid thing, everybody is trying to think of ways to get out of it. People get sick, people have midterms, people do anything so they don't have to go. And what the funny thing is that they get over there, they can't stand to go, and at about 8:30 you can leave your exchange but very few of them come home early. [Music playing]. There is a feeling if you stay at home you might miss that certainly somebody that you've been spending three years searching for... or something may happen. [Music playing]. I think people would rather stay in exchange and be bored and go home and be alone. I think... a lot of people in sororities and fraternities are afraid to be alone. There's always somebody around, you're never alone. I think...the thing about joining the group... to be alone, I think, takes a lot more than being with people. Even if you're putting on a false front when you're with people and maybe they're not even looking for someone but they're afraid to go home and just sit by themselves and maybe think... and maybe think about what they're doing, and how far they're getting and whether they're getting nowhere. [Music].