I got pulled off of this project for a couple of weeks to work on some steampunk thing, but now we're back on it.

Thanks for all the helpful information so far, especially to DTD Alum. Just like years ago when I was going through rush, Delts are still some of the best.

Research continues, but I've run into a fundamental question: does pledging last one academic year or one semester? Or, like a lot of things, does this vary from school to school, too?

If so, which is probably more common, one or two pledge classes each year? If it's a year, there's more time to do things, both in real life and in these scripts, but if it's one semester then the house would have twice as many opportunities to recruit.

Please help me get this right.

By the way, there must be a simple noun for "being a pledge." What is it? Pledgehood? Pledgeship?

The pledge period is normally only one semester and it's just "a pledge" or "pledging".

At my school (small, private, liberal arts, Greek-dominated) pledging was a little less than a semester (10 weeks maybe?) but there was only one pledge class per year. MAYBE one or two fraternities might take one or two guys before or after rush (we had rush second semester), but it wasn't common. I have heard some state schools have both a fall (formal, large) rush and a spring (smaller, informal) rush, and that the spring pledges are looked down on a little, but this is all hearsay. This is something that could easily vary from school to school (and the flipside, no matter which way you write it, a bunch of Greeks will watch it and say, "Pfft, that's not how it works! These guys clearly did no research!")

Edited because I forgot that it was just fraternities he was looking into.

RIF

New Member Period

Is there any fraternity that calls it this?

On a local level, I've seen fraternities refer to their pledges as "Associate Members" in more formal settings - perhaps out of solidarity with the women who were making the transition over from Pledge to New Member at the time? (Mike, I don't believe this is the norm).

My campus was behind the ball on the terminology change - the culture shift was juuuuuust about finishing up whenever I joined and was New Member Coordinator.

I'm not sure of any groups using it officially, but my organization has been using the term 'New Member Period' more frequently. Pledging is still the term, but I actually hear New Member Period quite a bit. Whether the actual chapters use it, I know mine doesn't.

The only one I know for sure that never uses the word pledge officially is LXA with their 'Associate Member' term.

I think there are a few other fraternities that use the term "associate member." Sigma Nu uses "candidate." We're not NIC, but we use "probationary member," so we'd have a "probationary member period" or "probationary membership." But we still use "pledging" to describe how one becomes a probationary member."

The questions continue
 

So being a pledge last's one semester, which means there must be two initiations per year, toward the end of each semester. That answers one question (thanks, BTW), but I'm back with more.

Right now, this is going to be very general stuff, which will no doubt reveal my utter ignorance of the subject. You guys talk about "driving out of your lane." Hear now questions from someone who doesn't even have a license.

When does rush (or I believe "recruitment" is now the preferred term typically begin? In my memory, we had "formal rush" the week before classes began, followed by a couple of weeks of "casual rush." This gave every house three weeks to decide whom to give bids to, but from what I've read here, this is not typical.

Formal rush, by the way, was very organized, largely run by the IFC office, and the rules were very strict: the guys called it "dry rush" as well, if that tells you anything. "Wet rush" were more laid back event organized by the fraternities themselves; there was more drinking and mixers, and it was a great chance for the PMs who came out for formal rush to come back and bring their friends from the dorms.


Also, in building the environment for the story, I want this to be somewhat realistic, which means detailed background. Bear in mind that you're talking to someone who wrote a novel set in a farmhouse-turned-recording studio, and before I wrote anything I had to draw the floorplan of the house.

So I'm trying to work out some numbers regarding enrollment. I've read repeatedly that only 5% of college students join a GLO. How realistic does that sound? I'm imagining our fictional college has eight fraternities of roughly 50 guys each. That means 400 fraternity members, plus a largely equal number in 8 sororities. If they are 5%, then total enrollment would be about 16,000. Does this sound believable to everybody?

I have other questions, but these will do for now, and -- once again -- I appreciate all this help. We're scheduled to start writing in earnest in July, and with your help I'll be more than ready to make this guy's pledging seem believable.

Pfft, that's not how it works!
 

Thanks very much for this. The more I read here, the more I realize that there is no one right way to do any of this. And no one right name to call anything.

I'm even thinking of trying to work that in the dialogue. "That's not how we did it at University X!" "But you're not at University X now, and this is how we do it here."

I hate getting accused of not doing my research. Sometimes it seems like I do nothing but research.:cool:

I think you really have to decide what kind of Greek campus your school is, then write around that. If you put a mishmash of features from all sorts of schools together, then nothing is going to sound realistic.

CAN be two initiations per year. If a fraternity is as big as it feels it wants to be, or if it carries over the pledge class from the previous semester because it doesn't feel like they're ready for initiation, they may only have one initiation per year. They're not obligated to have a pledge class or initiation every semester.



With Fraternities there really isn't a "typical". The campus pretty much makes its own rules. Even NPC sororities, which have a ton of rules they have to follow, can still vary quite a bit from campus to campus.


5% could be a good number (maybe even a little low), but then you have oddities like colleges where 80% are Greek.

One thing that probably ISN'T realistic is 8 fraternities and 8 sororities. Generally (with few exceptions), there are more fraternities than sororities. Also, membership in fraternities don't tend to be even. If you have 8 fraternities and 400 men, you probably have a chapter or two at around 80 members, and then at least one chapter that has 10-12 members. I would think it was rare to have all fraternities roughly even.

If you're saying 8 fraternities with 400 men, you could have maybe 5-6 sororities with as many women. Even with all our fairness rules, though, you're probably going to have a couple groups around 80, a couple in the middle, and then two or so at 25-30 (while smaller colleges with smaller Greek systems SOMETIMES let sororities get smaller than this, I don't think that's typical). The lower groups are usually the ones with some sort of stigma attached (the nerd house, the fat house, etc) that probably earned the stigma years ago and haven't been able to shake it. Actually, a good plot line could be your guy asking one of the fraternity men about the girls of Beta Beta Beta, having either already spotted a ridiculously hot one, or about to spot a hot one as the guy tells him that the BBBs are the nerd house and he doesn't want one of them. Yes, this plays into the stereotypes, but if you don't (at least a little), it will make for a pretty boring part of your story.

"Recruitment" is definitely the preferred term in NPC sororities, but I would think "rush" is still more common among fraternities.