Pledged (27 page)

These subjective evaluations, often written by complete strangers, carry great weight in the rush process. An alumna who knows that a rushee “has a bad reputation” can write a “no recommendation,” or no rec, which outweighs a formal rec even if the no rec doesn’t come from a rec board. “In some cities,” says
Rush: A Girl’s Guide to Sorority Success
, “board members drive by a rushee’s home or run a check on her father’s occupation to decide whether or not she should receive a recommendation.” The guide further advises, “Knowing a member of a recommendation board helps you receive a recommendation. By the same token, if a rec board member does not like you, even for a silly reason (maybe you hurt her daughter’s feelings last year) you may be denied a recommendation.”

If a rushee doesn’t know a rec board member, she is advised to prepare a résumé for the rec board and the sorority alumnae she will ask to write recommendations. The résumé is expected to include grades, honors, and activities, as well as talents, interests, and travel—to give sorority sisters material for rush party conversations. “Travel, especially abroad, indicates affluence and sophistication, which are always positive factors in the evaluation process,” states the rush guide, which emphasizes the importance of presenting as upper-crust an image as possible. It stresses,
“You should not list previous blue-collar employment on your resume unless it is very exotic. If you served food at McDonald’s don’t mention it. If you served food at a restaurant on Martha’s Vineyard, do.”

One of Brooke’s friends was pressured to get into Eta Gamma by her mother, who lined up a staggering twenty recommendations from Eta Gammas. As domineering as stage mothers and as pushy as beauty pageant mothers, sorority mothers can be a strange breed. Perhaps because their sisterhood was a product of a different time, sorority mothers often pin their hopes for their daughters’ future achievement both in college and in adulthood on their success or failure at rush. At one school in the mid-1990s, for example, a girl was courted by two houses; the campus considered one superior to the other. The girl phoned her mother to inform her that she had chosen the inferior one. The mother, appalled, hissed, “You just ruined your life,” and drove down to see her daughter right away. After a heated conversation, the sobbing girl went to the campus’s Panhellenic office at two in the morning to change her bid, but the officers still working there said it was too late. When a Texas sorority girl told her mother that she didn’t get into Tri-Delt, her mother cried and moaned, “Now how are you going to meet a husband?” This incident also happened in the mid-1990s.

In Brooke’s Texas hometown, mothers practically courted each other to lobby sorority daughters to help their own children. “Oh yeah, moms talked. They would get together for tea and go, ‘What is Susie thinking?’ ‘Well, Cindy’s just so happy in EtaGam.’ ‘We really wish Susie would go EtaGam,’” Brooke said. “They’d have lunch over it; it’s a huge deal in Texas. Moms were definitely like, ‘Oh, Susie really likes EtaGam; do we think she has a chance? Can Cindy help? Could you ask Cindy to get back to me on that? I’d like to know if Susie really has a chance.’”

According to author Maryln Schwartz, at universities in the South, mothers and grandmothers of rushees start sending sorority houses cakes, cupcakes, flowers, and other tokens in time for rush. They send pencils engraved with the rushee’s name so sisters will remember to vote for her. Iced letters on the baked goods read versions of, “Just remember my daughter Jane Smith.” Schwartz wrote, “This practice got so out of hand at the University of Mississippi that the dean of students . . . put an end to it, saying sororities would no longer accept these pre-Rush gifts.” But an Ole Miss Kappa Kappa Gamma told Schwartz, “Those cakes still keep coming.”

A legacy isn’t necessarily automatically admitted to the sorority in which her relative was a member. But she will get special treatment. A chapter that doesn’t automatically admit legacies will usually decide by the second night of rush parties whether or not it plans to extend the legacy a bid; if it does not want her, the group will give her the courtesy of letting her know early enough so that she can connect with another house. Occasionally out of competitiveness, other sororities will try to “steal a legacy” simply to lord one over another house.

Rush candidates are divided into groups and assigned a “rush counselor,” or “Rho Chi”: a sorority sister who, supposedly unbiased, cannot be involved with or disclose her sorority as she guides her group through the process. The Rho Chis are sometimes known to carry emergency packs including nail polish, mints, Band-Aids, and tampons. On the first night, the Rho Chis lead their groups to parties at every sorority on campus, where they mingle with the sisters. After open house, rush parties are by invitation only.

