Funny-in-retrospect Recruitment stories
 

I was wondering if anyone has any humorous stories from Recruitments past, possibly ones that weren't so funny really at the time... :rolleyes:

I'll start off:

Until recently (as a result of this incident) we had been permitting our brothers to wear their letters out to the bar. This was allowed because we've never had any problems with the current brotherhood regarding disruptive behavior/fights/ect while out at the bar. The logic was that the mere act of drinking in your letters wasn't disrespecting them, it was how you behaved. Since we were all very well behaved (especially in letters), we didn't see a reason to make people change after jersey day, which is on the same day we always go out to the bar.

All of this worked out fine until my Son (little brother) Laki and I made a stupid mistake. A guy named Josh who is a friend of Laki's had rushed our "rival" fraternity (nicknamed the Digs), and was regretting it. Also, his girlfriend loved us to death and was pushing him to drop shirt and join us instead. This guy confided in Laki that he was planning to drop the Digs. With this knowledge, we voted to shirt him if he did. Sure enough, a few days later he tells Laki that he's dropped them, so Laki and I decide to shirt him when we all go out later that night. Laki puts the shirt in his pocket.

We're at this nice, calm little outdoor restaurant/bar hanging together with a ton of Sig Nus and various girls, and Josh tells us how cool it is we can wear out letters out to the bar and represent. Laki takes this cue and says "Yeah, we love doing it. You should too!" and tosses the shirt to Josh. It was a great moment.

Later that night we are all getting ready to leave this other place, and suddenly like 15 Digs show up outside like a lynch mob. Someone had seen Josh wearing our shirt and told them, and they were beyond pissed and mostly wasted. Turns out, Josh hadn't actually told them he was dropping shirt, so this was the first they heard of it. We had about equal numbers, and they were up in our faces trying to get us to fight, but I managed to calm things down by appealing to the less antagonistic guys.

After that, we re instituted the ban on wearing letters to the bar, and banned shirting there too obviously. On another note, if the guy who was 2 inches from my face the whole time ever does that again, i'm going to break his jaw.

Nice.

In retrospect, when we were a colony, we were completely retarded with our Rush. We were unhoused, so we'd do NOTHING prior to formal rush, then we'd get a room in the University Center, and I'm not joking, we'd have a movie night where guys would dress like movie characters.

Another time, we set up a fake casino. We sucked at recruitment back then. That's probably why it took us 3 years to get our charter :)

It's almost embarrassing to admit that stuff, but it's 7 years in the past.

The guys running the show these days have really been top notch though. As alums, I think we all learned a lot from our mistakes.

I've never heard of this Jersey'ing a guy. Pretty interesting stuff!

Its not really a jersey, its a black tshirt with our letters on the front and "Snake" on the back. We give them to candidates before they get real jerseys.

"Shirting" means bidding someone outside of formal recruitment. After Fall Rush is over, you can "shirt" someone by giving them one of these shirts and formally asking them to join. This is used to pickup guys who didn't sign up for formal rush, or weren't sure they wanted to join until they saw their friends did, latecomers, ect. Spring recruitment is entirely unorganized by IFC and is 100% shirting.

We have a pretty strange IFC at Stetson. Its funny because Panhellenic rush rules are straight out of Soviet Russia, while IFC rules are extremely relaxed.

We have always called that "Snap Bidding." Our chapter doesn't let guys wear, have stickers on cars or even write the letters until they are Knighted. Even on the shirts that then Candidate Class designs they have to spell out: S I G M A N U... If it happens that we are going to have shirts or something for Greek Week, etc... we simply provide them with shirts that are the same color so they will match.

I think the only chapter in So Cal that allows their new guys to wear letters prior to Knighting is CSULA and they only allow it for a few days prior to Knighting. We keep them from wearing anything with letter because it eliminates confussion when they visit Sigma Nu houses on other campuses.

(The only exception to using the letters prior to initiation is the paddles the Candidates give to their big bros or the gift they give to chapter.)

WE did the same with letters. Our bid day shirts had Sig Nu spelled out on them. Big Bro's would get the letter shirts about a week out from initiation.

Yeah that's the same as Fresno St. We don't allow candidates to wear letters till they are inititated as a Knight. Makes them strive for not only their badge more but to wear OUR letters.

Yeah, we're the only fraternity on campus that allows candidates to wear letters. I'm not sure why that is, and I wouldn't be opposed to changing it, but we recently bought a bunch of the pledge shirts with letters, so it would be silly to change it now.

I figure it probably does help the candidates feel more included in the brotherhood while they are pledging and less like second class citizens or something. We're extremely good about treating our candidates as equals, theres none of the "pledge get me a beer" style stuff going on that happens at some chapters.

Badge! Trevor get me a beer :D

Change your name to Jay Pitts and I might do it ;)

My badge is 172. Is there anyone on here with a badge # between 1 and 171...? If not get me a beer!!!!! I don't even remember the last time I called badge on someone. I think our chapter is pretty good about respecting the older guys. I know when I visit the younger guys my beer is rarely empty and when I am with the older guys I find myself getting quite a few beers.

I have you beat... 5.

Most folks with lower badge #'s than me are members of the Chapter Eternal :)

Yeah, calling pin number is kinda a bitch move. You should respect people without them having to put a number on you.

It's unfortunate that my chapter really doesn't have any sort of tradition of being able to call badge number on people. When it happens, I don't think it's a matter of respect so much as tradition. If we don't have that sort of tradition though, there's no good reason to start it up.

