Sorority rush - please make it sound appealing to me

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD rushed last year and I was in a sorority.

I preface this all by saying, neither of us rushed in the South. That's a whole different ballgame that I know nothing about.

It also varies by school but for DD (VA Tech) They suggest what type of outfit to wear for each day of rush. It gets more formal the further you get into rush. After each round you list you get to drop a certain # and the sororities drop a certain #. It goes on like this each round until you get down to 2. You rank them 1 and 2 and the sororities do the same. Yes, you may not get your top choice. You may not even get your second choice but I think that's pretty rare. If you don't like the bid you end with you don't have to take it.

NP

And are there people that don't get any bids?

It depends on the school but that would be rare. Many schools guarantee a bid if you go through the whole process.

And by “guarantee” they mean you may get one bid that you weren’t interested in at all. Washes their hands of it but your daughter is rejected by any house she had listed as preferences.

I've always called rush "pay to have friends". How can you find good friends with this superficial process? I don't pick my friends based on looks, how they dress, financial backing, etc. I pick based on type of person they are, are they genuine, nice, good person. I don't need some group of girls ranking me and deciding if I wore the right outfit to make the cut for the next round.

and guess what, there would be a house for even you! What did my DD like about the house that she ultimately chose? That they were "real", asked interesting questions designed to get conversation flowing easily, and they laughed A TON. It had nothing to do with their looks, how they dressed (was on zoom) or their financial backing. When she got off one zoom with the place she ended up, her roommate who had been in the room (and didn't rush), said, "wow that was so fun just to watch and listen, they seem like a great fit for you". That's what it's about.

The problem with the greek bashers on this thread is that you are all just taking the worst stereotypes, the southern belle greeks, or whatever you see on the news. You're not realizing that 95% of the girls across the country that are in sororities are JUST LIKE YOUR DD. And guess what, not every greek make is a rapist! What?! how could that be, it goes against all the stereotypes I have ever heard. Well didn't anyone teach you not to stereotype?

This was literally the point of the book I read. That sororities protest people falling for stereotypes, but then they're all true and actually worse than advertised in some cases. All the sororities in the book said the exact same thing about the nasty media and then couldn't disprove any of it. They would have national conferences with panel talks centered around strategies to basically hide how much of their setup was exactly what was complained about and gaslight people or outright lie to pledges through coordinated codes. The "commitment to service" was just rich girls throwing some money at a cause maybe once a semester. Other people manage to make friends naturally through classes, sports, clubs, jobs, etc. without needing to wear all the same outfits or debase themselves. It seemed purely aimed at creating an exclusionary vibe because if it wasn't exclusive then your delusion that it was actually worth anything or made you special all evaporated like smoke.

Well, it sounds like whoever wrote that book didn’t have an agenda at all!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find the whole thing just grates against everything we have been teaching our children about inclusivity and not excluding people because they are different.

That's life, sorry loser

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD rushed last year and I was in a sorority.

I preface this all by saying, neither of us rushed in the South. That's a whole different ballgame that I know nothing about.

It also varies by school but for DD (VA Tech) They suggest what type of outfit to wear for each day of rush. It gets more formal the further you get into rush. After each round you list you get to drop a certain # and the sororities drop a certain #. It goes on like this each round until you get down to 2. You rank them 1 and 2 and the sororities do the same. Yes, you may not get your top choice. You may not even get your second choice but I think that's pretty rare. If you don't like the bid you end with you don't have to take it.

NP

And are there people that don't get any bids?

It depends on the school but that would be rare. Many schools guarantee a bid if you go through the whole process.

And by “guarantee” they mean you may get one bid that you weren’t interested in at all. Washes their hands of it but your daughter is rejected by any house she had listed as preferences.

I've always called rush "pay to have friends". How can you find good friends with this superficial process? I don't pick my friends based on looks, how they dress, financial backing, etc. I pick based on type of person they are, are they genuine, nice, good person. I don't need some group of girls ranking me and deciding if I wore the right outfit to make the cut for the next round.

+1. The bending over backwards to justify Greek life is really weird.

Typical. “I’ve started an entire thread to bash something, and those who try explain why it’s not so bad are just defensive and weird.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD rushed last year and I was in a sorority.