The last party of rush, called Preference Night, usually involves emotional speeches by seniors about what the sorority has meant to them, as well as a ceremony intended to make the candidates feel as if they are already a part of the group. But mostly, the purpose of Preference Night is to make girls cry. This way, if the rushees are led to believe that the sisters are so close that the sorority moves them to tears, then they will conclude, “I want friends like that, too.” (Some sororities bring in a favorite rushee’s older sister or aunt, if she is an alumna, to help persuade her to join. Others distribute tiny cakes with the rushees’ names on them.) Between the parties, the sisters have five to ten minutes to write down anything they can remember about the girls they have met, in order to help them when they later vote to narrow the list of candidates.

After the Pref parties and before a specified deadline (usually midnight), each rushee submits to the campus Panhellenic office a card on which she ranks her top few (usually two or three) choices. The sororities, meanwhile, submit their final bid list of girls in the order that they would accept them into the sorority. Panhellenic staff members then feed the lists into a computer, which matches the girls to the sororities, depending on how high the names appear on each list.

On the first few nights of rush, sorority sisters will be expected to meet several hundred, if not more than a thousand girls, who are herded around the house to have approximately three-minute conversations with as many sisters as possible. This brief impression, crucial for both rushers and rushees, is what causes sororities to begin to prepare their members for rush several days in advance. Many sororities return to school early to go on a pre-rush retreat or rush “workweek” before formal rush (Alpha Rho and Beta Pi stay on campus). At one mid-Atlantic school, I observed a sorority’s first pre-rush meeting of the year in order to observe its “practice conversations,” the superficial small talk that sisters will have with candidates. Essentially the older sisters train the younger ones in how to respond to most recruits’ questions with one goal in mind: “making every girl want us.” This can entail spinning, flattering, and outright lying. (“Will you take my best friend if I pick your sorority?” “We love her! She’ll probably get in anyway!”) During the pre-rush meeting I attended, the girls were specifically instructed to lie. If a rushee were to ask if she would have to live in the house, the sisters were told, “Don’t say yes because some girls get intimidated”—even though there was a one-year requirement. If a rushee asked how big the chapter was, a practice question-and-answer sheet suggested the sisters inflate the number.

As sorority sisters from around the country have described to me, the conversations at these parties are all about the same. A rushee is ushered to a sister, who will engage in something akin to the following conversation:

“So . . . where are you from?”

“New York City!” [Candidate reminds herself to smile brightly.]

“What’s your major?”

“I’m a dance major!”

“Oh, my sister Tiffany is a dance major, too!” [Sister reminds herself to find something the rushee has in common with a sister.] “Here, I’ll introduce you! Tiffany, come talk to [insert rushee’s name].” [Sister thrusts candidate toward Tiffany.]

Meanwhile, the sisters have gestures to let the rest of the sorority know what they are thinking about the girl to whom they are talking. Some sororities cross their legs certain ways to indicate what they think of a rushee. Others put their hands behind their back in a silent plea for rescue, signaling, as one sorority girl explained, “Help—this girl can’t talk.”

Before the semester begins, many sororities have their sisters memorize names, faces, and details about the girls who have already sent in recommendations. State U sisters receive photographs of each rushee at the start of the term. Sometimes the rushees have extra help. According to
Ready for Rush
, Kappa Kappa Gamma alumnae from Vanderbilt University one year sent “Goo-Goo Clusters” to University of Virginia Kappas. The candy bars were wrapped with ribbons reading, “Vandy alumnae are Goo-Goo over Laura Smith and Cheryl Wood!” The manual says, “This not only fed the actives a tasty treat but also made everyone remember these two rushees. Needless to say, both Laura and Cheryl pledged Kappa Kappa Gamma.”

At the pre-rush meeting I attended, the sisters were sitting in their chapter room on the floor, chairs, and couches, some having arrived straight out of the shower, still in thin bathrobes, wet hair, and bare feet. As they waited for the meeting to commence, they engaged in important preliminary conversations.

“I really need to change my underwear. Should I go change my underwear?” asked one.

“Did you guys see me do my mermaid dance last year?” asked another.

“Yeah, I have to change my underwear,” affirmed the first, who briefly left the room.