I know that this is a stupid question that most everyone's probably going to go "doh!" over... so bear in mind, I'm from a colony and none of us were ever "frat guys" until now....so...calling badge......means....what?

There are no stupid questions.

Say I'm Zeta Lambda 522 (522nd initiate of the Zeta Lambda chapter of Sig Nu).
and ZL 510 is sitting on the couch watching some stupid show.
I would then say "Badge, give me the TV remote kind sir".

We'd probably never do that, but it's just an example.

It's like say I'm ZI #897 well if one of my lower pledge bros or older guys say maybe #889 wants shotgun in a car he'd go "BADGE!" and then I'd have to fight him off to keep my seat. It's a silly little tradition. We get our badges based on GPA so the better the GPA within your pledge class the better your badge.

Also I noticed that colonists wear letters...they aren't initiated but I guess it makes sense since there are no knights to represent on their campuses.

By GPA?! I woulda been screwed.
The intiates voted on our badge number orders, with top honor going to the "model pledge". It's by GPA, house commitment, learning the pledge information, all the intangibles.

Ours is pretty much the same. We vote on badge ranking based on how much of an effort we felt the candidate made during the process. This usually works very well, although I know of one instance where a very hardworking candidate got screwed by the process somehow.

For our badge ranking, we now do the vote thing as well.

Back when we received our charter though, I did devise what I thought was a pretty fair way of ordering the first set of badge #'s. We of course gave 1,000,000 points to the guy who really pulled it together. After that, you were awarded 75 points per active semester (this was a big deal as we took 3 years to get our charter), then 100 points for being E.C., 90 for L.C., on down the ranking to 30.. and you got 30 for any committee you chaired or any really minor officer position.

When you found a brand new chapter, as you might imagine, everyone pretends that they don't care what their badge # is, but that's a total lie :)

It's probably different for a recolonization though.

It's been my experience that when it comes down to it, everyone cares and wants the lowest possible. I bet it's different when it comes to classes that are going for a milestone - then that milestone number probably becomes the goal rather then low badge. example:

500
1000
1500
2000

I mean don't get me wrong I understand the whole badge thing...but to me...well at least in my chapter....badge just means how well you did in your candidate semester....yeah you may have a lower badge, but that doesn't mean shit when you're not contributing to the chapter....we have that tradition too....I mean I see it as a sign of respect to those who came before...but I mean if you aren't doing shit for the chapter and you want to call Badge on something...that BS

I THINK MY POST IS GOING TO BE LONG SORRY GUYS:

Let me give you a little advice. Some guys will rip your head off for calling Sigma Nu a "Frat" and you may hear a little saying that says "don't call my Fraternity a Frat, you don't want me calling your country a c..." I don't want to write the word here but you can figure it out. It is an issue of respect and Honor and the word Frat has a very negative image. It is a personal choice but you may want to pass that on to your Colony Brothers. It adds a little class when people never hear you say the word Frat. One time I actually corrected a Proffesor who asked the first day of class "are there and Frat boys in this class" I raised my hand and said "no sir but there are 7 Fraternity men here and we all plan on earning "A"s in your class." We backed it up and of the 7 (3 Sigma Nus, 2 Sigma Chis, a TKE, and a Sig Ep) 6 received "A"s and one dropped the class. I had the same professor the following quarter and he asked me to stay after class and it turned out that he was a Sigma Nu from an East Coast school and he only asked the question the previous quarter because he saw me and two of the other SNUs wearing letters and he hoped that we would answer the question that way. He actually wrote me a letter of rec for my current position with my Firm.

NOW BACK TO THE BADGE TOPIC:

It has always been frowned upon to call badge within your own class in our chapter.

We use badge for lineup purposes when entering meeting. Badge also comes into play when we have buffet style meals at our preference dinner and at formal. The ladies go first then badge number order.

As for badge numbers order in my chapter each class votes on their own class we have always felt that the class has a better understanding of what the candidates each did our order is as follows:

President of Class
VP of Class
Treasurer
Recorder
Candidate of Class (Voted by fellow Candidate receiver of the most Votes)
2nd most
3rd most
etc...

We have a few exceptions where if a guy doesn't make grades he falls to the Brothered/Neophyte status and receives the lowest chapter badge number. If there are multiple guys that don't make grades they go in order by the votes again.

Our other exception would be if we are going to hit a milestone and the Candidate of the class gets that badge number unless that badge falls in to one of the top four positions. When we got to 200 we hit it on the nose and the brother got the lowest badge issued to his class. He didn't care he gets to wear 200 and he cherishes his number as if it were his left foot.

Badge number is just a sign of respect for your fraternal superiors and I am sure we all wished guys would just respect the higher badges without anything being said.

Right, sorry....that's why I did have the phrase "frat guy" in the quotation marks, though... I accidentally said frat at College of Chapters around Chris Healy and Jake Welshans ... got pulled aside later and was told, "Look, you're a little brother to us since we helped found y'alls re-colonization...just...never say frat about EN again, alright bud?" ...and it's pretty much left my vocabulary since then. ...anyways....

So, those are the main ways of choosing numbers, eh? ....and, Kevin, no, nobody likes to admit it, but, we'd all like the lowest possible number...nobody really knows what it means...but, that's not the issue, it's low and everbody else seems to want the lowest one, so, we do too. lol

SnuKnight, I think that is an awesome way to do it. Let the pledge class vote on it. Nice.

It works for us. And it is all that I have ever known.