I preface this all by saying, neither of us rushed in the South. That's a whole different ballgame that I know nothing about.

It also varies by school but for DD (VA Tech) They suggest what type of outfit to wear for each day of rush. It gets more formal the further you get into rush. After each round you list you get to drop a certain # and the sororities drop a certain #. It goes on like this each round until you get down to 2. You rank them 1 and 2 and the sororities do the same. Yes, you may not get your top choice. You may not even get your second choice but I think that's pretty rare. If you don't like the bid you end with you don't have to take it.

NP

And are there people that don't get any bids?

It depends on the school but that would be rare. Many schools guarantee a bid if you go through the whole process.

And by “guarantee” they mean you may get one bid that you weren’t interested in at all. Washes their hands of it but your daughter is rejected by any house she had listed as preferences.

I've always called rush "pay to have friends". How can you find good friends with this superficial process? I don't pick my friends based on looks, how they dress, financial backing, etc. I pick based on type of person they are, are they genuine, nice, good person. I don't need some group of girls ranking me and deciding if I wore the right outfit to make the cut for the next round.

and guess what, there would be a house for even you! What did my DD like about the house that she ultimately chose? That they were "real", asked interesting questions designed to get conversation flowing easily, and they laughed A TON. It had nothing to do with their looks, how they dressed (was on zoom) or their financial backing. When she got off one zoom with the place she ended up, her roommate who had been in the room (and didn't rush), said, "wow that was so fun just to watch and listen, they seem like a great fit for you". That's what it's about.

The problem with the greek bashers on this thread is that you are all just taking the worst stereotypes, the southern belle greeks, or whatever you see on the news. You're not realizing that 95% of the girls across the country that are in sororities are JUST LIKE YOUR DD. And guess what, not every greek make is a rapist! What?! how could that be, it goes against all the stereotypes I have ever heard. Well didn't anyone teach you not to stereotype?

This was literally the point of the book I read. That sororities protest people falling for stereotypes, but then they're all true and actually worse than advertised in some cases. All the sororities in the book said the exact same thing about the nasty media and then couldn't disprove any of it. They would have national conferences with panel talks centered around strategies to basically hide how much of their setup was exactly what was complained about and gaslight people or outright lie to pledges through coordinated codes. The "commitment to service" was just rich girls throwing some money at a cause maybe once a semester. Other people manage to make friends naturally through classes, sports, clubs, jobs, etc. without needing to wear all the same outfits or debase themselves. It seemed purely aimed at creating an exclusionary vibe because if it wasn't exclusive then your delusion that it was actually worth anything or made you special all evaporated like smoke.

you DO realize that the point of a book is to SELL it, and of course they are going to have an agenda and make it look just awful, and in some places Im sure it is. That said, there are plenty of good, no even great, sororities filled with normal, nice girls next door. Why do you obsess so much? If you dont' want to rush, don't, or more appropriate if you don't want your kid to, tell them they are on their own with no financial support. Dont know what else to tell you but don't post on a thread just to disparage when you know absolutely nothing that responds to the OP's question.

[Anonymous]

https://uncpress.org/book/9781469672106/the-benefits-of-friends/

A woman I used to work with wrote this book. It's released at the beginning of September. I'm looking forward to reading it. It sounds balanced.


In 2011, Jana Mathews's career took a surprising turn. What began as an effort for a newly minted college professor to get to know her students turned into an invitation to be initiated into a National Panhellenic Conference sorority and serve as its faculty advisor. For the next seven years, Mathews attended sorority and fraternity chapter meetings, Greek Week competitions, leadership retreats, and mixers and formals. She also counseled young men and women through mental health crises, experiences of sexual violence, and drug and alcohol abuse. Combining her personal observations with ethnographic field analysis and research culled from the fields of sociology, economics, and cognitive psychology, this thought-provoking book examines how white Greek letter organizations help reshape the conceptual boundaries of society's most foundational relationship categories—including friend, romantic partner, and family.
Mathews illuminates how organizations manipulate campus sex ratios to foster hookup culture, broker romantic relationships, transfer intimacy to straight same-sex friends, and create fictive family units that hoard social and economic opportunity for their members. In their idealized form, sororities and fraternities function as familial surrogates that tether their members together in economically and socially productive ways. In their most warped manifestations, however, these fictive familial bonds reinforce insularity, entrench privilege, and—at times—threaten physical safety.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know how it’s like in other parts of the country, but here in NYC at least, being a part of a sorority/fraternity would be a pretty big red flag in certain industries outside of, say, PR and finance.

