No GC during Recruitment
 

No GC during Recruitment for me and girls who live in the house, that is. I just realized that during Spirit Week and Recruitment Week I won't be able to check on PNMs' experiences or even sisters' because I won't have access to my computer!

For those two weeks I'm going to be busy moving in, decorating the room, catching up with my sisters, and preparing for Recruitment week, anyway, but the girls who live in the house won't be allowed to plug in any appliances or hook up their computers.

This is for aesthetic appeal. Once you think about it, no rooms had any appliances because it creates a more cluttered look. Thus, alarm clocks must be put away after you wake up and computers and microwaves and such must be hidden. Ha ha, I heard last year some sisters tried hiding their big appliances in their bathtub because we show PNMs our bathrooms, too, but they had a CLEAR shower curtain so the PNMS wondered why we keep computers in the tub. Needless to say, I am probably going to store stuff like that at a sister's townhouse for awhile.

Anyway, I guess I'll have a lot to read when recruitment's over, huh?

Do any other houses store away their appliances during Recruitment Week?

We don't have to hide out appliances except for clocks. It's because they don't want the sisters to look at the time while talking to a PNM because it could be perceived as rude. We aren't allowed to wear watches either.

WOW no GC!! I don't post everyday but I sure do read everyday....I am addictted!!!

we do!
 

We hide our appliances, everything that doesn't look pleasing when you walk in a room. Right down to the trash cans. We just hope the PNM's don't ask to see what's behind the closet drapes!!! That's where my roomie and I stored everything during Rush when we lived in the house. We joked that if anyone gets too close to the curtain, they'll bump into something. Now that I think of it, I think we did have our computers out though. I mean a computer is different that a trash can and refridgerator. Anyway, good luck hiding all your things, it's a challenge!
Tara
I have a Phi Mu castle...

I guess if I was on a house tour and didn't see any computers, I'd wonder if the girls were serious about school! It seems like a not so great idea to me.

No one really seems to notice the lack of appliances. When they told my PC about this we had to really think back and then we were like, "Ohhhhh! Right! Wow..." At the time of house tours you're just so into observing the cute decorations and themes and the way the room is set up that it doesn't occur to you there are no little blinking lights anywhere. Sort of like a model home. It sure looks nice but you know people don't actually live like that. The rooms are waaaaaaay too clean and tidy for people to actually go about living there for awhile.

I guess I can understand the idea of hiding appliances, I have never heard of it though!!

I went to a school where we didnt have houses but I do know that most of the other chapters I have visited have a "computer" room where the girls studied, so i guess they would still see the studious nature in that room?!

I think it is a good idea, I would have never thought of it!!:)

Guess it depends where you go to school ... at my college, I knew one student all four years who did not own her own computer, so you'd need a ludicrously large computer room. And besides, I can't imagine how distracting it would be to study in a room with that many people around!

This is a dumb question, but do the girls see every bedroom? I thought in large houses like at UF all the rooms were more or less the same and there was a "model" bedroom the rushees saw and that was it. I didn't think they went through all of them - I thought most of the rush was conducted in the common areas of the house.

Most of rush does take place downstairs, but house tours are given and you see a bunch of rooms. I remember being so impressed with AOII and XO because in each room I saw there was a different theme. All the houses fixed up their bedrooms really nicely.

For preferentials' one-on-one convo, though, we do it in the bedrooms. 2 pairs of rushers and rushees in each bedroom. The ceremony is downstairs.

Some houses do everything downstairs.

I'm not sure what I did wrong, but my post didn't show up.

Anyway ~ I can understand hiding microwaves and similar appliances, to clean up the clutter. I can even understand hiding alarm clocks, so that neither sisters nor PNM's are checking the time. But computers? Maybe it's just the CS major in me talking, but I agree with FuzzieAlum - if I saw no computers in the house, I'd be concerned. Keep them off, or keep them on with a nice sorority-themed screensaver, but don't hide them. (Nobody's going to be surfing the net during parties anyway.....)

