Extreme Home Makeover: Sorority Edition

As a follow-up to my post a few weeks back about my tornado hit sorority house, I wanted to share the latest news I have heard.

Apparently, structural engineers surveyed the house and recommended it be demolished. Unfortunately, this looks to be about right. Which leaves the AXO girls with a few options: 1) Sell off the land and buy or build a new house elsewhere on campus 2) Buy an existing building that could be used as a sorority house...or 3) Become Extreme Home Makeover's next project.

The above picture was taken when the girls made a try-out tape for Extreme Makover's show. Now, I have never really watched this show from beginning to end, but I have caught the tail-end of it many times (since it's on before Desperate Housewives on Sundays). It seems to me there is a common theme to the show. Some family with lots of kids, one who's terminally ill and one who's in a wheelchair, simply can't afford to all live in anything bigger than a one bedroom home because of the hospital bills. So Extreme Makeover comes in, builds a kick-ass huge house and saves the day. And without fail, everybody cries at the end.

I was trying to imagine what the execs at Extreme Makeover where thinking when they saw this tape from AXO. What I heard was that all these girls stood in front of the destroyed house and chanted their recruitment song, which goes:

A-X-O is the only way to go,
We are the best,
Forget the Rest
That's all you've got to know

Then the house President stepped forward and told what happened to the house. I'm not sure what else she said, but I don't know what this will do for ABC's ratings.

I mean, will the execs really feel bad for the chanting Big Ten sorority girls, whose 14,000 sq. ft. historic home, originally built for the University's President, has been destroyed by a natural disaster? Or, will they see this as an opportunity to do something original on the show, and risk being criticized for condoning Greek life? How do they turn away another story of a single mother who needs a house for her 3 kids with leukimia in favor of 100 upper-middle class sorority girls who have a strong and patronizing alumni network?

I wonder if on the try-out tape, they mentioned that the AXOs hold a Chili Dog Fair every fall to raise money for a local girl who has a rare kidney disease, or that we have a billiards tournament to raise money for Domestic Violence Intervention and Prevention, and volunteer at the battered women's shelters? Or that year after year the AXOs are among the highest number of participants and groups raising the most money for the University's Dance Marathon, a 24 hour dance-a-thon that raises money for kids with cancer for the Children's Miracle Network...or that the family the AXOs sponsored was so overwhelmed with support, and hospital visits to their little girl, Alissa (who has since gone into remission) that they were given several more families to direct their efforts to....or that the AXOs consistently have the highest participation in other group's philanthropies to support their altruisms?

I don't know. That's just what I would've mentioned if I were in charge of making this tape. Then again, I haven't been there in four years, so I don't know what has changed. But, good luck girls! I understand you're worth it, even if the rest of the world doesn't. If they do pick you and you get a pimped-out sorority house, I'm sure it will be a real tear-jerker show.