^^^D'oh! Tease! I clicked 'new posts' and saw your name again and thought "yay! another installment!!"

:(

Well, I posted one about two minutes earlier, so I'm not THAT much of a tease
:)

^^^I know!!!! That's what got me fooled into thinking there'd be more there again!!! ;) :)

Pref Day!
 

My Rho Chi woke me up somewhere close to three am and handed me my schedule. I was excited to see that my schedule read:

Phish Food
Everything But The…

I hadn’t been cut! Finally, I had a full schedule.

Roommate and I woke up early to get extra pretty for the preference parties. I wore a white strapless dress covered with giant yellow polka dots, vintage from the 80s. It sounds terrible, but it’s actually an amazing dress. During breakfast, a girl in my recruitment group that I had become quite close with and I discovered that we had identical schedules for the day.

Phish Food- The girl from home met me at the door! We had a long chat about the principles of Phish Food. I told her that I was certain that I could live up to them. The ceremony was beautiful, and I was close to tears. After I left, I was pretty sure that Phish Food was the house for me, but I still had one party to go.

Everything But The…- Here, I was put with a girl who I had never met before. This disappointed me. We got along great, though. She reminded me a lot of Mandy Moore. I had a fantastic time at this preference party as well. I also found the ceremony here to be beautiful.

At the end of the day, everyone headed back to rank. I wasn’t sure what to do. There was just one member in particular at Phish Food that I loved, but I got along really well with a lot of the Everything But The…s. Both of the houses were homey to me. I actually liked the idea of the smaller numbers of the Everything But The…s because I felt that the sisterhood might be tighter. I thought about the national sorority and everything that the groups stand for. Eventually, I decided that the ideals of Phish Food were really the ideals that I wanted to live up to as a person. I also considered that I felt more strongly about the organizations that the Phish Foods support through philanthropy.

I told the Rho Chi at the computer:

1. Phish Food
2. Everything But The…

My Rho Chis told us that they would only wake us up in the middle of the night if we did NOT receive a bid.

Ugh, I hate the middle of the night thing! Oh, but I think it's great that you took the national's ideals into mind when ranking the chapters. I know chapters can vary a lot by school, but they are obviously part of the same org on a national level.

Bid Day
 

I woke up around 8 in the morning. I had gotten a bid! My roommate and I rushed to get ready and eat breakfast. Together with our recruitment group, we walked down to the Ag Sci building where we would receive our bid cards. In the lecture hall that everyone was sitting in, I sat next to the friend that had had an identical schedule to mine. We finally got our bid card and were so frustrated that we had to sit on them. Once everybody had received theirs, we opened them. Mine was for...

Phish Food! Or, as we are more commonly known, Kappa Delta. My friend's was also. We hugged and screamed as we discovered that we were going to be sisters.




The other chapter that attended preference at, Everything But The..., is VandalSquirrel's own Alpha Gamma Delta. I'm not going to reveal the rest on here because it was just last fall and I don't want to give any PNMs the wrong idea. However, if you want to know, PM me and I'll tell you the rest.

Congrats on getting Kappa Delta. It was a good story too!

Yay!! Thanks for finishing the story! ;) And congratulations on KD! They're lucky to have you! It's so funny that in my first post in this thread I pointed out how excited I was that you had "Everything but the..." as a choice and it turns out it was the code name for my own org! ;) Enjoy your new sisterhood.

Oh, you're an Alpha Gam? That is funny.

Yes :), but I went to Penn State (a loooong time ago). Where did your roommate end up?

My roommate, as well as our two suitemates, went Kappa Kappa Gamma.

That's great that they all found a home! Thanks for sharing your story! :)

Congratulations!

Belated congratulations for joining Kappa Delta!

Your story is a great example of "it only takes one". Often, PNMs get bummed about not having a full schedule or getting hung up on one chapter (myself included) that cut them that they can't see the big picture of recruitment, to join ONE chapter.

You also looked for the good in every chapter that invited you back and didn't pay much attention to reputation. Another important lesson for PNMs!

Woohoo! Congratulations to you and Kappa Delta! Being cut out from houses- even if you did not care from them- can be painful. But I am positive you ended up in the right place for you.

what a great story. thank you for sharing it with us and congratulations on kappa delta. belated welcome to the farmville four!

WaterChild
 

WaterChild -

If it is okay with you I'll address the cell phone situation (and obviously feel free to join in) now that you've finished your story.

I'm off to enjoy the limited hours at the SRC, but I'll be back later. If you haven't made it back to Moscow yet, enjoy all the snow we got last night!

You're welcome to go into the cell phone issue now.

I'm not back in Moscow yet, so I had no idea that there was fresh snow, but I'm excited now!

I kind of forgot I was going to come back and post, sorry SWTXBelle.