We dont hide anything, even the garbage can, I dont know why, it sounds like a good idea... we usually only show one or two rooms, who evers is clean :)

we usually had 'bout three "model rooms" during recruitment. all of these rooms were devoid of things like appliances, dirt, trashcans, clocks, and even make up and hair products. those rooms were perfect and always looked like the most spirirted girls in the chapter (with all of the alpha gam stuff in there) all of the other rooms were locked and stored the model rooms extra stuff.


marissa

Woah. That's soooo foriegn to me, that some of ya'll have never heard about hiding things during rush, or showing "whoevers room is clean." Ya'll must not have that big of a Greek system. At USC, where we have one of the biggest Greek systems, Rush begings to get planned in January. Not only are the rooms cleaned everyday to be immaculate but its a Pan-H rule that appliances be stored away and that includes computers. I wasn't sure that made sense when I first heard it, but whatever. Rules are rules. USC is such a big school with a popular Greek system, that all the girls are trying to get into a house during rush, so they're not going to care whats around and whats not.

WOW...I have never heard of hiding appliances!! My school has one of the largest greek communities in the country and I'm not sure if anyone does that!!! I can understand the clock thing. but not computers and microwaves! It wouldn't even look like a college student lives there! I could not imagine doing that! lol. we only show like four rooms anyway :)
I love hearing how other people do things like this! It's so interesting! :)

I don't know if I'd have felt comfortable as a rushee going into rooms that didn't look like a college student actually lived in them. I mean, my room was used as a model room in our house, and I had a computer and a mini fridge and such. The room was really big and really nice, and I had tons of D Phi E stuff, but it looked like a college student's room.

Don't the women ask if it's really someone's room? It just seems odd to me!

funny!
 

I think it's really interesting how schools are so different. When I rushed, I didn't realize that there were no appliances there and every chapter on my campus' sorority rooms look about the same. I concentrated on the sorority themed paddles, etc. not the trash can. But I must admit the rooms look amazing during recruitment. The night before ALL rooms in the house have to be "rush ready" and the national officers walk around and double check. Of course the rooms aren't fully done until LATE into the morning hours, but the national officers give us tips on things to hide that we wouldn't think of. The funny thing is we hide the garbage cans but all the perfume/makeup/etc. is allowed to be out, as long as its neatly arranged and not extremely cluttered. Rush week is the last week the entire year that every room in the house is spotlessly clean, so we have to get the full effect of the rooms during that time. After that all hell breaks loose!

Anyway, I just think it's so interesting how some chapters do things differently. I'd like to see how rush is done on other campuses. For example, at UF we do "walk outs" to exit the houses, but at other campuses, they've never heard of them. Personally I'm a "walk out" freak...it's on of my favorite parts! I mean who'd think you could get your entire chapter of over 120 out onto the front lawn in perfect order in 16 seconds!!! Rush is a sheer miracle when you think about it!

Ok, I'll stop now.
Tara :)
I have a Phi Mu castle...

Re: funny!
 

"Boobs to backs, all of you!" regarding the walkouts, I hear. :) Big beautiful smiles, coordinated outfits, perfect like a beauty pageant. I love how the girls RUSH out of the houses and grab rushees like it's guerilla warfare. My first house when I rushed the PXs hyped the rush outs so much they even counted down the exact second the door would fly open! I thought something was going to explode! ::eek:: But it was okay. And I remember Pi Phi doesn't grab, we call names. Relieves the "will I ever get picked" panic like in gym class. :D

i don't understand, what exactly are walkouts?

I agree. If I walked into a house as a rushee, I would really wonder why there are no computers. It would make quite an interesting topic of converstation for me, though! :D

explanation
 

I guess I could explain what walk outs are. Basically your entire chapter lines up inside the house at every exit door, or the main door, depending on how you do it. When the party officially begins, the doors fly open and the sisters basically prance out of the house very fast and stop abruptly, like ROWDYsister said, boobs to back with our hands either down at our sides (not swinging casually, but directly at our sides) or with our hands resting on our behinds. We are all on top of eachother within a matter of seconds, last year it was 16 seconds for 120 girls to walk out of 3 doors onto the bottom half and middle half of our lawn, stairs, and front porch. We make it look like a pretty display, like a beauty pageant of our sisters. Then one sister welcomes the girls to our chapter house and we all rush the tent to "pick our PNM". Practicing walkouts is a HUGE part of work week and probably takes the most amount of time because timing has to be perfectly so you can utilize the most time talking to the PNM not walking out of the house. Some chapters get nasty and squirt their sisters who mess up with water guns. Now I think that's a great idea, but not when you're getting squirted in the face!! I do understand though, when someone messes up, the whole chapter has to stop and re-line up and start all over again. I could go on about this all day, so I'll stop now.

Our PX didn't do a very good job of explaining the "rush" or "walk out" to us, so I was super shocked the first time I saw it. But it's really pretty to watch. And very calculated, each sister knows exactly which blade of grass to stand on basically!