Oh come on, no it wouldn’t. An employer wouldn’t know anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP there are lots of people on this board who simply hate greek life and can't imagine why anyone would do it. Got news for you, many of them don't even have kids in college and once they do, their kid may well be interested themselves. Why? because it's a way to make a large college smaller, to find "your people" which we are always talking about on this board. It's much easier to find your people in a group of 200 sorority sisters, as opposed to 15,000 under grads.

It's also just fun. They have an active social life, lots of parties and activities including charity events, and there are lots of leadership opportunities.

And again, there is a huge emphasis on diversity in greek life these days. These are not white blond girls anymore, though I can't speak for the SEC schools. My DDs house represents every ethnicity on campus and is a home for all their members, from the studious to the party girl and everyone in between. She has met a group of girls that she really enjoys being around (especially the older girls) and never would have met them had it not been for her sorority.

In reality, it's not much different than any other social club or even sports, or academic etc. Yes the rush process is tough, and that's because there are SO many people interested. When you have 15 houses and a thousand people interested, you are going to have to have a selection process.

Actually, my kids have always steered clear of groups and organizations that cause drama, treat people unfairly, and judge others based on superficial traits. They have done this since ES, when they quickly realized the Queen Bees were downright mean to many kids and excluded them and made fun of them. While my kid was not excluded, they were smart enough to realize this was wrong and didn't join those groups. Similarly in MS and HS, steered clear of the "mean girls" and "popular crowd" where your status could change daily. She watched a good friend go thru it in HS and just supported her; watched the friend wander around alone at Homecoming because she'd been ditched by the "popular friends" yet wouldn't/couldn't talk to her other group of friends 4 of them for fear of being further excluded from the popular group. My kid is nice enough to remain good friends with this girl, and just be there when she "has the time for her and that group of friends", but they all hurt watching the friend deal with the ups/downs/meanness of the popular group and wish she could see she doesn't have to do that to herself.

I wonder if your kids inherited your superiority complex? The women in my sorority weren’t half as judgmental as you demonstrated yourself to be in one post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://uncpress.org/book/9781469672106/the-benefits-of-friends/

A woman I used to work with wrote this book. It's released at the beginning of September. I'm looking forward to reading it. It sounds balanced.


In 2011, Jana Mathews's career took a surprising turn. What began as an effort for a newly minted college professor to get to know her students turned into an invitation to be initiated into a National Panhellenic Conference sorority and serve as its faculty advisor. For the next seven years, Mathews attended sorority and fraternity chapter meetings, Greek Week competitions, leadership retreats, and mixers and formals. She also counseled young men and women through mental health crises, experiences of sexual violence, and drug and alcohol abuse. Combining her personal observations with ethnographic field analysis and research culled from the fields of sociology, economics, and cognitive psychology, this thought-provoking book examines how white Greek letter organizations help reshape the conceptual boundaries of society's most foundational relationship categories—including friend, romantic partner, and family.
Mathews illuminates how organizations manipulate campus sex ratios to foster hookup culture, broker romantic relationships, transfer intimacy to straight same-sex friends, and create fictive family units that hoard social and economic opportunity for their members. In their idealized form, sororities and fraternities function as familial surrogates that tether their members together in economically and socially productive ways. In their most warped manifestations, however, these fictive familial bonds reinforce insularity, entrench privilege, and—at times—threaten physical safety.

its really not that deep people!! But ok, again if YOU or your KID is not interested, DON'T join. Enough said. Those that do and are happy to have done so, do not deserve your belittling superiority.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP there are lots of people on this board who simply hate greek life and can't imagine why anyone would do it. Got news for you, many of them don't even have kids in college and once they do, their kid may well be interested themselves. Why? because it's a way to make a large college smaller, to find "your people" which we are always talking about on this board. It's much easier to find your people in a group of 200 sorority sisters, as opposed to 15,000 under grads.

It's also just fun. They have an active social life, lots of parties and activities including charity events, and there are lots of leadership opportunities.

