Those Bonding Moments in Greek Life
 

Lately, we've been telling new GC members that a lot of the true bonding moments in Greek life occur away from ritual--when you're just hanging out together. My husband and I just witnessed a good example.

We're visiting a college town right now and the wind and rain are formidable. A bunch of AXiDs just came tearing out of a gas station and jumped into their car and somehow one of them accidentally rolled up her window with her hair hanging out. We could hear hysterical laughter as she got it back in. My husband remarked that they'll be talking about that at reunions 50 years from now.

All the way back to the college, I was thinking about random wild and crazy moments with my sorority that we still talk about to this day...

What a fun example! Made me think of some of my own...

1) During rush every room had M&M's in them (this was for house tours where rushees saw our own rooms). Every rush my roommates and I would eat them up before that party round and run out at the last minute to get more, like a couple of hours before the parties started. Common among every room, we'd drain the local grocery store's stash.
2) Packing my car up one semester, a sister helped me load things in and put my hot rollers (remember how they came in a plastic "heating" case?) on the top of the car. I drove off without noticing and they crashed onto the street. Neither of us have ever forgotten that.
3) Every Christmas the campus theater showed the movie "Black Christmas" about a group of sorority sisters stalked on their campus...Olivia Hussey was the star. Of course a bunch of us would go see it and then be afraid to go into the house basement to get our luggage for traveling home.
4) How everyone in the house wore Lanz nightgowns (remember them? Late 70's) but we wore them backwards. Have no idea how that started, but I have a fond memory of that for some reason.
5) And one of my very favorite - related to ritual - was whenever we'd have a candle-lighting ceremony and the heightened anticipation when it would go around for a 2nd time. THAT was special!

Candlelights, for sure!

And others, like stuffing 8 people into my car and going to the drive-in...wiring the bedroom doors shut in a fraternity house so they would have to jump out the windows onto the patio...too many practical jokes to remember...cookie shines...watching TV together in the TV room...the rush workshop that the Fijis invaded...

Hmm, I'm thinking of my own to add, because they feel so far away even though they're comparatively not:
1) A bunch of us on the sorority hall last-minute deciding to go to a pajama-themed mixer with another sorority and then wandering into the Jimmy Johns downtown in our pajamas to eat there on a Tuesday night.
2) Formal my junior year where one sister decided to wear all the sashes at once for all the superlative winners who didn't get theirs-she was wearing multiple white satin sashes at once that said all sorts of things like "candlelight here we come", "most likely to be found at a fraternity house", "pledge class mom", etc. and running around screaming "I'm a winner!"
3) On a more serious note, I don't think I ever bonded as much with my sisters as when the younger biological sister of a senior chapter sister suddenly got sick and passed away while she was participating in recruitment. It was absolutely heartbreaking, but the way we honored her, supported each other and loved on the chapter sister truly showed me the meaning of our open motto, We Live For Each Other.

And of course there was the time my mom surprised me during ritual, but that one is during ritual...still my favorite happy memory from ADPi:) I think it was Sciencewoman who guessed correctly that she was coming to surprise me when I posted about it back in the day.

LOL. I announced my engagement to my chapter via a candlelight. The trouble was that I was the chapter's ritualist at the time, so the candle pass started with me - and my sisters were very confused as to whether I was engaged or pregnant!

My husband and I picked out the ring together, but it had to be resized. For weeks, I was accosted at chapter - "Where's the ring? Let's see the ring!"

As for those bonding moments :) one of my sisters introduced me to my husband. She was my maid of honor.

One evening after a day full of rush parties, they gave us a two hour dinner break before Membership Selection. All we had eaten all day were breath mints and diet soda and everyone was starving. I was a sophomore, and these two really fun, popular seniors told me to come with them. The driver opened her sunroof and we sang some of the dirty sorority songs you learn off the record all the way to dinner, and I remember thinking. "I will remember this day forever." The same two girls dragged me to a lot of different things that year. I was kind of going through a period of depression, and they made me leave my room. I'm glad they did.