The cellphone policy is new, I checked with my sisters who came through and it was in effect in 2005 and 2006. As an individual I really don't see what the big deal is in not being connected 24/7. The women told me they were informed of the situation when they signed up for recruitment, and their parents were also given information on how to reach them. Obviously the local Panhellenic thought is was important enough to institute that policy, and there are plenty of people posting dumb things on Facebook and Myspace, which means even more is being said in person.

Plenty of fratties and other people say stupid crap about chapters, and there have been incidents of rec writers and family members showing up on campus when a woman is cut. There have even been phone calls to the Dean of Students from parents regarding placement or lack thereof, so honestly it makes sense to me. The part I find absurd is that people freak out about not having access on demand. Of course I am biased because I am capable of going to class and not text messaging during a lecture or using the intarweb to IM people (true story, the guy I sat next to in class this morning was playing some game like World of Warcraft or Second Life, WTF?). I think it is extreme, but it is in response to those who don't have any self control or the ability to not helicopter (PNMs and others).

I could see a compromise of having a designated time during the day to check voicemail and call home in a monitored situation to make sure there aren't dirty rushing issues (and trust me, I've run into plenty of PNMs in town and they need to learn discretion) or just misinformation. The internet access is easy to deal with. You cannot use wireless access without registering your computer and account with ITS, and even if women show up early Greek Life could turn in a list of PNMs and have their access turned off.

Like I said, I'm biased, and there are plenty of places in Idaho with little to no cell access and I spend plenty of time there so I can cope without being on a technological leash.

Speaking as a parent, as long as I KNEW I wouldn't be able to reach my baby I'd be okay. It was the idea of not knowing about it that struck me as extreme!

Separate from the cell phone issue, and pertaining to my campus, I am not a fan of how we do recruitment. Firstly I hate the term recruitment and like the term rush. Secondly I don't like having it before classes start, but that is going to be too hard to change for various reasons.

As a result of having recruitment before school, women move into chapter facilities on Bid Day. I think it is a HUGE disservice to those women (the men don't require it, and there are guys who stay in dorms or off campus), and I love love love that our neighbor Washington State University has freshmen live in residence halls for the first semester at the minimum, or for the full year. There is so much Greek/Nongreek animosity and I think not only would it help people to make friends and not be haters, but could increase inter-fraternal relations, and might increase Greek life participation through informal recruitment. It would also keep older members and leadership involved longer, as well as living in the chapter facility. Unfortunately we have too much off cheap and available campus housing (but OMG at least half is super slummy), so the new members have to move in ASAP for financial reasons. I am an outgoing person and had a lot of campus involvement so I know all kinds of people outside my chapter and the fraternities my chapter mostly associated with, but I cannot remember the amount of times I would meet someone and they wouldn't know anyone from my chapter.

But that's just me, WaterChild likely has a completely different experience.

This campus is HUGE on parental involvement (my parents thought it was hysterical to have welcome letters and invitations to events) and we even have a BBQ during recruitment for parents to attend with their students. If parents and students don't know, they just aren't paying attention.

I payed plenty of attention when I registered for recruitment and when I arrived on campus. I, not my parents, was told that my parents were not supposed to contact me during the week but if an emergency came up they could call the Dean of Students office. Nothing said that we would lose access to our cell phones. We were not told until after we had moved in and taken a tour of the campus and done several activities that we couldn't have them. There was a barbecue, but at this point, it was just a rumor. I actually had to call my mom after she had left campus to tell her that I wouldn't have my phone. It was really ridiculous. I don't know if PNMs used to be informed ahead of time, but I certainly wasn't and I am a very aware person. If it had been mentioned in an email, I would have read it. And VandalSquirrel, the boys are required to move into the fraternity houses at the end of their recruitment with the exception of one or two of the houses.

With the boys it varies year to year depending on how full the houses are, but it is not required like it is for sorority women. The men don't have to deal with the overflow issue and living in the dorms nearly as much as the women do, but we've also had chapters close between when I came here and you did, which affects occupancy, as well as all the remodels.

I'm only going off what my sisters told me re: cellphones, as I didn't even know it was a new policy. There's obviously a communication issue to PNMs and families so maybe we should let our Rho Chis and Panhel reps. know so it can be addressed for the next recruitment. If I'm writing recs or have a woman ask me about Greek Life, I'll be sure to direct her to the Greek Life Office for clarification. There's a different system being used for recruitment registration now too, so maybe that's part of it, paperwork isn't being sent home and it is all being sent via VandalMail and not getting passed on to parentals. When I registered for recruitment years ago, my family got a phonecall from the Greek Advisor at that time, but perhaps it was because I was from out of state and they didn't realize I had come for summer session and was on campus already.