And again, there is a huge emphasis on diversity in greek life these days. These are not white blond girls anymore, though I can't speak for the SEC schools. My DDs house represents every ethnicity on campus and is a home for all their members, from the studious to the party girl and everyone in between. She has met a group of girls that she really enjoys being around (especially the older girls) and never would have met them had it not been for her sorority.

In reality, it's not much different than any other social club or even sports, or academic etc. Yes the rush process is tough, and that's because there are SO many people interested. When you have 15 houses and a thousand people interested, you are going to have to have a selection process.

Actually, my kids have always steered clear of groups and organizations that cause drama, treat people unfairly, and judge others based on superficial traits. They have done this since ES, when they quickly realized the Queen Bees were downright mean to many kids and excluded them and made fun of them. While my kid was not excluded, they were smart enough to realize this was wrong and didn't join those groups. Similarly in MS and HS, steered clear of the "mean girls" and "popular crowd" where your status could change daily. She watched a good friend go thru it in HS and just supported her; watched the friend wander around alone at Homecoming because she'd been ditched by the "popular friends" yet wouldn't/couldn't talk to her other group of friends 4 of them for fear of being further excluded from the popular group. My kid is nice enough to remain good friends with this girl, and just be there when she "has the time for her and that group of friends", but they all hurt watching the friend deal with the ups/downs/meanness of the popular group and wish she could see she doesn't have to do that to herself.

I wonder if your kids inherited your superiority complex? The women in my sorority weren’t half as judgmental as you demonstrated yourself to be in one post.

HA NP, I was JUST coming on here to say how the anti-greek people in this thread are some of the most judgemental people I have ever seen, with one heck of a superiority complex.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorority girls are the ultimate “pick me” girls.

NP who was not in a sorority and did not rush: What’s wrong with wanting to be picked, for a part in a play, or a spot on the basketball team, or a sorority house, or a job, or to have your novel published, or to find a romantic partner, or to come on down for “The Price is Right”?

Because being picked for a part in a play, a spot on the baseball team or to have your novel published, or a job, etc is typically based on your skillset for that position/job. But the skillset for a sorority/fraternity is your pedigree, how you dress, your family connections, many superficial characteristics. It's just a continuation of being in the "popular crowd" in MS/HS.

That's how I saw it as well.

…and?

And why not leave them to it? That’s not my type, but glad there’s an “outlet” for people who roll that way. Better to have college kids who are deeply invested in that kind of scene to have literally a system to be in. And then because that will take up a lot of their time and energy, that frees up other spaces and opportunities for students who want to pursue different things.

Live and let live. I’m really not sure why that’s such a hard concept for people. A lot of things don’t sound appealing to me—snorkeling, clubbing, fishing, reality TV, tennis—but I understand that people enjoy those things, and good for them. I don’t need anyone to “make it sound appealing to me,” as if I personally need to validate what other people value and how they should spend their time and energy.

+1

[Anonymous]

Every single one of my DD's friends rushed this past spring (save her roommate who will likely rush next year) and they all went in with the "well let's see how it is" attitude. All smart, down to earth, awesome, diverse girls. All pledged and are happy. So there you go, that's why people do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD rushed last year and I was in a sorority.

I preface this all by saying, neither of us rushed in the South. That's a whole different ballgame that I know nothing about.

It also varies by school but for DD (VA Tech) They suggest what type of outfit to wear for each day of rush. It gets more formal the further you get into rush. After each round you list you get to drop a certain # and the sororities drop a certain #. It goes on like this each round until you get down to 2. You rank them 1 and 2 and the sororities do the same. Yes, you may not get your top choice. You may not even get your second choice but I think that's pretty rare. If you don't like the bid you end with you don't have to take it.

NP

And are there people that don't get any bids?

yes, at every round.

And thats fine. Because you want to join a sorority with a group of women who share your values. If you dont receive a bid from a specific sorority, its bc they dont think that you share their values. And the matching process should be a two-way street.

Lets say you are a studious woman and you take school seriously. Joining the sorority that is women who only want to party doesnt align with your values. Or if you are a student athelete, the partiers probably wont align w your vales either.