This is what sisterhood is all about. :)

I have to think of mine, and I'll come back to share....

When I was a junior or so -about 1965 - I wore my hair long and straight. This was at Alabama in the early days of hippies. My conservative sisters took offense and chased me around the house one Saturday night with scissors to cut it off! One girl in the pledge class below mine came to my defense with a baseball bat and fended them off! We still talk about how she saved my hair that night! It was all good natured and we all rolled on the floor laughing about it -but I owe her!

Yes I remember those Lanz nightgowns and we wore them backwards too! At least three of us worked at the Lanz store in Long Beach. We usually wore them on a weeknight for a late night Naugles run to be followed by the latest episode of Dynasty. Pile as many sisters as possible into a VW Rabbit or Bug and off you go!:)

Back in the 60's there was a soap opera called "Dark Shadows" It was totally a nutty concept about Vampires.
We use to rush home from classes during the day to gather around our console TV in the chapter room before we headed back to our classes.(No, everyone didn't have a TV in their dorm room in 1967)
One particular event that truly bonded the pledge class below me but almost cost them their membership was a prank they pulled the week before initiation It was a tradition in our chapter to pull harmless pranks on the pledge trainer just before initiation. This group "kidnapped" and blind folded her and took her to Dallas from Ft.Worth where they handcuffed her to a light pole outside a popular radio station that had big windows looking out on to the street. Well, the radio station disc jockey started talking about it on the radio and then a photographer from the Dallas Morning News came and took a picture which appeared on the front page of the paper. Unfortunately, a member our National Council lived in Dallas at the time and the girls were caught. There punishment was they had to remain a pledge until the next Fall when they could be initiated. I guess she forgave the chapter because her daughter pledged our house several years later.

The Vermony Country Store still seems Lanz nightgowns, pjs, robes, and flannel sheets. Google them.

We were at a mixer one night, and there were a bunch of sisters and some fraternity members gathered around talking. We somehow got on the topic of chickens and roosters, and knowing my little is a Seinfeld fan, I recited a quote from the show: "You've got the hen, the chicken, and the rooster. The rooster goes with the chicken. So, who's having sex with the hen?"

Everyone thought it was a serious question at first and started laughing. I tried to explain myself, but it was too late. I'm still not sure I've lived it down. And that year at our annual formal, my "Most Likely" award was "The sister most likely to not know the "difference" between a chicken and a hen" ..........

:rolleyes: :p

I shared this story on GC a long time ago, but one of my best bonding moments was a road trip that I went on with three brothers to visit another chapter.

I was never a big drinker, and would rarely drink anything at all during parties and socials. On our first night there, the chapter had a party. A member of the other chapter started getting a little aggressive about me not drinking alcohol during the party. Two of my chapter brothers were close by and stepped in. They basically told the other member that I didn't drink, I didn't make a big deal out of it (wasn't judgmental on other guys drinking), and it was my choice and our chapter members respected and supported me. Simply: back off.

This was probably one of the first times that I really felt close to my brothers for letting me be me.

Funny enough, the next day (a Saturday), we were at a bar with a lot of the other chapter guys when a different chapter brother noticed I wasn't drinking and started saying something about it. The brother from the previous night (who had started bugging me about not drinking) stepped in this time and said "He doesn't drink. It's cool." Nice to get support from another brother in another chapter.

The week after I accepted my bid, my chapter did a progressive dinner at sisters' houses. It was a ton of fun and I loved getting to know everyone. At the last house, I was struck with this feeling that I had found "my people" and that I was going to love this sorority more than I already did. I had no idea how much support my sisters would provide me through personal and family illness and just through the difficulties of being so far from home. My sisters became my home and I will forever be grateful for them.

I just remembered one of my favorites! Every year, after pref and after we turned in our bid lists, we would all head over to a particular IHOP in Boston (Kenmore Square), still wearing our pref dresses, heels, badges, pearls, hair and makeup done, etc., and tucked into some pancakes and other assorted carbs. We definitely turned heads! I only got to go twice. During my freshman year, (a) the sorority, which was still a local at the time, didn't do FR, and (b) even if they had, I would obviously have still been a PNM, not a member. During my senior year, I was a rho chi and therefore deaffiliated - rho chis didn't reaffiliate until a couple of days after bid day.