ROWDYsister, ya'll call names for round 1 too?! Maybe I'm forgetting but that must be super hectic since we don't get the rosters very early for round 1 to know who's coming through. On the other hand, maybe I'm thinking of prefs...

Tara
I have a Phi Mu castle...

During rush at my school. We do hide a lot of stuff, just not computers. I guess we don't have a problem with microwaves because we do not have them in the bedrooms, all our microwaves are in the Kitchens and we do not show those during rush. We do however have to turn off phones and clocks either have to be put away or in such a place where we can not see the time(we are not allowed to wear watched either).

One major plus about the DG house at my school is that our house looks like a house. Our rooms are really big, not like dorm room style so we want our rooms to look homey too. So we figure that if we took away all computers and clocks it would look less homey. During rush though certain computers are on and there screensavers have little DG messages on them. We always show our whole house, except for all the bathrooms, during rush which is hard to do because we only have a little over 20 minutes to do so, so at times certain girls do not get to see everything which sucks. And since we show are whole house the house is cleaned everyday for a week before just to make sure it does not take a really long time on house tours days.

Sadly to say at Northern Arizona University we dont have sorority houses, all the sororities and most of the fraternities live in one large res. hall. We each though have a chapter room. So for recruitment instead of walk outs, we are lined up on either side of the door to our chapter room (on the inside of the room). As we are standing there we are singing and prancing(dont ask about the prancing:) ) except on the first night, because we are not aloud to sing that night. The factor is that on the first night we dont get to show a house or anything, so we just talk to the girls.

Re: explanation
 

I don't remember which round they started calling names but I remember feeling relieved. ;)

The watergun thing must be sooo irritating after a couple of times, esp. if you're already irritated with practicing walkouts...

On my campus, they didn't hold rush in the houses (only about ten years ago no one had houses, so that's why) but in common rooms on campus. And our rush rules forbid any sister from leaving the room once the party starts. So we didn't do anything like walkouts. We would usually stand in the room and chant to welcome them in.

It just occurred to me that this spring, for the first time, all sororities on campus will now have a house. I wonder if they'll move rush into the houses? Personally, I don't think it's a good idea. The houses are reflective of what the unversity chose to give that sorority, and one house in particular is a dorm-style rather than a house-style and would surely suffer in comparison. (Plus it's a 15-minute walk from the other houses! I can just imagine coordinating shuttle vans!) If the chapters were responsible for their own houses, I might feel differently.

Sorry, that was a digression!

well we dont have to hide anything, just make sure everything is neat and organized. i remember rushing and being in one girls room and seeing a screen saver with our letters on it. it made me think these girls were really into it, which I took as a good sign....other than that, I liked how the girls rooms looked, it was cool to see another side of it, and it made me excited to be able to live in the house eventually. :D

From a fraternity standpoint, we don't "hide" anything, but the rooms that we do show are clean ones. For this upcoming fall rush, I think we will show one empty room that has recently been recarpeted and repainted, and one member's room who has done something unique with it. In the past, we have showed a room that had a mini-bar installed in it, and one in which the member had his bed hooked up to a pulley system, so it could be raised up to the ceiling when he wasn't using it.

All of this rush talk, sororities and fraternities, is getting me realy excited for the fall! It also doesn't hurt that we are expecting the biggest freshman class ever at Montana State :)

Me too! Butler also has the largest freshman class ever. They don't know where to put them because they ran out of dorm space! :eek: I'm just glad to be living in the house so I don't have to worry about housing this year! :D

Jess

Wow...I must say, these "walk outs" seem kind of impressive! Thinking back to rush on my campus...all the houses on our campus greeted you with a peppy, cheery song for the first round of rush. If there was a staircase at the front door (as my hosue did), the girls were lined up on that, all smiles. There were some unique songs at each house (I do not miss singing "boom boom boom boom....I wanna be an Alpha Chi!" ;) ) but mainly people clapped and sang the greek alphabet song, as a sign of greek unity across campus. The PNMs lined up at the door, single file, and the sisters (lifetime members!) were would walk up one by one and pick the next girl in line.

