Short black skirts and heels for all!

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Summer Wildcat Mary Fan

Attention sorority recruiters:

This is the age of equal opportunity enterprise, equal opportunity exploitation. No one shall be denied the chance to flaunt her breasts and bare her thighs - as long as they are sleek and firm - or join a group advocating thereof, nor be denied the chance to be sucked into a Barbie-ized ideal of womanhood because of age, race or ethnicity.

This revolution in thought has long swept across country clubs and advertising agencies alike, making for an enlightened age where 6-foot, 100-pound blacks, Asians, Latinos and other dusky-hued lovelies may proudly strut in heels and crotch-high dresses alongside whites. Brown, black, yellow and white thighs and breasts alike we bare.

We see it each night on television, in ads, on fashion TV shows - brave symbols of the great progress we as a nation and people have made to become an enlightened America today.

How did this revolution miss you?

For certainly it has, as evidenced by the floods of eager girls in Rush that intermittently block traffic on Mountain Avenue as they cross the street en masse. A savvy recruiter or any advertising agent worth his salt would do his utmost to make certain that the driver stopped mid-street watching in wide-eyed, hungry wonder at the heaven of flashing legs and bobbing breasts before him would also see among the predominantly blond bunch a couple of strategically placed dark-skinned girls.

Carefully picked, of course, so that they would eclipse all the others in loveliness.

But, sadly, they are not there. This university last fall was 13 percent Hispanic, 5.2 percent Asian, 2.4 percent black and 2.1 percent indigenous peoples - 22.7 percent minority.

But a glance at the sororities - which Princeton Review's guide to the top colleges perennially lists as a dominant force here - shows that though you are a powerful force on campus, you are weak when it comes to having any minority face at all among your ranks.

Sorority recruiters, remedying this situation would be in your best interests.

It is called balance. It is an aesthetic thing and a sensible thing in today's world. Every enterprise wants to appeal to a wide cross-section and expand its market base. It is just good business sense and it staves off race gripes like this one.

And sorority recruiters, you are certainly working for - or in some instances, running - a remarkable and highly lucrative business, as we all know.

We also all know you don't expressly block minority applications. It is really not your fault that there is still something redolent of the old passé All-American ideal clinging to sororities - Betty Cheerleader set to meet Joe Football and have their 2.5 kids with strong white teeth and ruffled sun-gold hair. And so it is not your fault that many minorities take that as an unspoken "Keep Out" sign.

But you can remedy the low minority turnout with aggressive recruitment policies reminiscent of those pursued in equal opportunity's heyday.

Yes, institutions that jumped on the equal opportunity bandwagon early are trying to phase out some of the more radical recruitment tools like affirmative action. But you are just starting; you somehow slipped behind everybody else, so you must follow in the progressive institutions' footsteps.

And, as ill of me as it is to raise the issue, your failure to attract minorities may raise the ugly specter of discrimination against the majority and minority races alike.

Why should whites alone be saddled with the burden of this glorious institution of farming out marketable women on the commodities market of Greek row?

Minorities, newly freed from the chains of a formerly racist nation by the enlightened doctrine of equal opportunity and all its principles should be subject now to the same baggage of every other well-adjusted, well-integrated All-American girl.

Burden all and burden alike.

You sorority recruiters give whites the challenge of choosing selfhood or a sorority.

Minorities, too, should feel as though they are given the same choice. They cannot continue to be stripped in a Clockwork Orange fashion of their right to choose how they wish their characters - their outlook and self-look - to be shaped.

Mary Fan is the perspectives editor at the Arizona Daily Wildcat and a journalism and molecular and cellular biology senior who is still major shopping. Her column, Skyfall, appears every Thursday.