During my junior year, one of my sisters was planning her wedding for the following summer, and another of my sisters was going to be one of her bridesmaids. The bridesmaid spent a good chunk of the meal complaining about the color of the bridesmaids' dresses. They were fire-engine red. At one point, she picked up the bottle of ketchup that was on the table, pointed to it, and said "THIS COLOR!" We were in stitches! (I don't know why she was complaining. I was a guest at the wedding, and she looked good in that dress.)

Going through the installation of my chapter as a Founding Father was one whole bonding experience, seeing as it was the 17 of us with the consultants from IHQ versus an established chapter with a pledge class.

While we did have our big and important moments like initiations, big/little ceremonies, formals, homecomings, etc, I always found our bonding moments were all the moments in between the big ones. Weekly trivia nights at the local Applebees, road trips to the chapter president's house for bylaw meetings, seeing who had the best story from the weekend at chapter meetings all stick out way more to me.

Whoever started this thread is right, the fondest memories happen randomly.

A few to share:

1) I set up a PC brother with a date for formal, but she bailed at the last minute (the afternoon of). So, I had to hurry and find him another date. I ran to the dorms, where a friend from high school lived and asked her, but she didn't wanna go, but her roommate said "I'll go". Within a few hours, she got a dress, did her hair and was ready - well, miraculously it all worked out; they had an absolute blast, dancing and talking the whole night together. It couldn't have been any better.

2) A bunch of us went to a Bon Jovi concert. We pre-funked at the house, then got into somebody's truck and sang "Livin' on a Prayer" at the top of our lungs - I mean, we were shouting it at passersby. Needless to say, my voice went out like 15 minutes into the show.

3) We often did laundry basket races down the stairs. But one night we decided to combine it with a food fight, where we threw marshmallows, chocolate chips, even bread slices, at whoever was racing down (boys will be boys!!). We got into trouble for the mess, which nobody cleaned up, but it was a lot of fun.

This just popped up on my Facebook wall. I could have certainly added this to a few different threads. But it's meant to remind us that brotherhood/sisterhood isn't instant (it takes work!), and it's the little, seemingly insignificant moments that make it special and help it grow.

Brotherhood Isn't Built in a Day
http://blog.phiredup.com/?p=3958

One of the funniest things on bonding came not from Active Brothers was one time when our "Pledge Class" kidnapped all of the Officers and took us away from the house.
They agreed to meet back at the house at a certain time that night. They had taken our C of A and left 2 crossed swords on a couch!
We were upset as Actives until we thought about it and WOW, The Pledge Class had really come together and bonded! Became on heck of a class and future Brothers of the Chapter!!!

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This is going to sound hella weird, but...room assignments. Our house had/has unique rooms and a variety of basic configurations (eg, more than just a raft of identical doubles), so it was always fun to talk with sisters about which rooms you wanted to put in for or get advice from people who'd lived in spaces you were interested in or just likely to get. Matching roommates/neighbors/floormates was a fun way to get to know people, too, whether you were looking for a roommate yourself, connecting your other friends in the house, or just excited to see who would be living next door to you for the semester. At its best, the process made us all feel like a real team - like there was a place for everyone and nobody needed to feel left out.

This isn't bonding in the Chapter (most of those simply should not be put on the internet!) , but as a Sister of ADPi:

I was with a lot of friends, driving from my then-PA home to Florida for a soccer convention, and the only sorority woman. I spotted an ADPi bumper sticker on a car in the right lane, and started yelling, "pull up alongside that car!! Faster!!" until the guy driving finally did. "Blow the horn!!" I put my index & middle fingers against the window, and the sisters in the other car did the same, making the DIAMOND, both cars honking and laughing and generally enjoying the sisterhood.
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The memory still gives me the warm fuzzies!