For the first round, rush generally took place downstairs, but each house did a tour of both the downstairs and upstairs. You saw a variety of sisters rooms, they were all decorated nicely. This was the best part of rush, IMO. The sorority houses on the Syracuse campus are all beautiful, and it's just a great experience to actually get to see the insides of these old homes! Also, I think it's important to do room tours, because I think seeing how every sorority truly lives and conducts itself, could help to dispel certain stereotypes rushees may have prior to starting rush/recruitment. I do remember having to hide clocks, not being able to wear watches, turning off phone ringers, lowering answering machines, but as for computers? Those pretty much had to be at the very least signed off of the internet. And stereos were out, too...pretty much everyone has music playing (softly) to set the "mood" for their room.

For the second round, which was skit round when I rushed (I believe it is now "philanthropy night" at my alma mater) everything was done downstairs. Then for pref round, everything was done downstairs, except each house did a sort of "one on one" with a sister you had sort of clicked with, upstairs, in different bedrooms.

I have to say, I actually enjoyed rush. Maybe I was a masochist, or I just love smiling until my cheeks hurt, but it was so exciting to see all those young women, so eager to meet you, so happy to finally be starting a new phase of their college career. And so much fun to finally meet the newest faces of your chapter!!!

Ahhh, the things you miss when you're out in the "real world"!!! :D :cool: :D :cool: :D

Squirt guns?
 

>>Some chapters get nasty and squirt their sisters who mess up with water guns. Now I think that's a great idea, but not when you're getting squirted in the face!! I do understand though, when someone messes up, the whole chapter has to stop and re-line up and start all over again.

Water guns?!

I've been in Broadway-style musical productions where a chorus of 60 had to learn perfectly unison dance steps, quick entrances, etc...so I know about long, hard rehearsals and having to get an elaborate performance up to speed in a short period of time.

That being said, if any director had ever squirted me in the face for messing up during rehearsal, I'd walk out of the production and never come back...even if I were the star. That's something you do to a dog that jumps on the couch. That's not something you do to humiliate or punish a fellow adult. I can't even imagine my sisters doing something like that to me.

Ivy

remember
 

While squirting in the face isn't nice, remember we're in Florida, and getting hosed down in the middle of the day walk out after walk out, is kinda a relief from the heat! We half jokingly told our Rush chair to get her own water gun for us! Anyway, just my perspective...

Tara
I have a Phi Mu castle...

Agreed!

Re: funny!
 

Dood, my trash can IS sorority themed! My 3-big gave it to me for initiation!!! I have the only Phi Sig trash can in my chapter!

all I have to say is....

Re-mem-mem
Re-mem-Remember
Phi Sig Sig
Good times togehter
Laugh and sing and doin whatever
we like best forever and ever
Makin new friends day after day
Hopin good things come our way
Stick together you and I
Hope we never say good bye....


ahhh recruitment


And then theres the....

TB! Ssssssssss!

1-9-4-6 Doohretsis! Alley-oop!

yay!

I just realized that since I'm going to be in a hotel for the week of recruitment, I probably won't be able to write my story as a pi chi down as the week goes along :( Well that's dissappointing! I guess I will maybe try to sneak home at some point during the week, or else use the computer lab at the student union, because I think it would be interesting to see a recruitment counselors view on the whole week.
Until then...
RC Love and Mine,
S

Get this: after my realization a few weeks ago that I couldn't have appliances out such as computers, I figured no GC for awhile. But now I found out my roomies and I had to call the phone company to hook us up before Spirit Week started because once chapter starts (Sunday) no non-sisters (that would be the phone person) are allowed in the house til after chapter's over (after Recruitment.) So no land lines for my room afer all! Sort of funny, but more in a "heh" way than a "ha ha" way. :)

my thoughts on your digression :)
 

I'm pretty sure they are keeping rush the same way this year because of the whole North/South side thing. Maybe it'll change once the whole campus master plan goes into effect and all the greeks are on North side, but that won't be for how long? Maybe then we could do cool bid day things like the ones that I read about on here and get jealous of, like having everyone run to their respective houses. It's harder to do when the two residence areas are separated by a good 30-40 minute walk.

When I was rushing on both sides, I understood why we had all the parties in campus buildings, but I remember going through formal rush knowing that I'd have to live in whatever house I joined and wishing I could see what I'd be in for (and it's not like housing didn't come up in rush anyway). Not that I joined during formal rush, but that would be my own digression. :)

In our house, we had a long hallway leading out to the fire escape on the third floor. You would not believe what you could hide in there after you thumb-tacked a sarong up to cover it. :) But we all left our computers on our desks - at an engineering school where people can't function without e-mail and IM, you'd DEFINITELY notice if there weren't any computers, and probably wonder how anyone managed to get anyone together for social events (god forbid you use a phone - and yet another digression from me).