The recruitment chair began to explain logistics. During the selection process, as the recruitment chair called each recruit’s name, the girls could voice opinions about the recruits before the sisters voted.

The president interrupted. “Remember not to compliment them to their faces, like ‘Oh my God, you have such a cute bag,’ because then they think you’re judging them by their appearance,” she said. “But if their parents are generous and they fit the mold of this house, we want them. And if there’s a cool girl but you’re not sure what else to say about her and you want to get to know her better, call her an ‘NGB’: ‘Nice Girl But.’”

“And if you really, really, really love a girl,” the recruitment chair said, “you say, ‘I would take her as my Little.’”

“Remember,” the president interrupted again, “you want everyone to want you. You want
everyone
to want you.”

A sign-in sheet was passed around the room as the meeting shifted to conversation practice. “You might think it’s really easy to talk to someone, but it’s really not and you could feel really stupid,” the recruitment chair said.

“Girls are going to ask you the dumbest questions you’ve ever heard in your life,” added the chapter’s adviser.

The recruitment chair offered a few tips before the practice began in earnest. “Memorize our philanthropy. Last year someone asked a sister what our philanthropy was and she said, ‘Uhhh . . . ’ And don’t talk about drugs.”

“What if someone comes up to you and says, ‘I’m coked up out of my mind’?” asked a sister.

A junior piped up, dramatizing the typical rush introduction: “Oh, then you say, ‘Oh, I have a sister who’s coked up out of her mind, too! Here, I’ll introduce you!’” The girls erupted with laughter.

The sisters in the room were paired up and assigned scenarios for practice conversations. The first pair sat on a couch in front of the room, one of them perched on an armrest.

“Okay, first, you should be sitting on the same level at all times,” the recruitment chair pointed out. The perched girl hopped down to the cushions.

The girls introduced themselves and shook hands.

“No touching!” the adviser exclaimed.

“I thought there was just a ‘no massage’ rule,” a sister said.

“No. Even if she’s your friend, don’t be stroking her head and stuff,” the adviser said.

The girls resumed.

“So, are you excited?” asked the girl pretending to be the rusher.

“I’ve been waiting for this day my whole life!” said the sister who was acting as a rushee.

“What kind of classes do you take?”

“I’m an engineer and I’m trying out for band!” The room laughed.

“Oh, that’s . . . nice. How many credits are you taking?”

“Twenty-three!” The audience laughed again as the rushee turned to them to explain, “You get to talk to a lot of dorks.”

“So,” the rushee turned back to her partner, “do you like veggie burgers?”

An older sister addressed the room: “Even if this girl is the biggest tool, you still have to say hello and smile. You don’t know who she lives with, so you want her to go home and say we’re awesome, because her roommate might be like our number one choice.”

“Use the analogy that this is a guy who you know likes you,” said a senior. “You’re flirting and you pretend there’s no one else in the room. Even if you’re obviously not going to hook up with him, you still want to make him want you.”

“Just remember,” said the recruitment chair, “there should never be any more than two sisters on one potential new member and even two shouldn’t be there for long. It’s intimidating.”

At the end of the meeting, the girls were handed a sheet entitled “Increase Your Rush Vocabulary” to help them think of words to describe candidates. Among the vocabulary words were “shy,” “attractive,” and “loud.”

Bump Groups

JANUARY 13

CAITLIN’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

Oh man, at the house for-ev-er.

OPEN HOUSE, CAITLIN’S FIRST RUSH EVENT AS A SISTER,
was a
disappointment. Eighteen times, a Rho Chi led a group of rushees past the beds of blue pansies and into the entry hall as the Alpha Rhos chanted, cheered, and clapped. Eighteen times, Elaine stepped forward from her position in the TV room and said, opening her arms wide, “Hi, I’m Elaine, the recruitment chair. Let me know if you have any questions. Welcome to Alpha Rho!” As the Rho Chi prodded the girls forward one by one, the next Alpha Rho in the long line snaked around the room stepped up to introduce herself and take the girl into either the dining room or the TV room to chat. For just over five hours (including four ten-minute breaks) Caitlin forced herself to have superficial conversations with girls who were “just okay.” The only girl she liked was someone she already knew: Traci, who lived with René.