Assuming so much here. At big, southern schools there are so many legacies, it doesn’t matter how perfectly suited you are to their “values” - you’re at the bottom and inevitably get dropped. And it’s lightening fast. You can’t actually get to know anyone so propaganda like this just makes girls feel inadequate and it’s a fine display of the misery of rush. Connections are everything. There have to be girls in the house who already know you somehow or there isn’t a reason in the works for them to pick you over the other 2,000 girls.

It’s a horrendously cruel process. So much so that the nice older girls would rather pay a fine to not participate - because it was a traumatic week for them even with a happy ending of a bid they took.

For the life of me I cannot fathom why anyone would want to remain a part of an organization that makes them pay to not participate in the "horrendously cruel process". I have enough self esteem to know I don't need to "pay to play"

But you have to remember that these girls are 17-18 and don’t realize it’s cruel until they go through it. They have an optimistic, Hollywood vision of the fun. But it’s really stressful even if they end up happy at the end of the week.

No school should do rush until at least second semester. These kids have enough changes to navigate without the BS of rush drama right before classes start.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorority girls are the ultimate “pick me” girls.

NP who was not in a sorority and did not rush: What’s wrong with wanting to be picked, for a part in a play, or a spot on the basketball team, or a sorority house, or a job, or to have your novel published, or to find a romantic partner, or to come on down for “The Price is Right”?

Because being picked for a part in a play, a spot on the baseball team or to have your novel published, or a job, etc is typically based on your skillset for that position/job. But the skillset for a sorority/fraternity is your pedigree, how you dress, your family connections, many superficial characteristics. It's just a continuation of being in the "popular crowd" in MS/HS.

That's how I saw it as well.

And again you know nothing. Stop posting what you do not know.

We know that sorority girls are mostly shallow lemmings who were total kunts to those of us who didn’t go Greek, so eff off with what we “don’t know.” That was our lived experience. Now go on, tell us how we weren’t hot enough or cool enough or whatever to be in a sorority. That’ll show us how nice and inclusive you are!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn’t Greek life mostly a southern thing? The whole thing smacks of backwater.

Um, no? Most of the Ivies and top 20 schools have Greek life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At UMD, some sororities also participated in “dirty rush” by telling PNMs to suicide their house (only rank that one house), knowing that they girls weren’t high enough to get a bid. Then they would contact them under the guise of COB (continuous open bidding) and snap them up. It was a way to ensure they got all of the girls they wanted. Unfortunately, some girls always went that route and then didn’t get the bid later on, and they were usually the ones who invested so much into that one particular house that there wasn’t another house interested.

I am so confused by this (and I was in a sorority in college!). I get the gist is that this is against the spirit of the rules and hurts the girls rushing, but I cannot follow this.

OP, where is your dd going to college? The process can be very different if you are talking Colgate vs UGA, for examples.

I went to a different college and this isnt what dirty rush meant at my school either. At the school that I attended, dirty rush was when sororities wouldnt follow the rules panhellinic set out for fairness during rush. For instance sorority members werent supposed to socialize w rushees outside of the rush process during rush, so that the whole process was fair to everyone—everyone pledging got a chance to meet every sorority in the same way everyone else did under the same time constraints of one hour/party/day. At my school AOPi was the sorority with the prettiest girls and they would often dirty rush other hot chicks. Make sure the hot chicks met everyone outside of formal rush process, etc.

Dirty rush as its used mostly means contact with houses prior to rush and possibly bid promising. The convoluted story about being told to suicide is not considered dirty rush but it is certainly against the rules. If you suicide bid and don't get a bid, then you are eligible for COB and snap bidding after the end of formal rush. So i bet there are houses that use that as a way to ensure they get everyone that they want but certainly it is not the way its supposed to be done.

Most of the time girls do not suicide bid, but if you end up getting a bid from the house you didn't want, you won't accept it but then you can't participate in rush again until the next year. If you suicide and get no bid, you can do COB immediately after bid day so alot of girls do do that because they think they might have a shot at COB and don't want to miss out on a whole year before they can rush again. At UVA for example, last year, most of the houses picked up several kids via COB. I think only one house didn't participate. My DD knows several friends who did COB and got into houses they had been dropped from during the formal rush process so it's a good option.

NP. This is so confusing to me. If you get dropped from a house during rush, why would they then pick you up during COB?