Pushing the Envelope

24-year-old Los Angeles native ARIELLE BRAVERMAN is a psychology major about to start her senior year at the University of Oklahoma. And her worry-wart mother LYNNETTE doesn’t like that.

To Lynnette, Oklahoma’s just “the school its football team is proud of.” After all, Los Angeles has two of America’s best psych schools in the ones at UCLA and USC. And finishing that formal education in California instead of in the Sooner State would’ve saved team-oriented, self-conscious Arielle lots of dough.

But Arielle takes the flight to Oklahoma City, anyway. During the drive to nearby Norman, she and her best buddy, Tulsa native KRISTANNA TUBBS, discuss one factor keeping the twosome on the OU campus: Their sorority, Rho Rho Rho...the only one in the world that reenacts old movies.

Arielle runs Oklahoma’s Rho Rho Rho chapter while style-conscious Kristanna, a film-and-media-studies student, serves as the sorority’s treasurer. Their first order of business in this new school year: Break in seven pledges.

This year’s newcomers: Bookish ODYSSEY PETERSON, a physics major who strives to keep an open mind; native New Yorker A.P. GIANNINI, the boisterous granddaughter of husband-and-wife ad agency workers; fun-loving MEG PARKENING, a champion equestrian; confident-and-driven INDIA HOWARD, a star softball player who makes her own jewelry; self-reliant ARIANA POLANCO and fellow architecture student EVA MARIE COPPENBARGER; and restless, searching petroleum engineering student STACEY LYNN HENNING...whose older brother, a former OU student, was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon when that fraternity was infamously shut down in 2015 and replaced by Rho Rho Rho.

It isn’t long before house pledges and house veterans alike learn from Kristanna and Arielle that the Tri Rhos will take on that 1978 classic, “National Lampoon’s Animal House.”

While Oklahoma’s Tri Rhos gear up to reenact 1978’s biggest movie comedy, Arielle and fellow Tri Rho-fellow psych student TREASURE CASTERLINE, the house vice president, dive into a year-long assignment handed down by RHONDA WALLACE, the folksy, nurturing professor whose on-campus presence, more than anything else, keeps Arielle enrolled in Norman: “Take some time outa your life and do somethin’ scary.”

India and another Tri Rho sister, the talkative VANESSA SAYAVONGCHANH, take Rhonda’s message to heart...when the twosome ride a horse into their English Literature class for the first “Animal House”-styled stunt of the year.

Vanessa’s and India’s prank causes a biohazard that pales alongside Meg’s steed-related set of antics: Retaliation against ZACHARY WALDEN, who tried to molest Meg and some other female students in the dorm Meg lived in last year. Textbook narcissist Zachary’s also a member of the RUF/NEKS...the school’s famous all-male spirit organization.

Meg, Kristanna, Arielle, A.P., and Rho Rho Rho veterans ROSEMARIE KLOPMAN, SUSANNAH FOSTER, and PIXANNE CULLEY don disguises to team up to deprive Zachary of his turn to drive the famed Sooner Schooner during the Oklahoma-Mississippi football game. Arielle, Kristanna, adventurous Pixanne, quick-thinking Rosemarie, and soft-spoken Susannah detain Zachary in a stadium tunnel...as Meg drives the schooner while A.P. hides in it.

All that horsing around by the Tri Rhos earns the house retaliation...in the form of graffiti painted onto the side of the sorority house during the sisters’ tuxedo party, masterminded by Ariana and the fearless Eva Marie. It’s a tux party instead of a toga party because, as Eva Marie tells her housemates, “I read where a tuxedo on a woman is a sign of empowerment.” On top of that...outspoken, dogged Treasure says: “I feel naked in a toga, anyway.”

All this time, Kristanna shoots footage of house events...for an assignment in her Topics in Film and Media Production class.

She and her fellow Tri Rhos continue to fight back...by marching to the RUF/NEKS’ headquarters to protest Zachary’s sexcapades, and to act on the suspicion that some of the men put the graffiti on the sorority house. Hostility from receptionist ANNE MCCAFFERY renders the march fruitless...but the sisters’ own take on “Animal House’s” roadhouse stunt succeeds.

Odyssey and Stacey Lynn spearhead the conversion of the Tri Rhos’ house into a dry roadhouse...where A CHIPPENDALES-STYLE DANCE GROUP performs. And when the women find Zachary’s a dancer in the act, they coerce him and the RUF/NEKS who defaced the house to help the sisters clean up the facade.

Things look a bit better for the Rho Rho Rho members...even if they don’t prove faithful to the “Animal House” screenplay. Treasure, though, nails her “do somethin’ scary” activity...teaching herself to play her church’s pipe organ (after all, “there’s no musical instrument in the world scarier”). The very Sunday where Treasure provides special music, she and roommate Rosemarie meet BELINDA MCCORMICK MCCAUSLAND...who works for Rho Rho Rho’s national headquarters.

When Belinda meets the whole chapter, she tells the women that their chapter’s under investigation...due to the two stunts with palominos and the claims against Zachary. And the news comes when Arielle and Co. gear up for entering the Norman Mardi Gras Parade...an event the Deltas in “Animal House” would’ve crashed instead of applying for a spot in it.

Tri Rhos and RUF/NEKS alike testify in front of Belinda and THREE SCHOOL BIGWIGS...figures who find out Arielle and Kristanna chose “Animal House” to see if its stunts fly in today’s campus climate.

At Kristanna’s and Arielle’s commencement, they, Lynnette, and KRISTANNA’S FOLKS learn that Rho Rho Rho will stay alive at OU, due to the testimony and to Kristanna’s filming...and that Zachary will go to jail and have to register as a sex offender.

And Arielle cites another reason she chose OU: Her maternal great-grandparents were born in the state...and she didn’t want to destroy the roots.