Candy Everybody Wants
So! I decided to partake in sorority rush! And this is a day late! Not that anyone was, ah, waiting with bated breath or anything.
Before I go into this, I should note that this is my experience with sororities – it should in no way be construed as a blanket statement that all sororities are bad, and all people who are in sororities are bad, stupid and a bunch of followers. In fact, when people say things like that, it makes me angry, because it just isn’t true. Everyone sees experiences through their own filter, and if I’d ended up loving it, even I would see this history differently. And not everyone had the same experiences, even at the same school, in the same sorority. I’m sure – no, I know – there are women who loved it. I just wasn’t one of them.
To recap: I was stranded in a dorm full of environmental students who went to a different school, and I felt entirely out of place. My roommate was on the crew team and went to bed at 9 p.m. every night, while the rest of my dorm was studying whether lily pads would survive in water the color of Kool-Aid, and I certainly wasn’t meeting anyone in my classes, given that most of them – at the tender age of 19 – already owned several diamonds that were more than three carats. Well…except for one. Enter Megan, a sophomore in my sociology class whom I’d become friendly with, who talked to me extensively about rushing! Rushing was so great! Sisterhood was awesome and not at all stereotypical! And guess what else? Megan was on scholarship too! Hooray! Rushing was for me!
I mean, obviously it wasn’t as simple as all that, but it certainly appealed to my sense of organization and structure, and hell, if it would get me out of the tree dorm and give me some sort of platform to relate to the neverending stream of teenage BMW drivers, I was all for it. Or halfway for it. Or at least borderline not-opposed to it or SOMETHING, I don’t know, I just couldn’t take things the way they were anymore.
Rush, to put it simply, is the process prospective pledges go through to see if sorority life is for them – both on their end, and on the side of the houses. But first! Oh yes, first – you have to attend a wildly bizarre presentation where rabid, chihuahua-like women run around in lettered sweatshirts and screech the Greek alphabet in singsong and holler about sisterhood and all of its benefits. Sisterhood is fun! Sisterhood is next to godliness! And then you sign a form that probably includes a suicide clause that states that you will not hold the SU Pan-Hellenic Association responsible if you don’t get in anywhere and opt to off yourself instead, and into the jungle you go.
Rushees are divided into groups, given a leader (called a Rho Chi) and a schedule, and shipped off on their merry way to tour the houses. The whole process is divided into a few rounds – how many, I can’t remember – three, four? The whole idea is that as you go around to the houses, they decide – based on a five-second conversation with as many overly perfumed sisters as they can parade in front of you – whether they’d like to ask you back, and separately, you decide whether you’d like to come back, and so on, until the final round, where you get your bid. A day or two after each round, you got an envelope with a Scantron sheet and a list of the houses who asked you back. You filled in the little circles with a #2 golf pencil indicating where you wanted to return, and headed back out for another round, same as the first.
The house visits are where the pain begins. The houses were varied, overwhelming and ranged from the clearly rich to the dangerously desperate. A smattering:
- At Rich Superskinny House (I mean, I’d be shocked if anyone in there ate more than one peanut a week. I was marveling non-stop at the overwhelming dangerous THINNESS), I was asked no fewer than three times what my father did, and whether I had a car, and if so, what kind? Because the sister was JUST DYING to tell me about her new Audi. And did I have an Audi? Because she really liked Audis, especially hers.
- Dying, Desperate House was in such dire straits and in danger of losing their physical house due to waning membership that they were outright begging rushees to pledge DPhiE, and they KNEW everyone called them Dogs, Pigs, Elephants, but they did, in fact, have a model in the house! A real, live model! So they were hot! If you joined, you would be hot, too, and maybe even become a model. There were no dogs, pigs or elephants here!
- Another Rich, but not Quite as Rich and Not the Skinniest House greeted the rushees with an impenetrable wall of sisters who were deeply tanned and highlighted, wearing black and dripping in diamonds. Terrifying as hell, is what it was.
- Quasi-normal but Still Stepford-Like House did a skit that outlined the fashion “must haves” for Spring Rush, and highlighted the fact that the right sister would have the latest Georgia boots (something with a stacked heel and no, I didn’t have them) and a hooded coat with toggle buttons. It was meant to be tongue in cheek, but I think they were serious. Georgia boots were big.
- At Random, Non-Descript Sorority With the Historical House, I had what was possibly the most inane conversation of my entire life that included the words, “My boyfriend is in DEKE! DEKE! DEKE! What house is your boyfriend in?” more times than I can even recall. It didn’t seem to matter that I didn’t have a boyfriend, because if I joined AChiO I could have a boyfriend in DEKE! DEKE! DEKE! too, because they – DEKE! – were right next door.
- Rich, Predominately Jewish House let me know that they had some “concerns.. I mean not BIG concerns, it’s just that…well, we’re mostly Jewish, but it’s just worked out that way, because we don’t judge people – like you – who aren’t Jewish! In fact, we have a few non-Jews!…Like Betty!” and then the sister I was talking with pointed at the token shiksa in the room. I visibly blanched and rolled my eyes, and they never asked me back. You may recall I have a small sensitivity to this.
And so on. The only three that seemed to have the slightest shred of sanity were Kappa (where the sisters I met had tattoos, and I am easily swayed by tattoos). Theta (where I think I should have ended up, if I were going to torture myself with this kind of thing) and the one I ended up in, where I knew Megan belonged, and where I had formed a vague connection with a sister who also smoked two packs a day like me, and we “bonded” over our inability to walk up the stairs without wheezing, despite being superthin. If that’s not sisterhood, I don’t know what is. And for anyone reading for the first time, I quit six years ago, and if you saw me and heard that I used to smoke a lot, you would laugh at me, for I do not look like a smoker. At all.
Knowing what I know now, I will say that the rush process is actually among the more disgusting things in this world. So much depends on factors that don’t even involve the sisters and their “deep, personal connections.” Instead, it relies on connections of another kind: for example, each house is typically required to give preferential treatment to someone who was either referred by alumni, is the sibling of a current or past member, or has any kind of relative in their recent familial history – mom, grandma, aunt, and so on. If someone is a legacy of any sort, it’s a near-lock that they’ll get a bid, even if they set the living room on fire and farted on your face while making out with your dad. A double or triple legacy is given the first born of the sorority president and unobstructed access to free sex with your boyfriend for life. And, finally, preference is also given to – the weirdest of all – a girl who grew up in or around the area of the college, the theory being that they will return after they graduate to donate lots and lots of money to the chapter.
Add these facts to the fact that the rushee is put through such a vigorous rotation of sisters who have a secret code of signs, signals and buzzwords to help move the process along (and rescue them from a dud), that each conversation – the conversation that is supposed to be the catalyst for a lifetime of happiness and devotion – lasts about three minutes. And in those three minutes, they decide if they really really like you (in our house, they got a rating of ‘silver’ on their index card); just like you, but have reservations (‘gold’ on the index card) or would rather throw up on their shoes than spend time with you again (‘blue’ on the index card. The sorority colors!) It should be noted that after one year of rush on the sister side, I applied to be a Rho Chi for the next two years. I did exactly one rush in my sororal tenure, while other people were subjected to at least four, including fall rushes for sophomores – the process was that untenable.
In other words, it’s a totally fair game, and admission is based on nothing but the true spirit of a person, as determined in three minutes or less and maybe the quality of your shoes. Extra points for Georgia boots and visible time spent in a tanning booth.
You’re wondering why I put myself through this. Me too.
*10,000 Maniacs.
22 comments February 7th, 2007